';'!'i'.fs';i:(Viy:;ViA:,?: 
 
 
 
 '^i^V^if/n.-i':.a^»ia:<'^v^. ,
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 Peter Scott
 
 :i
 
 RIDPATH'S 
 
 History of the World 
 
 BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE CAREER 
 
 OF THE HUMAN RACE FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF 
 
 CIVILIZATION TO THE PRESENT TIME 
 
 COMPRISING 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE STORY OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 From recent and authentic Sources 
 
 COMPLETE IN NINE VOLUMES 
 
 By JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL D. 
 
 Author of a " Cyclop/Edia of Universal History," Etc. 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH COLORED PLATES, RACE MAPS AND CHARTS, 
 TYPE PICTURES, SKETCHES AND DIAGRAMS 
 
 The Jones Brothers Publishing Company, 
 Cincinnati, O.
 
 (CoprrigBf 1894 
 doprrialjt 1896 
 €oprrig§t 1897 
 €opyri3Rt 1899 
 (Corrrigfif 1900 
 doprrialjt 1901 
 Coprriflftf 1907 
 ^6? foncB Brotfjora PuS[iǤina Companj 
 Cincinnati, ©§ia 
 
 SOLD BY SUnSCRTPTION ONI. V.
 
 RIDPATH^S 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 BOOK Vn. — PARTHIA 
 BOOK Vni.— GREECE 
 BOOK IX. —MACEDONIA 
 
 9991R^A
 
 5ooI{ ^^u^nl^. 
 
 PARTHIA. 
 
 Chapter xxxiii— The country. 
 
 1^ Y the events recorded in 
 the preceding Book the 
 reader has been made 
 fully aware, not only of 
 the existence, but of the 
 prowess and enterprise of 
 the Hellenic race out of 
 the West. The conflict wliich he has been 
 considering, terminating in utter disaster to 
 the Persian Empire at Arbela, was a crisis iu 
 the affairs of two great peoples having the 
 same ethnic derivation. The Macedouiaus 
 were one of the European developments of 
 that same family whose fecundity on the 
 plateau of Iran gave us the Persians. Hav- 
 ing seen the result of the struggle between 
 the two races, we might here at once transfer 
 our station to the West, to follow the evolu- 
 tion of the Hellenic tribes into nationality, 
 from nationality to conquest, and from con- 
 quest to decadence. 
 
 Thus fjxr in the present volume we have 
 pursued this suggestive method, tracing the 
 course of one people until its conflict with 
 another people has led us naturally to consider 
 the history of the latter. Thus the conquest 
 of Egypt by the Persians carried the reader's 
 attention, first of all, from the valley of the 
 
 Nile to the valley of the Euphrates. The coin 
 quest of ancient Cbaldaea by the Assyrians 
 next drew his interest from the south to the 
 north, from Babylon to Nineveh. Then came 
 the conquest of Assyria by the Medes, which 
 carried the inquirer beyond the Zagros, and 
 made him acquainted, for the first time, with 
 the warlike representatives of the Aryan race. 
 His attention was next recalled by the revival 
 of the Babylonian Power until what time 
 Persia forced her way across Mesopotamia, and 
 subdued the larger part of Western Asia. The 
 history of this Persian Empire we have just 
 considered, and the suggestion of its close 
 would carry us naturally in the wake of the 
 conquerors to Macedonia and the Grecian Isl- 
 ands. This direction we shall indeed pres- 
 ently follow ; but before the final transfer of 
 our historical position from Asia to Europe — 
 before descending from this Iranian plateau to 
 view the astonishing development of the an- 
 cient Hellenic tribes in their archipelago and 
 on the main-land of Greece — it remains to con- 
 sider the peculiar history of an Empire which 
 sprang up, and at length occupied the place 
 of Persia on the highlands of Western Asia. 
 Tiiis Empire is Parthia. Its consideration 
 in this connection is difficult. The Parthian 
 
 (377)
 
 878 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Power did not reach its climax until after the 
 successors of Alexander the Great had quar- 
 reled and fought themselves into silence. The 
 Empire then extended throughout the period 
 which covered the entire decline and extinc- 
 tion of the Grecian commonwealths, and lay 
 alongside in time with the development of 
 the later Repuhlic and Empire of E«me. 
 Of tlie dominions of the latter, Parthia was 
 destined to constitute the thm-far on the East. 
 Against the Parthian arrows in the far East 
 not even the Roman legions could prevail. The 
 strong men, the wild warriors of Central Asia, 
 held the legionaries at bay, or buried them by 
 multiplied thousands in the desert. In time, 
 therefore, the consideration of Parthia before 
 the history of Greece and Eome is a derange- 
 ment of historical relaTtions; but in "place the 
 narrative must be given here. The reader 
 will therefore retain his point of observation 
 on the Great Plateau, and note the develop- 
 ment of the Parthian Empire down to the 
 beginning of the second century of our Era, 
 before transferring his station to Macedonia 
 and the Hellenic peninsula. 
 
 The relations of the Parthian Empire with 
 Persia were remarkable, but not without prec- 
 edent. We have seen Babylonia revived from 
 the grave of ancient Clialdiea. We have 
 seen the Persians themselves flourishing in the 
 land of the Medes. We shall hereafter see 
 many examples of the upspringing of a new 
 national growth from the roots of the fallen 
 tree of some old nationality. In the present 
 instance Parthia may be said to have come 
 forth from the ruins of Persia. The Parthians 
 had long existed as a distinct people, subject 
 to Persian authority. It was reserved for 
 them, by their greater vitality, to survive the 
 wreck of the other Iranian nations, to expand 
 over the ruins of the Alexandrian conquests, 
 to establish a true Empire, and to defend it 
 through several revolutionary epochs, until 
 the drama of Ancient History was closed, and 
 that of Modern Histr)ry begun. It might al- 
 most be said that the Parthian Power has 
 never ceased until the present time, and that 
 the Persian Shah is the living representative 
 of Arsaces I. 
 
 At the beginning, then, it will be proper 
 
 for us to consider briefly the Country of ancient 
 Parthia and the territories subsequently in- 
 cluded in the Empire. This will be followed 
 by a view of the people and their civilization ; 
 after which the narrative of their civil and 
 military career will be given to the beginning 
 of the third century of our era. The dis- 
 tinction must be borne in mind between the 
 Province of Parthia proper and the Imperial 
 country ruled by the great kings during the 
 last century of the ancient epoch. Parthia 
 Proper may be said to have corresponded with 
 tolerable exactitude to the modern province 
 of Khorassan. The position and extent of the 
 country can be noted by the reader by a 
 simple reference to a map of the Persian Em- 
 pire of the present time. The country now 
 includes the districts of Damaghan, Sharud, 
 Sebzawar, Nishapur, Meshed, Shebri-No, and 
 Tershiz. The length from east to west is 
 about three hundred miles, and the extreme 
 width a hundred and twenty miles. The area 
 is thirty-three thousand square miles, being a 
 little greater than that of Ireland in Europe, 
 or the State of Indiana in America. 
 
 The position of Parthia may be defined in 
 general geographical terms as lying about mid- 
 way between the south-eastern borders of the 
 Caspian and the northern shore of the Arabian 
 sea. The country had on its western side the 
 province of Hyrcania, but the latter was gen- 
 erally included under the common name of 
 Parthia. To the east and north lay Margiana, 
 and to the south and west Sagartia and Sar- 
 angia. On the south-east the country was 
 bounded by ancient Arya — a name significant 
 to all the Indo-European peoples. The reader 
 will alread)^ have noted that Parthia as here 
 defined is not far removed from the primitive 
 seats of those tribes out of whose fecund loins 
 all the great races of Europe and America 
 have been ultimately derived. 
 
 Of the general character of Parthia Proper, 
 and of the surrounding regions, suflScient has 
 already been said in the description of the 
 same countries in connection with Media and 
 Persia. The mountain region extending east- 
 ward in a chain from the southern extremity 
 of the Caspian, branches out into many ranges 
 in the Parthian territory ; and from these
 
 PARTHIA.—THE COUNTRY. 
 
 879 
 
 brooks aud rivers descend into the plains, 
 furnishing a fair supply of water. The soil is 
 tolerably fertile, aud the climate marked with 
 those particular vicissitudes under which the 
 energies of the human race are best developed. 
 It is probable that the flora and fauna of 
 modern Khorassau fairly represent the vegeta- 
 ble and animal life of the ancient country. 
 
 It is sufficient to note the great contrast be- 
 tween the region which we are considering 
 and the deserts north and south. The man 
 of antiquity may have well regarded Parthia 
 with delight on his escape from the sandy 
 waste on either hand. The primitive tribes, 
 roaming at will through groves of pine, through 
 sloping lands covered with walnut, ash, and 
 poplar, by river banks lined with the willow 
 and mulberry, may have well chosen this coun- 
 try in preference to any that they had found, 
 and pledged their lives and barbarian resources 
 to its defense. Nor could the winters, extend- 
 ing from October to April, severe in snow and 
 freezing, prevail to destroy the preference of 
 the first Parthians for the country of their 
 choice. 
 
 The situation was favorable for the devel- 
 opment of an ancient State, and the character 
 of the people conduced strongly to that end. 
 We have seen how primeval man at the first 
 chose the alluvial valleys and lowlands about the 
 estuaries of great rivers ; but the second choice 
 of position was those upland regions whose 
 beauty of situation and abundant resources 
 invited the first tribes to rest aud settlement. 
 In this respect Parthia may be regarded as 
 most attractive. In addition to the general 
 fruitfulness of the country — its production of 
 the native cereals and berry fruits of the forest 
 and river banks — the region might well be 
 selected for the desert defenses on either side. 
 Nature has provided for the races of men many 
 natural bulwarks, but none superior to a waste 
 of desert sand. It is, therefore, likely that for 
 long ages before the first authentic annals, the 
 country here described was peopled by adven- 
 turous and warlike tribes. That they did not 
 multi|)ly and develop at an early epoch into a 
 great State must be attributed to the fact that 
 agriculture was not suggested with sufficient 
 emphasis to provoke the energies of the race. 
 
 A mixed life contained the summary, and for 
 a long time limited the activities, of the prim- 
 itive Parthians. But the mixed life signifies 
 a sparse and somewhat fluctuating population, 
 and this is unfavorable to the early develop- 
 ment of social and political power. 
 
 AVe have thus far considered only the orig- 
 inal province of Parthia Proper, and not the 
 character of the countries which were brought 
 under the Parthian sway in the times of the 
 Empire. AVe are not here concerned to note 
 the political and historical development, but 
 only the territorial extension of the primitive 
 kingdom. SuflSce it to say, that hard after 
 the declirie of the Persian power came the 
 rise of Parthia and the expansion of her do- 
 minions north, south, east, and west. The 
 reader will not have failed to detect the name 
 of Parthia in several paragraphs of Persian « 
 history. The country was included for a long 
 time within the dominions of the Achtemenian 
 kings, and constituted no mean part of the 
 Empire of Cyrus and his successors. There 
 were times, as we shall hereafter see, when 
 the native force of the Parthian race asserted 
 itself against the Persian rule, and more than 
 one rebellion gave token of what might be 
 expected as soon as the Persian Power should 
 suffer from foreign violence or fail from in- 
 herent weakness. 
 
 That event at length arrived, when near 
 the close of the fourth century B. C. the 
 Son of Philip, as we have seen in the preced- 
 ing Book, ground under his heel not only the 
 Mesopotamian countries, but all the dominions 
 of the Great Plateau and beyond to the river 
 Indus. It thus happened that Parthia had, 
 first, her historical relations with the Persian 
 Empire ; afterwards, with the Empire of Alex- 
 ander and its divisions ; and lastly, with the 
 military governments established by the Ro- 
 mans out of the far West. 
 
 But we are here to note merely the exten- 
 sion of territory which came to the Parthians 
 by war and conquest. Tlris territorial expan- 
 sion first included the adjacent countries of 
 Chorasmia, Margiana, Arya, Saraugia, Sagartia, 
 and Hyrcauia. The provinces and kingdoms 
 known by these names were, as we shall here- 
 after see, overrun and subdued by tlie armies
 
 380 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 of the Parthiau kiugs, and were added, one 
 by one, to their dominions. The process of 
 physical growth was coincident with the re- 
 verse process of decay on tlie part of the 
 Pei-sians, the Greeks, and the Romans, in the 
 countries of Central Asia. 
 
 The province of Chorasniia bounded Parthia 
 Proper on the north, and consisted of a low- 
 lying plaiu between the Parthiau mountains 
 and the ancient river Oxus. As we have in- 
 dicated above, this was for the greater part a 
 desert region, capable of supporting only the 
 wild tribes of Tura with their flocks. It is 
 believed that to the present day the nomadic 
 habit of life has prevailed with all the suc- 
 ceeding nations that have occupied the country. 
 Nor is it wonderful that the sparse peoples of 
 such a district should have been conquered 
 with ease by the warlike Parthians. 
 
 The country of Margiana was sometimes 
 considered as a distinct kingdom, and some- 
 times as a province of Bactria. The region 
 lay to the north-east of Parthia, and included 
 a much more favorable district than might be 
 found in Chorasmia. The river Margus carried 
 verdure and plenty on its banks, and its waters 
 ■were diverted, in both ancient and modern 
 times, by channels and canals and dykes, 
 extending for many miles from the principal 
 stream. Strabo has given us an account of 
 the fertility of this region, and of the extraor- 
 dinary fruitfulness of the vine, bending with 
 rich clusters on the banks of the Margus. 
 
 Next among the provinces touching Par- 
 thia, and lying on the eastern border of that 
 country, was Arya, the little district which in 
 the fate and vicissitude of things has preserved 
 to modern times the name of our ancestral race. 
 This province embraces the ancient valley of 
 Herat. The country is mountainous, limited 
 in area, not populous, easily subdued by the 
 more powerful Parthians in the time of their 
 warlike greatness. 
 
 Next in our progress to the south we find 
 the province of Sarangia, greater in extent 
 than Arya, but hardly stronger in develop- 
 ment. Here dwelt the desert barbarians called 
 the Sarangse. The region was one of alternate 
 hUls and plains, not wholly waste, having a 
 few small rivers flowing in a south-westerly 
 
 direction. It does not appear that the primi- 
 tive Sarangians were a people of great force, 
 either in war or in peace, and their country 
 was in course of time easily absorbed in the 
 Parthiau Empire. 
 
 Still skirting the latter country in a south- 
 westerly direction, we come to the larger State 
 of Sagartia — larger, but at the same time more 
 iuhos2)itable, less capable of supporting a great 
 population. The ancient tribes were men of 
 the desert, living after the manner of Bedouin 
 Arabs, subsisting for the most part by the 
 capture of such animals as nature had as- 
 signed to the sandy waste. The disposition of 
 the ancient people was more warlike than that 
 of the tribes inhabiting Sagartia and Saran- 
 gia ; but their armies were never sufiiciently 
 strong to compete in battle with the Parthian 
 horsemen. 
 
 We now complete the circuit on the west 
 with the province of Hyrcauia. As we have 
 said above, this country was at times included 
 under the common name of Parthia. It had 
 the same geographical and climatic character 
 with the latter country. It was traversed 
 through its major diameter by two valleys 
 lying between mountain ridges of considerable 
 elevation. The country was well wooded and 
 fairly watered. In this respect Hyrcania 
 rivaled the better parts of Parthia in excel- 
 lence of tree-growth and vegetable products. 
 It was said to be a land abounding in shrubs 
 and green slopes and flowers — fruitful in many 
 things, pleasing to the eye, abounding in the 
 creatures of the chase. The country has been 
 represented in both ancient and modern times 
 as especially prolific in animal life. The trav- 
 eler, as far back as the times of Strabo, was 
 pleased with the prospect. In area the province 
 was considerably inferior to Parthia Proper. 
 Of all the bordering regions of the latter 
 country, Hyrcania, however, was the most in- 
 teresting and important. It has been urged 
 by Rawlinson and other competent critics of 
 the situation, that the place and character of 
 both the country and people of Parthia were 
 favorable to the expansion of political power 
 and the establishment of a widely extended 
 rule over the surrounding nations. 
 
 We have now considered briefly the extent
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 and nature of those countries immediately sur- 
 rounding the original Parthian kingdom, but 
 have by no means included in the description 
 the wide range of countries beyond — countries 
 included in the times of Mithridates in the 
 Parthian Empire. On the north-east we have 
 first of all the extensive country of Bactria. 
 In different ages this region has been variously 
 defined. In general, the country so named 
 ■was bounded on the south and south-east by 
 the mountains of Hindu Kush ; on the north 
 by the Oxu.s; on the west by Chorasmia and 
 Margiana. In the times of the Parthian as- 
 cendency, however, Bactria extended north- 
 ward far beyond the Oxus Proper to the 
 northern branch of that river, skirting the 
 mountain range which defined the southern 
 limit of Scythia. The country had much of 
 the same character with Margiana and Cho- 
 rasmia, but was less of a desert, more of a hill 
 country, especially toward the east. The tri- 
 angular apex of Bactria lying among the 
 mountains under the meridian of 74° east 
 from Greenwich, marked the uttermost limit 
 of the Parthian dominion on the side of India. 
 It suffices to say that the country for a long 
 time resisted the ambitions of the Parthian 
 kings, and it was near the close of the second 
 century B. C. before it was included in their 
 dominions. 
 
 On the south of the country just described, 
 bordered on the west by Arya and Sarangia, 
 was the small province of Arachosia, another 
 mountain region of similar character to Bac- 
 tria, but less severe in climate. It was watered 
 by the river Etymandrus and its tributaries, 
 reaching far into the highlands on the north- 
 east. The country here described occupied 
 the southern, as Bactria occupied the northern, 
 slopes of the Hindu Kush. The province ex- 
 tended through about four meridians of longi- 
 tude, and was nearly square, marking the 
 extreme south-eastern limits of the Parthian 
 Empire. 
 
 1 Following the boundary of that great do- 
 minion to the south-west, we come to the two 
 countries of Sacastana and Carmania, the first 
 lying south of Sarangia and almost wholly 
 desert in character. Carmania is also, in its 
 northern part, a desert waste, and on its 
 
 southern border next to Gedrosia, a mount- 
 ainous region. Indeed, the whole of the two 
 countries just mentioned were in ancient times, 
 as they are at present, as little attractive and 
 as poorly adapted to civilization as almost any 
 region of Central Asia. 
 
 On the west, however, we come to the 
 country of Persis, or Persia Proper, lying 
 along the gulf of the same name, a region of 
 hills and streams and pleasant prospects. We 
 have here reached, against the sea, the south- 
 ern limit of the Parthian Empire, at its greatest 
 estate, in one of the most attractive and inter- 
 esting regions of the whole. Persia has been 
 already described, not only in its narrower, 
 but in its imperial extent ; nothing need here 
 be added as to the physical characteristics and 
 possibilities of the country. So also of both the 
 Medias, the Magna, and the Atropatene. These 
 have been amply described in a former Book. 
 
 On the south and west of these great and 
 important countries, but still included in the 
 Parthian dominion, lay Babylonia and all the 
 Mesopotamian countries, bounded by the Eu- 
 phrates on the west. Here were Susiana, 
 Assyria, Adiabene, and all the regions as far 
 north as the Armenian mountains. The 
 country of Armenia was also included in the 
 Empire of Mithridates, but here we reach the 
 ultimate limits of that Empire on the west. 
 Viewing it as a whole, we find it extending 
 from the extreme western deflection of the 
 Upper Euphrates, in longitude .38° 30' east to 
 the meridian of 74° in the Hindu Kush. The 
 northernmost limit was on the Oxus, a little 
 above the parallel of 42° N., and the extreme 
 southern boundary on the Persian gulf under 
 the parallel 27° 30' X. The whole extent 
 from east to west was hardly less than fifteen 
 hundred miles, and the greatest breadth from 
 north to south about four hundred miles. The 
 geographical area was not far from 450,009 
 square miles, being about co-extensive with 
 the area of the modern Persian Empire. 
 
 It must not be understood, however, that 
 the two dominions — Ancient Parthia and 
 Modern Persia — coincided in their bounda- 
 ries. A glance at the two maps will enable the 
 reader to note how different were the limits of 
 the ancient Empire from those of its modern
 
 PARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 368 
 
 representative. We do not here dwell further 
 upon the physical characteri.stics and natural 
 potency of the countries held under a single 
 sway by Mitlnidates, for the reason that the 
 
 the preceding histories of Babylonia, Assyria, 
 Media, and Persia. We, therefore, pa.ss at 
 once to the consideration of the Parthians as 
 a people, their institutions, general character 
 
 same have already been amply considered in and manner of life and government. 
 
 Chapter xxxiv.— people and Arts. 
 
 HE ethnic origin of the 
 Parthian race has not 
 l)eeu well determined. It 
 would appear that their 
 arrival in Central Asia 
 was somewhat later than 
 the incoming of many 
 other peoples into that region of the world. 
 Doubtless the Chaldseans, the Assyrians, the 
 Medes, and even the Persians, antedated by 
 several centuries — many centuries in the case 
 of the older of these nations — the arrival of 
 the Parthians in their ancestral seats. 
 
 We are here close to one of the great 
 ethnic problems with which the student of 
 history is confronted in the beginning of his 
 inquiry. The question is no less than that of 
 the origin of the Aryan family of men. His- 
 tory is able to trace backwards the movements 
 of the Aryan peoples to the region of the 
 Bactrian Highlands, but beyond that all is 
 mist and thick darkness. Did the Aryans 
 come from some other region afar? — some 
 country in which they were associated with 
 the Semitic or Hamitic family of men ? The 
 answer is not apparent. We are, therefore, 
 led to begin with the development and migra- 
 tions of the Aryan tribes from the region of 
 their primitive settlements without the solution 
 of the fundamental problem. 
 
 Parthia was not far from the Aryan nidus. 
 We may safely ascribe the origin of the people 
 to the same source with that of the Persians 
 and the Medes. Of a certainty the Parthians 
 were strongly discriminated from the peoples 
 just mentioned. They had more of the Tu- 
 ranian character — fewer of the well-known 
 characteristics of the Indo-Europeans as illus- 
 trated in the Hellenic and Roman races. So 
 N.— Vol. 1—24 
 
 strongly marked were the distinctions just re- 
 ferred to, that many inquirers have been disposed 
 to regard the Parthians as having a Scythic 
 origin. Arrian, among the ancients, declares 
 his belief in such a derivation. It can not be 
 doubted that there were relations between the 
 Parthians through the tribes of Chorasmia with 
 the Scyths beyond the Oxu.s. It must be ob- 
 served that race distinctions fade away some- 
 what along the border lines where two families 
 of mankind fret and roll together. Modern 
 history furnishes a hundred examples of such 
 obliteration of ethnic features along the bound- 
 aries of States and nations. 
 
 It was doubtless so in antiquity, but even 
 in a stronger measure. At a time when society 
 was unsettled, when the tribal state had not 
 yet given place to fixedness of residence, there 
 was more frequent mixing and interweaving 
 along the selvages of races than even in 
 modern times. These circumstances may serve 
 to explain the presence of Scythic elements 
 among the ancient Parthians. So that natural 
 and ethnic causes may be found sufficient in 
 number and character to account for the tra- 
 ditions of the Greek and Roman story-tellei-s 
 who were wont to classify the Parthians with 
 the Scythic race. 
 
 We may agree that at the time of the great 
 invasion of all central and Western Asia by 
 the Scythian barbarians, a larger amount of 
 their work and influence remained in Parthia 
 than in the other countries which they con- 
 quered. The Parthian language shows un- 
 mistakably a Scythic infection — ^just as English 
 bears indubitable evidence of the Norman 
 conquest. The Parthian vocabulary had in it 
 a large addition of Scythic words, and the 
 civil and military habits of the people were
 
 8S4 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 modeled, to a considerable extent, after those 
 of the Turanian barbarians. There are at the 
 present time certain Teutonic peoples in 
 Europe upon whom the Slavs have made a 
 like impression, insomuch that their race char- 
 acter might be mistaken by even a critical 
 observer. How much the more may such a 
 mistake be expected in the case of an ancient 
 people modified by a foreign influence ! We 
 must conclude that the Parthians, along with 
 the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Hyrcanians, 
 Medes, and Persians, belonged to the common 
 family to which the name Aryan has been 
 assigned. 
 
 The life of the Parthian people, however, 
 had much the aspect of that of the peoples 
 beyond the Oxus. This is to say that, like the 
 Tartar and the Turcoman tribes of a later day, 
 the Parthians were nomadic in habit, spending 
 the greater part of their time on horseback and 
 abroad. The Roman historians, as late as the 
 time of the conflict of the Consular armies with 
 the Parthian cavalry, were struck with aston- 
 ishment at the manners of a people who trans- 
 acted the larger part of their business and at- 
 tended to all duties and avocations, even to 
 eating and drinking, while mounted on their 
 horses. It should not be forgotten, however, 
 that much of the same disposition was snown 
 by the Persians, and the student might, if he 
 would, trace this aspect of Turanian life far 
 into Asia Minor, and even into Europe. In 
 other particulars also the Partiiians revealed 
 their innate sympathy with nomadic manners. 
 There was little fixedness of settlement, at least 
 until a late date, in the Parthian ascendency. 
 The old habit of hunting, of riding abroad, of 
 gratifying the passion for rapid transit from 
 scene to scene, continued to prevail, and at 
 length gave form to the organization and tactics 
 of the Parthian army. 
 
 It was such a people as these that Cyrus 
 the Great met and conquered in the early years 
 of his aggressive career. The nation Avas in- 
 corporated as one of the satrapies of the Per- 
 sian Empire, and remained in that dependence 
 until what time the cohorts of Alexander, ris- 
 ing from the West, shattered the Achsemenian 
 Dynasty and reduced it to its origiual elements. 
 But of the historical development and varying 
 
 vicissitudes of the Parthian race we shall 
 speak more fully hereafter. 
 
 As usual with men of antiquity, the re- 
 ligious life of the Parthians presented many 
 interesting features, and revealed no small part 
 of the national character. We are here, geo- 
 graphically and ethnically speaking, not far 
 from the primitive seat of one of the great re- 
 ligions of mankind. Zoroaster was a Bactrian. 
 We have already seen how the faith and doc- 
 trine which he formulated and taught spread 
 among the races of the Great Plateau and be- 
 came organic in the Zendavesta. 
 
 The teachings of the great prophet were- 
 accepted by the Achsemeniau kings, and were 
 imposed by them as a State religion upon the 
 subject nations of the Persian Empire. Among 
 these was Parthia. Whatever may have been 
 the tribal faith and practice of the old Par- 
 thians, they accepted the religion of their con- 
 querors, not only in its early singleness but ia 
 its subsequent dualistic development. The- 
 wild warriors of the Parthian plain came to 
 believe in Ahura-Mazdao as the fountain of 
 all Good, and in Ahriman as the source of 
 all Evil. 
 
 We have had occasion, in a former chapter, 
 to trace the rise of this belief and its evolution 
 among the Iranic peoples. It was from this- 
 source that Dualism as a principle of philo- 
 sophic belief made its way to the West, became 
 interfused with the speculations of the Western 
 nations, and at last intertwined itself with the 
 opinions and practices of the leading peoples- 
 of modern times. But it must be allowed that 
 dualism — the division of the universe into the 
 two parts of good and evil and the creation 
 of a hierarchy of the Powers set against each- 
 other iu perpetual warfare, involving the lives 
 and actions of men — is a natural growth pe- 
 culiar to the human mind at a certain epoch of 
 its career. We have seen such phenomena in 
 the valley of the Nile, in the valley of the 
 Euphrates, and in the highest activity on the 
 Iranian plateau. We shall hereafter see traces- 
 of the same thing in the mercurial intellect of 
 the Greeks, in the heavier cogitations of the 
 Romans, and in the dreams of the Teutonic 
 barbarians in their forest solitudes. But among 
 all peoples, the races now under consideration-
 
 PARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 385 
 
 were most active in tbe development of such a 
 belief and in its dissemination. Zoroaster was 
 the abstract and chronicle of the religious 
 opinions and philosophical speculations of the 
 }ieoples among whom he appeared. The Par- 
 thians took his system and entertained it dur- 
 ing their period of ascendency. Indeed, in 
 nearly all respects they became the representa- 
 tives of the Persians who had preceded them. 
 
 But in the hands of the Parthians, as in 
 the hands of the Persians, the Zoroastriau sys- 
 tem suffered deterioration. It went at length 
 into the form of Magism and idolatry. It were 
 difficult to say to how great an extent the 
 idolatrous aspect of the Magian cult was the 
 result of the revival of the ancient polytheistic 
 instincts of the race. Perhaps a part of the 
 degeneration may be attributed to this cause, 
 and part to the rise of a priesthood. Here 
 the history of Parthia could but repeat the 
 common story of the mischief always done, 
 the havoc always wrought with a national re- 
 ligion when it falls into the hands of a priest- 
 hood. Then it is that superstition, selfishness, 
 folly, the pride of caste, and the ambition of 
 power begin to take the place of the religious 
 fervor which marks the earlier stages of devel- 
 opment. Henceforth the history of religion 
 becomes a history of forms which by their 
 growth and inilection quench the glow that 
 dwelt in the spirits of the primitive prophets. 
 
 The Parthians fell under the dominion of 
 these influences. The Magi soon became a 
 powerful caste in the State. Fire, as the em- 
 blem of the sun, and perhaps the emblem of 
 life, became the object of superstitious adora- 
 tion. The elements of nature were held in 
 sacred awe. Rivers were worshiped, as were 
 many other parts of the material world. The 
 superstitions which we have noted in the case 
 of the Per.aians revived among the Parthians. 
 The dead might not be buried, but must rather 
 be exposed on high in the tops of towers, where 
 the bodies might be devoured by the birds of 
 the air. After the lapse of a long time the 
 bones might be gathered and deposited in 
 tombs. The sacred fire must bo kept burning 
 by the priests. In short, the whole ritual of 
 Magism must be performed — the ceremonies of 
 the faith perpetuated by the people. Under 
 
 such conditions, the Magi at one time became 
 especially powerful. They were members of 
 the National Council, uuder the Parthian kings, 
 and were as haughty, arrogant, and arbitrary 
 as they and their class have always been in 
 their despotism over society. 
 
 At length, however, Magism fell into a de- 
 cline. The high priests lost their hold upon 
 the Government. It would appear that a sort 
 of original paganism revived, which may well 
 remind one in its manifestation of the beliefs 
 and practices prevalent on the banks of the 
 Tiber and in the German woods. The Sun 
 became the principal object of Parthian wor- 
 ship. After him the Moou was adored as the 
 divinity of night. We might almost transfer 
 and adapt ia this connection the celebrated 
 chapter of the Sixth Book of the Ctesarian 
 Commentaries, wherein Julius describes the re- 
 ligion of the Teutonic nations. The prevail- 
 ing principle was that those objects of nature 
 only were fit to be worshiped by the aid of 
 which men were manifestly benefited. The 
 system was thus virtually devoid of specula- 
 tion. The Sun did good to men. Therefore 
 the Sun might well be worshiped. On a lower 
 plane we find the common beliefs of the Aryan 
 nations in minor divinities and spirits by whom 
 the smaller aflliirs of life were controlled and 
 guided. There were genii of the day-time, 
 genii of the night, genii of the hearthstone, 
 the spirits of the fathers, and the Larv.<B of the 
 earth. The system in its last estate was not 
 essentially diflTerent from that of the Pagan na- 
 tions of Europe. 
 
 The men of Alexander took with them inttt 
 the East the religious beliefs of the Hellenic 
 Aryans. The name of the Olympian Zeus 
 was heard in Babylon, in Seleucia, in Ctesi- 
 phon, in Ecbatana, in Persepolis, in Hatra, 
 and iu Bactra. Wherever the Greek cities 
 were planted, there the mythology of the 
 West, with its ample inflections, was founded. 
 This invasion of Zoroastrianism and Magism 
 the Parthians seem not to have resented. 
 As a general fact the Aryan religions have 
 been tolerant ; those of Shem have refused to 
 know other than themselves. The same prin- 
 ciple was illustrated when the Romans became 
 the conquerors of the East. They also carried
 
 886 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 their religious system, such as it was, to the 
 banks of the Euphrates and far beyoud. 
 
 Ah-eady before this time Judaism had been 
 propagated by several means in the Aryan 
 countries. At a still later period, when Rome 
 was converted to Cliristiauity, the new faith 
 ■was carried under the protection of the eagles 
 to the uttermost limits of the Empire. It 
 were impossible to say to what extent these 
 foreign religious influences permeated Parthia 
 and brought her people under their sway. 
 Already at the time of the primitive apostles, 
 Parthian Christianity had become a fact ; and 
 St. Luke enumerates the Parthians along with 
 the Medes and Elamites among the strangers 
 gathered in Jeru.salem. All this would indi- 
 cate on the part of the Parthian monarchs the 
 same tolerant spirit which the Greeks and 
 Eomans were wont to show to alien systems 
 of religion. 
 
 One of the chief forms of activity among 
 the Parthians was war. It is from their mili- 
 tary character that the race is best known to 
 the world. Long before the close of the An- 
 cient Era the name of this people was heard as 
 far west as Eome — and generally with terror. 
 They it was doubtless whom Horace had in 
 view under the name of Medii in the Secular 
 Hymn : — 
 
 Now by the sea and on the land, the Mede 
 Fears the strong squadrons and the axe of Rome ; 
 
 Now the late haughty Scythian doth piead 
 For mild response— and men of India' come. 
 
 The reader may, therefore, well be surprised 
 to note the fact that this most warlike nation, 
 whose fierce, wild cavalry swept like flying 
 clouds across the deserts of the Great Plateau, 
 had no fixed military establishment — no stand- 
 ing army. It appears, on the contrary, that the 
 Parthians, by their disposition and habit of 
 life, constituted what may be called a natural 
 soldiery. There were two branches to the 
 Parthian service, the cavalry and the foot. 
 But the first was the important part. Indeed, 
 it is doubtful whether the Parthian infantry 
 ■was of much value in the field. It was upon 
 the cavalry that the kings relied for victory; 
 and the reliance was not misjilaced. 
 
 In time of war the Parthian monarch 
 called upon his vassals to bring forth each his 
 
 quota of warriors for the field. It appears 
 that the constitution of Parthian society was 
 es.sentially feudal. The vassal was bound to 
 his suzerain in the matter of military service. 
 He must call out his retainers and slaves, see 
 to their equipment and mounting, bring them 
 to the place of rendezvous, and command them 
 in battle. It was thus that the army was 
 made up of bands of warrioi-s drawn from the 
 various districts after the manner of the Cru- 
 saders. But a common enthusiasm pervaded 
 the whole, and there was no lack of unity in 
 the general command. This was reserved for 
 the king in person, and for his generalissimo, 
 called the Surena. 
 
 The latter may be regarded as the head 
 baron of the countr}-. The office which he held 
 hereditary in his family. It is doubtful 
 whether even the king could displace him 
 from the position in which he was fixed by 
 heredity and custom. The same was in great 
 measure true of the other vassals. Each coni- 
 manded in his own right, and held his placs 
 at home and in the field in virtue of what may 
 be called the Parthian constitution. 
 
 Looking at the organization of the army, 
 we find a heavy-horse and a light-horse con- 
 tingent. The first was the main branch of the 
 service. This wing was undoubtedly the finest 
 cavalry of the ancient world. The warriors 
 were armed in mail as to their bodies, the scale- 
 armor of iron and steel descending as low as. 
 the knees, well made and strong, polished to 
 brightness, capable of resisting any of the or- 
 dinary missiles of the battle-field. On the head 
 was a helmet, also burnished, heavy, and well 
 made. The arms and the legs were free, an 
 they must needs be in fighting from the horse. 
 
 The weapons of these Parthian dragoons 
 were bows and arrows and a spear. All these 
 were long and strong. The arrow was shot 
 with such violence that its flight was said to 
 be invisible from its rapidity, and scarcely any 
 armor of the enemy could protect the wearer 
 from its fall. The spear was equally fatal, 
 being thrust with a violence which frequently 
 impaled two warriors with a single blow. The 
 horseman also carried a .short sword, which in 
 close quarters he drew and used with fearful 
 efl!ect. The horses of the dragoons, like their
 
 FARTMIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 387 
 
 ri<5ers, vrore a scale armor in battle, having 
 the same adjusted to their heads, necks, and 
 breasts. The light-horse carried bows and ar- 
 rows, but were unarmored, and bore no spears. 
 The value of this wing depended upon its 
 dexterity. Horsemen of this class hovered 
 within bow-shot, discliarging their arrows with 
 great rapidity, wheeling to right and left, at- 
 tacking the flank, and mauceuvering in such 
 manner as to confuse the enemy. 
 
 The supply-train of the Parthian army was 
 furnished by a caravan of camels laden with 
 provisions and military accoutrements. It has 
 been noted that tlie Parthians, advancing to 
 battle, always carried an abundance of arrows, 
 so that literal sliowers of these missiles might 
 be rained upon the enemy. The attack was 
 made with the utmost spirit. So far as strat- 
 egy was concerned, the same consisted in de- 
 ceiving the enemj'; in bringing him into un- 
 favorable situations; in cutting off supplies; in 
 taking advantage of any temporary confusion 
 that might occur, and filially in tlie furious 
 charge directly on the line. This mode of at- 
 tack was like a thunder-gust which expended 
 itself with the onset. When the flying squad- 
 rons came within reach of the adver.se lines, 
 they began to rain upon them a terrible dis- 
 charge of arrows, which was kept up inces- 
 santly until the actuaPshock of combat, when 
 tbe spears, and finally the swords, were used. 
 It was the expectation by this means to break 
 everything into confusion and sweep the 
 enemy from the field. But if the charge was 
 firmly met, the battle generally continued for 
 but a few minutes after the shock, when the 
 Parthians would turn to flight. 
 
 This, however, was a decejjtious movement, 
 intended to draw the enemy into puisuit. 
 The dragoons, as well as the light-horse, merely 
 scampered out of reach, and immediately 
 formed anew. If the foe, unacquainted with 
 this manneuver, should chance to follow, and 
 offer by the break of the lines or otlier for- 
 tuitous circumstances any advantage, tlie on.set 
 would be immediately renewed by the Par- 
 thians in a second charge like the first. This 
 manner of battle was on the whole especially 
 effective. It is probably true that in the 
 whole vast circle of victory and Imperial con- 
 
 quest the Roman legions never met anywhere 
 on the frontiers of the world a more dangerous 
 enemy than was this same Parthian army. 
 Hereafter we shall show in many details of 
 campaign and battle the results of the doubt- 
 ful contests waged by Rome with the mailed 
 dragoons of Parthia. The fact has been cited 
 that in the six great campaigns made by the 
 Mistress of the World into the countries be- 
 yond the Euphrates .she was obliged in no fewer 
 than five to yield the palm to her skillful and 
 courageous antagonist. 
 
 Several additional fiicts connected with the 
 Parthian method of warfare may be cited as 
 of interest to the general reader. The Par- 
 thians avoided all militarv movements, par- 
 ticularly battle, in the night. Perhaps the 
 management of cavalry in tlie darkness is at- 
 tended with greater peril and difficulty than 
 are consequent upon the evolutions of in- 
 fantry. Moreover, the Parthians did not em- 
 ploy fortifications, either for their camp or in 
 the field. For the rest, superstition may have 
 had something to do with that feature of the 
 tactics which required the withdrawal of the 
 army at nightfall to a considerable distance, 
 and the total avoidance of battle or further 
 movements until the morrow. 
 
 For reasons of a similar character the 
 winter was avoided as unsuited to campaign- 
 ing. We may readily perceive that the sum- 
 mer season, as in all other countries and 
 conditions, would be regarded as a favorable 
 time for those rapid and headlong movements 
 upon which the success of Parthian warfare 
 especially depended. It was noted, moreover, 
 by the Greeks and Romans in their conflicts 
 with the Parthians, that the latter could en- 
 dure heat and deprivation of water much better 
 than themselves — a circumstauce which gave a 
 not inconsiderable advantage to the warriors 
 of the East. 
 
 On the other hand, the latter were weak 
 in all operations pertaining to sieges and in- 
 vestments. In the nature of the case, the 
 Parthian cavalry were unable to carry a forti- 
 fied position. Tliey appear to have been al- 
 most ignorant of the machinery and appliances 
 necessary to a siege. The Romans, therefore, 
 were comparatively .safe in the fortified sta-
 
 388 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 tions which they established on the eastern 
 borders of the Empire. But they could never 
 be completely at rest in such situations ; for 
 their supplies were constantly endangered 
 by the ceaseless vigilance of the Parthian 
 horsemen. Whenever ccmmunications could 
 be cut 0^, it became siwply a question of 
 time wheii +he Romans luust come forth and 
 take the hazards of ilie open field in a move- 
 ment towards the base of supplies. Such re- 
 treats were nearly always fatal. The Par- 
 thians, whenever they perceived a moveiZont 
 of the kind, were on the alert. No straggler 
 henceforth escaped. On both ■nings and the 
 rear of the receding army a clouJ of warriors 
 might oe seen hovering in the horizon, and a 
 single misstep of the retreating forces was suf- 
 ficient to efiect their ruin. 
 
 Another feature of the Parthian warfare 
 was the absence of chariots and vehicles of all 
 kinds. Those who could not ride must walk. 
 In general, it might be said that the whole 
 force was mounted on either horses or camels. 
 In rare instances members of the royal house- 
 hold, the women and others, were borne after 
 the army in chariots. Sometimes the ponder- 
 ous bulk of an elephant was seen; but this 
 generally marked the presence of the monarch 
 or the generalissimo. These important per- 
 sonages were sometimes made conspicuous, as 
 well as secure, by having their station on the 
 backs of trained elephants. In rare cases 
 camels were used by the cavalry in actual 
 battle ; but the Greeks and Romans learned 
 that these beasts could be easily disabled by 
 sowing tribuU, or iron stars, in the way of their 
 spongy feet. 
 
 In the Parthian manner battle was made 
 with as much noise as possible. The army 
 was accompanied with its musicians, or clamor- 
 makers, who in time of the onset beat upon 
 metal drums, which resounded over the plains, 
 and was answered by the wild shouts of the 
 horsemen as they rushed to the onset. The 
 charge, as we have said, was at full speed. 
 The oncoming of the flying squadrons was so 
 rapid that they seemed to the Romans to rise 
 out of the earth. As soon as the charge had 
 broken upon the legions, the horsemen, if un- 
 successful, fled, as we have seen ; but in doing 
 
 so fired backwards Nor were the 'enemy able to 
 perceive any dimiuution in the shower of arrows 
 until the receding column was out of reach 
 
 Out of the nature of things war brings 
 cessation, and finally armistice and treaty. 
 These things require formalities. Since war 
 was the mood of antiquity, rules for formal in- 
 tercourse between belligerents were devised at 
 an early day. The Parthians had a well-regu- 
 lated ceremonial of the field and for military 
 conferences. It was the custom, when they 
 desired to confer with an enemy, to go forward 
 L- i'ull sight with unstrung bows. This signi- 
 fied a desire to communicate with the enemy. 
 The right hand was stretched out towards the 
 opposing camp, to signify the wish for a parley. 
 When the preliminaries of the conference had 
 thus been arranged, the formal represirntatives 
 of the two powers were wont to come together 
 on some neutral ground, as on a bridge span- 
 ning some boundary stream, and there discuss 
 the terms of settlement. Under such circum- 
 stances treaties were made. Nor could it be 
 said that the Parthians were less faithful in 
 the observance of stipulations to which they 
 had agreed than were the Greeks and Romans. 
 From the former of these peoples, who in the 
 times of Alexander had established them- 
 selves and planted their civilization in many 
 cities, old and new, throughout the East, the 
 Parthians had acquired a knowledge of the 
 Greek tongue, and this for several centuries 
 was used as the medium of civil and military 
 intercourse between them and the nations of 
 the West. 
 
 It were a mistaken view of the subject to 
 consider the Parthian administration in the 
 times of the Empire as a government of bar- 
 barous principles and Inethods. On the coh- 
 trary, it became as well refined as the contem- 
 poraneous governments which had in the 
 meantime been established by the European 
 Aryans. The forms of intercourse were regu- 
 lar and enlightened. Embassies were sent by 
 the Parthian monarchs to foreign courts, and 
 such were received in turn at the Parthian 
 capitals. It was the custom of the times to 
 send by the hands of international commis- 
 sioners presents from king to king as seemed 
 befitting to the age and condition. In none
 
 PARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 388 
 
 •of these respects were the Parthian monarchs 
 less scrupulous than their contemporaneous 
 sovereigns in the West. The intercourse be- 
 tween Phraates IV. and the Emperor Augus- 
 tus was conducted as between monarch and 
 monarch of equal rank. Ambassadorial eourt- 
 •esies were common, and without disparage- 
 ment to the kings of the East. The usual 
 methods of maintaining international faith 
 were observed. Oaths were made and pledges 
 given after the manner of antiquity. The giv- 
 ing and taking of hostages was one of the 
 commonesl means of securing good faith and 
 the fulfillment of agreements. It happened 
 on several occasions that members of the Par- 
 thian royal family were freely sent to Rome 
 in pledge of the fidelity of the king to his 
 stipulations with the Western Empire. 
 
 If from the consideration of war we turn to 
 the peaceful aspect of life and look at the king 
 and his court, we shall find much of interest 
 and instruction. True, we are constrained for 
 the most part to consider the aspect of this 
 •royal life in the East through a glass darkly; 
 for its manner has been mostly narrated by 
 ■the historians of Greece and Rome and Jewry. 
 The Parthians were not themselves a literary 
 .people, and but few original sources of infor- 
 mation are at our command. First of all, we 
 ■may refer to the national amusement, which 
 was hunting. After war it would appear that 
 the next highest source of interest and excite- 
 ment among the people, whether of noble or 
 of common rank, was the attack on wild beasts. 
 We have seen this trait of character already 
 displayed in Assyria and Persia. Nor is it 
 needed that we should return to antiquity to 
 ■find a similar passion in full activity. Nearly 
 every people, indeed, on its advance from half- 
 •barbarity to civilization has found gratification 
 in the pursuit and killing of wild animals. In 
 the first intent the wild beast takes tlie place 
 of the enemy. Its blood is typical of his. 
 The fdll of the boar under the arrow's flight 
 •or spear-thrust of the pursuer is next in the 
 scale of delight to the fall of the enemy in 
 battle. 
 
 Parthia abounded in wild beasts. On the 
 Assyrian borders the lion was found. Hyr- 
 ?ania was the native lair of tiosers so fierce that 
 
 "Hyrcanian" became an epithet descriptive of 
 the most dangerous species of that animal. 
 Leopards and bears also abounded. The Par- 
 thian hunters followed these animals into their 
 haunts, and exposed their lives in the contest. 
 In course of time, however, when the Empire 
 was established, pleasure and excitement were 
 sought in a manner more artistic and less dan- 
 gerous. Then were constructed the great parks, 
 called by the Eastern nations "Paradises," 
 wherein animals taken from the forests were 
 loosed, to live and propagate their kind under 
 the dominion of half-natural conditions. Here 
 the artificial hunt was made. The king and 
 his companions traversed the paradise, raised 
 the wild beast from his covert, pursued and 
 smote him after the manner of the ancient 
 chase in the wild and desert. 
 
 We may glance at the appearance of the 
 king when he went forth as a hunter. On 
 such occasions he wore a short cloak, of which 
 we find examples on the monuments and coins. 
 A helmet protected his head, and in his hand 
 he carried the strong bow with the double 
 curve, the animal tendon for a thong, and the 
 swift arrow against which nothing alive might 
 stand. Like his countryman, the monarch 
 went on horseback. Ilis person was orna- 
 mented in barbaric fashion with jewels and 
 gold. His hor.se were trappings of the same 
 sjjlendid fashion with the king's garments, and 
 the attendants were only less gorgeous in their 
 apparel, less haughty in manner, than the mon- 
 arch himself. 
 
 At the Court another fashion prevailied. 
 Here a long robe, like that of the Persian and 
 Median nobles, was worn )>_y the king. The 
 insignia of royalty were hung about his neck. 
 A diadem circled his forehead, and his ears 
 supported rings and jewels. Like her consort, 
 the queeu-in-chief, preeminent above the harem, 
 proud in her ascendency over hundreds of 
 concubines which the law granted to the sov- 
 ereign, adorned herself in a manner equally 
 splendid. She, as well as he, received the 
 title of Divine. She, like the king, wore a 
 diadem and sometimes a tiara. Not often, 
 however, was she permitted, under the custom 
 of the race, to obtrude herself into public 
 affairs. More than those of any other of the
 
 390 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Aryan peoples were the social and domestic 
 habits of the Parthians conformed to the man- 
 ners of the Orient. Polygamy was the law 
 of the laud. The harem was the expression 
 of the social system in its ultimate analysis. 
 All women except tlie characterless crowd of 
 Hetceice, dancers, and the like, who followed 
 in the wake of the army, were secluded from 
 sight. They must hide themselves like the 
 women of Shera. They must be veiled, that 
 their faces be not seen by men. With men 
 they must not converse, except with their hus- 
 bands in the harem. The sexes were sepa- 
 rated at the domestic meal and at the public 
 banquet. The care of the harem was intrusted 
 to eunuchs, after the manner already described 
 in the history of Persia. 
 
 We have already remarked upon the small 
 intellectual development of the Parthian peo- 
 ple, as shown in the absence of literature and 
 art. Their learning proceeded as far as the 
 mastery of their own tongue and, in the best 
 days of the Empire, a very general acquire- 
 ment of Greek. It appears that the Parthian 
 kings and their subjects were quick to discover 
 the superiority of the language of the men of 
 Alexander, and were not long in adopting it, 
 at least as the speech of their higher inter- 
 course. Greek was introduced as the official 
 language. The Parthian coins bore Greek in- 
 scriptions, and that tongue was, as we have 
 seen, used for several centuries in all the im- 
 portant intercourse between the Parthians and 
 the Western nations. 
 
 Beyond this it does not appear that the 
 subjects of Phraates and Mithridates were able 
 to progress. Of science they knew not even 
 the rudiments. Their interpretation of nature, 
 in so far as they were curious to know the 
 laws of phenomena, was purely mythological. 
 Of sculpture they knew but little, and of paint- 
 ing perhaps nothing at all. This is to say, 
 that of the higher forms of pictorial art they 
 were ignorant, except by incidental intercourse 
 with the Greeks anil Romans. In these re- 
 spects the Parthian race was in striking analogy 
 with the Medes and Persians, whose want of 
 genius in the particulars here referred to has 
 been noted by many critics and historians. 
 
 The activities of the Parthians were thus 
 
 physical rather than intellectual. They lacked 
 altogether the imaginative and speculative dis- 
 position of the Greeks, and indeed of all the 
 European Aryans. The civilization which they 
 established was material in the highest degree. 
 The nation was not without great force, great 
 outward activity, and inner energy; but the 
 poetic dream, the imaginative flight, the art- 
 istic concept, were things unknown, even in the 
 highest development to which the Parthian peo- 
 ple could attain. 
 
 In an architectural way the achievements 
 of the Parthians were more creditable. It is 
 in architecture that physical energies, com- 
 bined with the lower forms of ideality, find 
 their best expression. We have several in- 
 stances in history of peoples who succeeded 
 in reaching a fair degree of architectural work 
 without attaining to poetry and art. In its 
 higher manifestations architecture, of course, 
 becomes ideal. It expresses at the last the 
 imaginative powers of the human mind, and 
 is only secondary in rank to sculpture and 
 painting. But in its lower forms it is the 
 most material of all the arts. Thus far the 
 Parthians were able to proceed in the human 
 evolution, and no farther. 
 
 As a rule the Asiatic Aryans have not 
 been great builders. We have seen how small 
 a thing the Medes transmitted to after times 
 as it respects their arciiitectural achievements. 
 The Persians, under the Achsemenian kings, 
 roi-e to a higher level of structural ability. 
 In the preceding Book the reader has been 
 made acquainted with the palaces and temples 
 of Persepolis, and of one or two other of the 
 principal Persian cities. But even here we 
 fail to note the splendor and abundance of 
 Assyria, to say nothing of Egypt and Greece. 
 On the Great Plateau the energies of human 
 life have always been expended in forms of 
 action different from those of closely crowded 
 and permanent societies like those of the val- 
 leys of the Euphrates and the Nile. 
 
 Parthia was not rich in temples or palaces 
 or tombs. This is true particularly of the 
 Parthian kingdom in the earlier times, before! 
 the expansion of the nation had resulted in 
 the establishment of a great dominion. The 
 old kings and the primitive nobility were bar-
 
 PARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 391 
 
 baric in their habits and manners, caring little 
 for fixedness, and not much for visible splendors. 
 The consideration of the building methods and 
 results in the country is attended with difficul- 
 ties from the historical changes to which it 
 was subject. The determination of the age 
 of a given ruin is uncertain ; so that the in- 
 quirer may not well ascertain whether the 
 work has been done by the ancient race, in 
 the Greek period, under the Arsacidre, or 
 under the subsequent Sassauians. It is the 
 architecture of the Arsacidse only which we 
 should regard as truly Parthiau in its charac- 
 ter. The remains of those structures which 
 were made subsequent to the year 226 A. D., 
 must be regarded as the work of a later period. 
 Rawlinson has determined the time in which 
 the true national building was effected as cov- 
 ering about two centuries ; namely, the first 
 and second of our era. But we must remem- 
 ber" that the works remaining to us of this 
 period were merely the highest development 
 of a kind of building which had been culti- 
 vated for several preceding centuries. 
 
 The unfixedness of Parthian society is well 
 illustrated in the fact that the seat of the gov- 
 ernment was not established at any one city, 
 but was transferred from place to place, ac- 
 cording to the preference of the monarch. 
 There were thus several Parthian capitals, 
 among which there was little preeminence. 
 At the time when the Empire was at its great- 
 est expan.«ion, the city of Hatra was perhaps 
 the most centralized and important place of 
 residence for the Great Kings. It is from the 
 ruins of this old metro])olis that we are best 
 able to gather an adequate idea of the ancient 
 architecture of the country. By the Greeks 
 the city was called Ctesiphon. It was situ- 
 ated on the left bank of the Tigris, over 
 against Seleucia, the capital of the Seleucidse, 
 where the successors of Alexander for awhile 
 established themselves. Ctesiphon was built 
 by the Parthians across the river from the 
 Greek capital, and at length grew into a place 
 of importance. With the decline of the Greek 
 power in Asia, Seleucia shrank away, while 
 the Parthian city was improved and enlarged. 
 
 The founding of this Hatra is assigned to 
 Vardaues ; not the monarch of that name, but 
 
 another, whose history has not been deter- 
 mined. It appears that the city flourished 
 greatly in the latter days of the Parthian Em- 
 pire, but declined with the dominion of which 
 it constituted one of the principal ornaments, 
 only to be revived at a subsequent period by 
 the Sassanian kings. In the year 232 A. D., 
 when the Roman Emperor Severus overran 
 the country, the prisoners out of Ctesiphon 
 were estimated at a hundred thousand. 
 
 We are here concerned, however, with the 
 character of the architecture of the Parthian 
 period. Hatra had the novel characteristic 
 of being circular in form. The city was sur- 
 rounded by a wall, thick and strong, about 
 
 PLAN OF HATRA. 
 
 three miles in circumference, and a true circle 
 in form. The rampart was built of cut stone, 
 strengthened with bastions at intervals of a 
 hundred and seventy yards. Outside of the 
 wall was a ditch, broad and deep, and beyond 
 this was a mole, or agger, drawn around after 
 the manner of the ancients. We thus see 
 that at the time of the I'artliian ascendency 
 the building arts and military expedients of 
 the West had been introduced to the extent 
 of making the capital city easily defensible 
 against a powerful enemy. The nomadic in- 
 stincts of the race had stooped to the adoption 
 of tho.se rational means by which cities are 
 protected from assault. 
 
 From north to south across the circle 
 formed by the great wall, and constituting an
 
 392 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 arc thereof, was a river channel passing 
 through and furnishing water to the inhab- 
 itants. Perhaps the course of the stream had 
 been artificially rectified, as the antiquarian 
 has found it to be a right line through the 
 midst. In this respect the city was not unlike 
 Babylon, receiving the river through the wall 
 on the one side and permitting its outflow on 
 the other. There was thus formed two seg- 
 ments, a greater and a smaller, within the 
 circle of the wall. In the smaller and eastern 
 division were the burial-grounds of the people, 
 while the residence portion occupied the greater 
 division west of the stream. Here were placed 
 the public buildings, the palaces of the king 
 and his officers and nobles, and whatever 
 temples the religious system of the country 
 demanded. 
 
 All these structures have in great measure 
 gone down to dust ; but enough remains to 
 give the antiquarian a correct idea of the 
 whole. The ruins have been explored by 
 Layard, Fergusson, Ainsworth, and Ross, with 
 the same general result as to the character of 
 the ancient buildings of the city. Special at- 
 tention has been directed to a large edifice 
 standing near the center, and considered to 
 have been the palace of the king, with perhaps 
 an adjoining temple. Around the whole was 
 a wall in the form of a parallelogram, having 
 the respective dimensions of seven hundred 
 and eight hundred feet. The wall was of cut 
 stone, and was strengthened at frequent inter- 
 vals with bastions like those found in the 
 outer rampart of the city. Within this in- 
 closure were two courts, the first being open 
 and free from architectural remains, and the 
 second containing the ruins of the two edifices 
 to which we have just referred. 
 
 It is believed that the larger of the two, so 
 fnr as the ground plan was concerned, was the 
 less important and imposing Jt has been 
 conjectured that this division o:^ the general 
 structure was intended as a residence ]or the 
 king's guard, the minor ofS^^ers, and servants 
 of the court. The second building appears to 
 have been the royal residence. It consisted — 
 as has been determined by the ruins — of seven 
 principal halls lying parallel, opening to the 
 east. Three of these were of larger and four 
 
 of smaller dimensions. All were arched or 
 vaulted. The smaller halls were thirty feet 
 in depth and twenty feet in width, and the 
 height was thirty feet. The larger halls had 
 a depth or length of ninety feet, were thirty- 
 five feet in breadth and sixty feet in height 
 Into these vaulted and elongated chambers 
 light was admitted from the eastern openings, 
 which are supposed to have been closed with 
 curtains in the times of occupancy. 
 
 The observer standing in front of the struc- 
 ture would see a fa§ade of cut stone well laid 
 in a great wall from right to left, pierced by 
 seven archways, resembling very much the 
 entrances to stone viaducts, tunnels, or the 
 under arches of bridges, such as we see in 
 modern architecture. These arched halls con- 
 stituted the great apartments of the palace. 
 They were ornamented within, and at the 
 further e.xtremity terminated in smaller rooms, 
 which were doubtless the sleeping chambers of 
 the occupants. In the fagade, considerable 
 skill was shown by the stone-cutters and 
 builders. The seven arche§, three of greater 
 and four of smaller dimensions, were so ar- 
 ranged as to give a pleasing efl^ect. The arches 
 were sprung from sculptured pilasters, bearing 
 spirited figures, some real and some mytholog- 
 ical in character. In one place a female form, 
 floating in air, was represented in a way to 
 remind the beholder of the more elegant 
 figures thus suspended in the naural decora- 
 tions of Pompeii. In several places heads 
 were carved in the stone, particularly in the 
 keystone, in a manner peculiar to the Parthian 
 workmen, but by no means devoid of art. 
 
 The side walls of the arched halls within 
 were relieved by square pilasters rising from 
 the floor to the spring of the vault. In this 
 part much ornamental work was done. There 
 we^e capitals and ovals and peculiar carvings 
 of several varieties, especially in the line of 
 the cornice. Here again, on the capitals of 
 the piia.«tt-rs, were found human heads and 
 mythological creatures, some of which were 
 truly remarkable in character, and without 
 likeness among any other known sculptures. 
 It has been noticed, moreover, by antiquarians 
 that the figures in question were all marked 
 by a striking quality of spirit and activity — a
 
 PARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 393 
 
 "^^4 
 
 certain airiness of life almost jocose in its ex- I was vaulted after the manner of the halls in 
 pression. } the palace. Two windows were so set as to 
 
 A close examination of the struc- 
 ture here before us has led to the be- 
 lief that the first story, now remaining 
 in ruius, was surmounted by a second 
 and perhaps a third story of nearly the 
 same height, but of different character 
 from the first. In these, of course, the 
 arched openings would be wanting, 
 their place being taken by windows 
 or apertures not unlike what we should 
 expect in a modern building. Some 
 have gone so far as to construct restora- 
 tions of the palace, giving the full 
 fagade of about three hundred feet 
 from right to left, and a height of three 
 stories. Nor is it improbable that the 
 conjecture fairly represents to the eye 
 the true outline of the ancient edifice. 
 And in this we may not forbear to note 
 the close resemblance of the restora- 
 tion to the well-known appearance of 
 the projection of a great railway station 
 in Europe or America. The arches in 
 the first story correspond to the open- 
 ings for the tracks, and the second and 
 third stories above are not unlike the 
 superstructure of our stations for pas- 
 sengers. 
 
 We have already remarked that at 
 the bottom or further end of the great 
 halls were arranged the apartments of 
 actual occupation. Research has shown 
 among these the usual divisio'i between 
 those assigned to the men and those 
 occupied by the women. It is in evi- 
 dence that the arrangements in this 
 respect were strictly Oriental, the aim 
 being to prevent the free intercourse of 
 the men and the women of the court. 
 
 Something has already been said of 
 the adjacent structure, to which anti- 
 quarians Jjave assigned the office of 
 a temple. It is not certainly known 
 that such was the use of the edifice. 
 The ground plan shows a square of 
 about for<;y feet in each dimension. It appears 
 that th« building was surrounded through its 
 ■"sh^'e extent by a hall or passage-way, which 
 
 J 
 
 admit the light into the passage. The door- 
 way bore a frieze which exhibited some of the 
 finest work which the Parth'im cnisels were
 
 394 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 able to produce. As to the interior apart- 
 ment, that also was of a vaulted form above, 
 and dimly lighted by a single aperture. It 
 has been noted that the main apartment within 
 was devoid of ornamentation, and from this 
 fact the conjecture has been principally formed 
 that the room was devoted to religious worship. 
 The severe spirit of the Iranians did not per- 
 mit the religious thought to be distracted from 
 the contemplation of the unseen by the inter- 
 position of material forms. 
 
 The present sketch may serve as an outline 
 of building at its best estate among the Par- 
 thians. While the race may not by any 
 means be compared in its structural abilities 
 with the Greeks, the Romans, or the Egyptians, 
 it may well be likened to the Persians and 
 Susianians. The work which we have here 
 described was on the whole substantially and 
 well done. The building material — a gray- 
 
 members of a given family or kindred. The 
 work is plain and solid. The subterranean 
 apartments are of a peculiar bell-shape, widen- 
 ing to the bottom somewhat after the manner 
 of the modern cistern. Such underground 
 rooms are carefully walled with stone well 
 laid, plain, and substantial. It is quite likely 
 that the vaults were used as a receptacle for 
 the bones collected from the towers of the 
 dead, where, as already explained, the flesh of 
 the bodies had been plucked away and de- 
 voured by the birds of the air. 
 
 It is clear, however, that burial, in the 
 proper sense, came at length to be practiced 
 by the Parthians. We may well infer that 
 the notions of the Babylonians were to some 
 extent adopted by the Parthian people of the 
 times of the Empire. At all events coffins are 
 found not wholly dissimilar to those of the 
 ancient Chaldees, but there is a sufficient 
 
 PARTHIAN SLIPPER COFFIN. 
 
 brown limestone — was selected of the proper 
 quality, and was handled with skill. Tlie 
 cutting was done wiih great exactitude. No 
 mortar or cement has been found in any of the 
 walls. It would appear that the builders re- 
 lied wholly upon perfect work by the chisel 
 for the fitting and juxtaposition of tlie ma- 
 terials. Like the builders of Egypt and Baal- 
 bec, they relied upon the accuracy of the line 
 and the perfection of the work rather than on 
 the uncertain and dubious expedient of mortar. 
 We have already remarked that the smaller 
 segment within the circular wall of Hatra was 
 for the most part a necropolis. The surface of 
 this part is marked with many small structui-es, 
 square as to their shape, built of stone, but 
 long since fallen into ruins. It can hardly be 
 doubted that they were the sepulchres of the 
 Parthian citizens dwelling across the river. In 
 general, the foundations are about twenty feet 
 square, but are sometimes larger. Doubtless 
 each structure marks the resting-place of the 
 
 variation from the type to indicate a change 
 of use and manner. Instead of the so-called 
 " di.sh-cover " vessel, the Parthians employed 
 what is known as the "slipper" coffin, so 
 named from its resemblance in shape to a 
 sli|)per. Such boxes were of earthenware, a 
 blue-green in color, and glazed and orna- 
 mented in the way of finish. They are found 
 of all lengths, from three to six feet, are not 
 untasteful in form, and are perhaps among the 
 most durable sarcophagi ever invented. 
 
 The antiquary, by careful examination, 
 has found near the foot of the box an aperture 
 evidently designed for the escape of the gases 
 generated in putrefaction. As for the princi- 
 pal opening, that was closed over the face of 
 the dead with a lid, which was no doubt 
 hermetically sealed in its place. The small 
 art of the Parthians sought expression on the 
 coffin-lid, which was not infrequently adorned 
 with figures either suggestive of the life and 
 manners of the dead or emblematical of some
 
 FARTHIA.— PEOPLE AND ARTS. 
 
 395 
 
 are sufficieut to 
 
 of those waveriug Lopes wherewith the living 
 of all ages have beguiled themselves iu the 
 presence of death. 
 
 We have come iu this eonuectiou to the 
 consideration of such in- 
 different Art as the Par- 
 thiaus were able to pro- 
 duce. We have seen how 
 unfavorable on the whole 
 the country was for an 
 artistic development, and 
 how little genius for re- 
 production of forms and 
 images the Parthian race 
 possessed. The remains 
 of this people, liowever, 
 show a certain degree of aesthetic perception, 
 and a corresponding measure of artistic achieve- 
 ment. First of all, we may mention the 
 terra-cotta statuettes which are found in the 
 ruins of the Parthian cities. Some of these 
 Loftus has described with his usual care. The 
 Parthian artist seems to have preferred the re- 
 cumbent posture in the subject of his work. 
 One effigy represents a warrior reclining at a 
 banquet. He wears his helmet, his coat of 
 mail, and his greaves. Tiiere is evidently 
 much truthfulness in the delineation. Female 
 figures are represented according to the fitness 
 of things. The figure is draped, and the 
 face veiled after the manner of the East. In 
 some instances, however, it appears that the 
 infection of Western art had reached to Iran, 
 for examples have been found iu which a por- 
 tion of the person and the lower limbs are 
 nude. 
 
 From these attempts at the representation 
 of the highest existing form, namel)', the body 
 of man, we may pass to the consideration of 
 utensils. These were to a certain extent of 
 artistic outline and finish. The vases and jars, 
 water-jugs and lamps, of the Parthian people 
 were of terra-cotta, and were sufficiently well- 
 formed to merit praise even in a modern col- 
 lection of such objects. In general, the same 
 were modeled after the Babylonian pattern, 
 being produced on the potter's wheel, and 
 hardened by the heat of the furnace. It may 
 be noted in this connection that the larger 
 part of the pottery recovered from the Par- 
 
 thian period has been found in the sepulchral 
 vaults, where, no doubt, food and drink were 
 placed by the hand of that superstitious af- 
 fection which was stretclied out by all the an- 
 
 PAKTHIAN VASES, Jl'CjS, AND LAMPS. 
 
 cient peoples over the burial-place of the 
 departed. 
 
 From utensils we may pass to personal 
 decorations. These were many, and not in- 
 elegant. We have already referred to the 
 triple necklaces worn by the kings and queens, 
 and doubtless by the nobility. The diadems 
 of royal personages were adorned with jewels. 
 Ear-riugs and finger-rings appear to have been 
 generally worn by both men and women. 
 Beads and bangles were of the fashion, as were 
 also armlets, wristlets, anklets, and the like. 
 The toes were often adorned with rings. la 
 the manufacture of ornaments the Parthian 
 smiths employed the precious metals, as also 
 copper and brass. Another kind of personal 
 ornament much in vogue, especially among 
 the nobility, was the band of gold which 
 was made to depend from caps and mitres 
 in the style of modern ribbons. The infer- 
 ence of great personal pritle may be deduced 
 from the universality of adornments for the 
 person. 
 
 It is the decision of antiquaries that not 
 more than a half dozen authentic examples of 
 Parthian bas-reliefs have been recovered. 
 From these the opiniou of the modern reader 
 must be formed relative to the extent and 
 character of Parthian sculpture. On the Rock 
 of Behistun oue of these examples is found. 
 It consists of a procession of figures moving in 
 one direction, somewhat after the manner of 
 the procession ou the frieze of the Parthenon. 
 Some of the figures are on foot, but the rest 
 are mounted, and are riding with lance at rest.
 
 396 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 evidently in the charge of battle. In one part 
 a flying figure appears, which is thought to 
 represent Fame or Victory. The attitude of 
 both men and horses is spirited, and it is be- 
 lieved that the work, before the decay which 
 has come through centuries of exposure to the 
 elements, was of a high order of artistic merit. 
 It has been observed, however, that there are 
 discrepancies in the design, as for instance, *he 
 circlet, or diadem, which Flying Fame I.olds 
 over the head of the warrior is altogether too 
 large, being sufficient to cover his whole figure ! 
 
 another example of such art is that of a 
 mounted hunter engaged in conflict with a 
 bear. His spear is at the animal's throat. 
 His horse rises and the bear rears on his hind 
 legs for the final struggle. The work is rudely 
 done, but the design is true to nature and 
 marked with much spirit. The figure on 
 horseback presents a wonderful beard, curled 
 into a pufl' surrounding all the lower part of 
 the face, and balanced behind with a cor- 
 responding protuberance of the hair. The 
 bear much resembles an American grizzly in 
 
 
 bnm 
 
 
 HUNTER KILLING A BEAR. 
 
 But this is, as Hamlet might say, to consider 
 the question " too curiously." 
 
 Other bas-reliefs have been discovered in 
 various places. A favorite subject was the 
 horse and the man. One work of great value 
 and merit represents a Magus, or High Priest, 
 in the oracular attitude. At his right hand is 
 the cone burr. He is in full robe of office. 
 He wears a mitre that might almost have 
 suited one of the mediseval Popes. His hair is 
 worn long, and is curiously dune into a broad 
 pufl^ extending laterally on both sides at the 
 back of the neck as far as the shoulders. Still 
 
 his form and attitude, and the hunter seems tt 
 be clad as a man of the arctic regions. 
 
 On the whole, however, and to sum up re- 
 sults, it might almost be said that the Parthians 
 were a people wholly inartistic in taste and 
 habit. No doubt a single Greek town of the 
 second or third class, in the times of the Hel- 
 lenic ascendency, exhibited a larger range of art 
 work, whether of the chisel or the brush, than 
 did the whole Empire of Mithridates spread- 
 ing through many lands, from the little prin- 
 cipality of Osrhoene iu the upjjer bend of the 
 Euphrates to the summits of the Hindu Kush.
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 397 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV.— CiVIIv AND MILITARY ANNA " S. 
 
 S we have said in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, the tribal 
 history of the Parthiaus 
 is lost iu the mist and 
 distance. Nor need the 
 reader of th^ present age 
 cultivate the anxious 
 spirit relative to the origin of the migrations 
 and the wild iioiiia<lic life of a primitive peo- 
 ple so far removed in time and place from all 
 the interests of the world that now is. Cer- 
 tain it is that the Parthians were little known 
 to the Semitic peoples, as is evidenced by the 
 fact that the name is not found iu the He- 
 brew Scriptures. 
 
 We have already spoken of the Aryan or- 
 igin of the Parthian people and the probable 
 
 intermixture with them of the Scyths. Their 
 first emergence into historical view is iu con» 
 nectio'n with the story of the Persian Empire 
 at that juncture when the Pseudo-Smerdis at- 
 tempted by false pretensions to gain possession 
 of the throne. The narrative of that inter- 
 esting episode in Persian liistoiy has already 
 been presented. At the time of the conspiracy 
 the Parthians revolted and upheld the cause 
 of Sraerdis against Darius Hystaspis until 
 what time both they and the Pretender were 
 put down. 
 
 From this circumstance we learn that at 
 this time — namely, in 521 B. C. — Parthia was 
 a province, or satrapy, of the Persian Empire. 
 It appears, indeed, that Hystaspes, father of 
 Darius the Great, held the office of satrap of 
 
 PARTHIAN WAKKIORS.
 
 398 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Parthia at the time of the Smerdiau revolt. 
 He, of course, supported the claims of his son, 
 as did also the majority of the other princes. 
 But the Parthiaus, in league with many from 
 the adjacent provinces in the North, strove to 
 overturn the throne, suffering severe reverses 
 in the field, losing in a single engagement, ac- 
 cording to the reckless estimates of antiquity, 
 about eleven thousand men. Thus much may 
 be gathered from the inscriptions on the Rock 
 of Behistun. 
 
 We thus arrive at the existence of Parthia 
 as a division of the Empire of the Persians. 
 After their suppression and punishment for 
 revolt in the interest of Smerdis, the Par- 
 thians accepted Darius, and remained loyal to 
 the succeeding Achsemenian kings. Their 
 history becomes the common history of Per- 
 sia down to the time when the complication, 
 existing for more than a century between the 
 Great Kings and the commonwealths of Greece, 
 was cut by the sword of Alexander. 
 
 It is not needed in this connection to review 
 the work of the Conqueror as he passed from 
 Europe into Asia and traversed that con-tinent 
 through a distance of two thousand miles. 
 Persia was now in the ascendant over all the 
 East. Her dominion was accepted by many 
 peoples and nations. Alexander, by the acute- 
 ness of his genius, perceived that his object- 
 ive point was the court of Babylon, that the 
 overthrow of Darius would be a universal 
 victory, and that the subject nations would, 
 with the master stroke, fall asunder and ac- 
 cept himself instead. 
 
 The event was as the expectation. Arbela 
 ended all. With the life of Darius went out 
 the dynasty and the whole cycle of ideas 
 which it represented. True, Alexander deemed 
 it important to continue his expeditions north, 
 south, and east, until the subject nations were 
 taught by ocular demonstration the futility of 
 opposition to his will. One of his campaigns 
 was directed against Bactria. In the prosecu- 
 tion of this, passing from the Tigris to the 
 hostile country, he must needs traverse Par- 
 thia. But it does not appear that the Par- 
 thians had refused to accept the results of Ar- 
 bela. Little, perhaps nothing, is said of any 
 resistance on their part to the Conqueror's prog- 
 
 ress. To them, as to so many others, the 
 event was but a change of masters. 
 
 The reader of the present age is many times 
 astonished at the rapid and spectacular trans- 
 formations of antiquity — this for the reason 
 that he does not apprehend the civil and so- 
 cial condition of the ancient world. The Per- 
 sian Empire, for instance, was not closely 
 enough bound in its parts to constitute a 
 Staatenbund, much less a consolidated union 
 of nations. Each satrap was a feudatory, 
 holding loosely under his suzerain. To strike 
 down the latter was to break the nexus of the 
 whole, and to deliver the provinces back to 
 local independence. But the condition waa 
 such that the establishment of another nexus 
 was easy, if not necessary. 
 
 Thus for two centuries we contemplate 
 Parthia as a satrapy of the Persian Empire, 
 and then behold its transference to the Son 
 of Philip and his successors. It is sufficient 
 to note in this connection that the country of 
 Parthia proper was, under the Persian kings, 
 at first associated for governmental purposes 
 with Chorasmia, Sogdiana, and Arya. In the 
 second stage Parthia was bound up with Hyr- 
 cauia into a single province, and it is probable 
 that the two were held as one at the time of 
 the conquest of the Empire by the Macedo- 
 nians. By that event Parthia, without other 
 serious changes, was subjected to a Greek ad- 
 ministration under officers appointed at the 
 first by Alexander himself, and afterwards by 
 his successors. 
 
 . In order to follow the history of the coun- 
 try we are obliged in this place to enter again 
 that distracted epoch which succeeded the death 
 of Alexander the Great. We shall hereafter, 
 when we come to narrate with particularity 
 the partition of the world among the Greeks, 
 describe the wars, the tumults, and the trans- 
 formations by v.'hich the quadripartite division 
 of Asia, Eastern Europe, and South-eastern' 
 Africa was effected. For the present it is suf- 
 ficient to present an outline of that part of 
 the field with which the destinies of Parthia 
 are concerned. The four Powers to which we 
 have just referred — as determined by war and 
 compromise among the successors of Alexan- 
 der — were Macedonia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 39S 
 
 Syria. The last named was misnamed ; for 
 tiie dominion so-called had, at first, but little 
 respect to Syria Proper. Oa the contrary, it 
 iiu'luded all of the Alexandrian conquests in 
 South-western Asia. It was by far the most 
 extensive and important part of what had 
 been taken by the Son of Philip ; and it is 
 with this so-called Kingdom of Syria that we 
 are here concerned. 
 
 Considered from the style of dynasty estab- 
 lished over it, the same was known as the 
 Kingdom of the Seleucid.e, so named from 
 Seleucus Nicator, founder of the line of sov- 
 ereigns referred to. As for Seleucus, he had 
 not at the division of the Empire received a 
 portion, but he was at length appointed satrap 
 of Babylon, and from that position soon rose 
 to preeminence in the East. In this relation 
 be served under Antigonus, to whom the King- 
 dom of Syria had been given. But having 
 aroused the jealousy of the king, Seleucus fled 
 to Egypt, and put himself for a season under 
 the protection of Ptolemy. At length the 
 Greek monarchs of the three western divisions 
 of the Macedonian Empire banded against the 
 king of Syria. AVheu tiiis confederacy was 
 formed, Seleucus first recovered his office as 
 satrap of Babylon, and in that relation joined 
 the Western monarchs with his forces on the 
 field of Ipsus. It was by the battle so named 
 that the subsequent destinies of Western Asia 
 were for a long time determined. A new di- 
 vision, being a modification of that already in 
 existence, was made by the victors, and Seleu- 
 cus received for his part all of the Asiatic con- 
 quests which had been achieved by Alexander, 
 with the exception of Lower Syria and Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 No sooner had this result been achieved 
 than Seleucus was able to look around and 
 view with complacency his dominions. These 
 included Upper Syria, Mesopotamia, parts of 
 Capj)adocia and Phrygia, As.«yria, Media, Baby- 
 lonia, Snsiana, Persia Proper, Carmania, Sa- 
 gartia, Hyrcania, Parthia, Bactria, Sogdiana, 
 Arya, Zarangia, Arachosia, Sacastaua, Gedro- 
 sia, and the hither parts of India — and to 
 these was presently added Armenia on the 
 west. The Imperial realms here defined in- 
 
 cludetl a million two hundred thousand square 
 N. — Vol. I — 25 
 
 miles, from which, after deducting the waste 
 and desert parts, about eight hundred thousand 
 square miles of valuable and fertile territory 
 remained. 
 
 It now devolved upon Seleucus to choose 
 his capital and organize his Government. In 
 this connection the cities of Mesopotamia, fa- 
 mous in ancient story, would naturally suggest 
 themselves. There on the Lower Euphrates 
 was Babylon, which Alexander himself had 
 preferred as the seat of his dominion. On the 
 Upper Tigris was Nineveh, or the site of Nine- 
 veh, equally well situated for a capital of em- 
 pire. For a short season the former was 
 chosen ; but Seleucus for some reason wea led 
 of Babylon, and determined to build a caj tal 
 of his own. For this he chose a site about 
 forty miles distant to the north-east, on the 
 right bank of the Tigris, and there laid the 
 foundations of Seleucia, which soon sprang into 
 importance and grandeur as the seat of central 
 interest for all of South-western Asia. 
 
 Here then was founded the Kingdom of the 
 Seleucidse, under auspices favorable to perma- 
 nence and grandeur. But it was not long 
 until Seleucus made the fatal mistake of aban- 
 doning the position which he had so «ell chosen 
 in Mesopotamia and seeking another and less 
 favorable capital in the far south-west, on the 
 border of his Empire. 
 
 It would appear that Alexander and hia 
 succe.ssors fought against the law of nature in 
 their attempt to carry European institutions 
 backwards across Asia. There is certainly an 
 irresistible cosmic force which draws men to 
 the West. The historical drama constantly 
 shifts its scene in the direction of the setting 
 sun. There was doubtless a time in the past 
 when Babylon itself was a young and progress- 
 ive municipality in the West. A large part 
 of ancient history is concerned with the pro- 
 cesses and vicissitudes by which the central 
 energies of human power were transferred from 
 Babylon to Rome, just as a large part of Mod- 
 ern History has covered the details of the 
 movement from Rome to London. There is 
 something in nature, there is something in man, 
 there is much in the correlations of man and 
 nature, which propel civilization in the direc* 
 tion indicated and makes it almost impossible
 
 400 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 to replant eastward the aggressive societies and 
 institutions of the West. 
 
 The men of the Alexandrian epoch found 
 it so. Perhaps no valid reason could have 
 been assigned by Seleucus for yielding his 
 vantage on the banks of the Tigris and trans- 
 ferring his seat of government to Antioch, in the 
 valley of the Orontes. Whatever may have 
 been his motive, the policy was fatal to the 
 maintenance of a European dominion in South- 
 western Asia. The king, by the removal, re- 
 associated himself with the contentious and 
 contending successors of Alexander in Mace- 
 donia, Egypt, and Asia Minor. He was at 
 once reinvolved with them in those wars which 
 were destined to continue until what time the 
 
 must sooner or later lose him all his Easterm 
 provinces. Alexander had, against the preju- 
 dices of his own countrymen, adopted the- 
 policy of uniting the ruling classes and native- 
 princes of the East with himself. He had 
 encouraged to a great extent among his officers- 
 and men the formation of rrarriage unions and 
 other alliances by which the conquered peoples- 
 might come to regard their interests as identi- 
 fied with those of the Conqueror. He had 
 deliberately called to his aid the princes of 
 the subject Asiatic provinces, reappointed them- 
 to their places, conferred honors upon them, 
 and made them secure under his authority. 
 While this policy had left behind much bitter- 
 ness on the part of the adventurers who had' 
 
 I. SELEUCUS I. (Nicator) B. C. s8o. 
 
 I 
 
 2. Antiochcs I. (Soter), 261. 
 
 3. Antiochcs II. (Theos), 246. 
 
 4. Seledcus II. (Callinicus), 2-J6. 
 
 Antiochus Hierax. 
 
 5. Seleuccs III. (Ceraunus), 223. 
 
 6. Antiochus III. (The Great), 187. 
 
 DYNASTY 
 OF THE SELEUCID.«. 
 
 EXPLANATION: 
 Kings numbered in order of succession, 
 
 tlius, 1. '2.3. etc. 
 
 Regular Jescent indicated thus . 
 
 Doubtful or spurious deticent, thus 
 
 Arabic numbei-s after names indicate 
 
 date of death or dethronement. 
 
 I 
 7. Seleucus IV. (Philopator), 175. 
 
 I 
 10. Demetrius I. (Soter), 150. 
 
 8. Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes), 164. 
 
 9. Antiochcs V. (Eupator), 162. 11. Alexander Balas, 145. 
 
 12. Demetrius II. (Nicator), 125. 14. Antiochus Vn. (Sidetes), 128. 
 
 13. Antiochus VI. (Theos), 142. 
 
 16. Antiochcs IX., 95. 
 18. Antiochus X., 83. 
 
 15. Antiochus VIII. 17. Selecccs V., 20. De.metrics III., 21. Antiochus XII. , 69. 
 (Grypus), 96. 94. 88. | 
 
 I 22. Antiochus XIII., 65. 
 19. Antiochus XI., 83. 
 
 Mistress of the World should, from her seat 
 on the Tiber, stretch out her scepter over all. 
 
 But we are here concerned rather with the 
 actual course of events than with speculative 
 views concerning them. The withdrawal of 
 the capital of the East from Seleucia to An- 
 tioch left the Asiatic nations without the visible 
 presence of the master. It left them to the 
 suggestion of conspiracy, revolt, and independ- 
 ence. Worst of all, it left them to the domi- 
 nation of corrupt satraps, who resumed the 
 manners and methods of the past, extorting 
 from the subject peoples whatever might be 
 gained by excess and tyranny. 
 
 For Seleucus had in the meantime com- 
 mitted another administrative error, which 
 
 hoped to revel in all the spoils of conquest — 
 while it had in many instances alienated the- 
 home Government of Macedonia — it had nev- 
 ertheless secured to the Conqueror the regards,, 
 the confidence, and even the affection of peo- 
 ples and races whom he could not otherwise- 
 have bound sincerely to his interests. 
 
 At the first his successors followed in » 
 feeble and uncertain way the policy of their 
 great leader. But their weakness and cupidity 
 soon prevailed, and they began to promote Eu- 
 ropeans in the place of native princes. This- 
 method was fatally adopted by Seleucus on his- 
 withdrawal to Antioch. He set Greeks in 
 authority over the Asiatics, as if to say that 
 his security in the East depended upon Euro-
 
 PARTHIA.—CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 401 
 
 pean rather than Asiatic support. It may 
 be doubted whether his governors themselves, 
 chosen henceforth from the small Europeau 
 contingent, were more loyal, more devoted to 
 the king thau would have been the native no- 
 blemen of Asia; and as for the subject peo- 
 ples, all sympathy between themselves and 
 their rulers must at once have been destroyed. 
 
 We thus see the head of the Syrian king- 
 dom of the Greeks establishing himself in 
 leisure and pleasure at Antioch, little legarding 
 the concerns of the East. Tlie Mesopotamiau 
 countries and all beyond were left in charge 
 of their European governors. Seleucus him- 
 self gave his attention to Western affairs, in- 
 terfering in Egypt and Asia Minor, according 
 to the caprice of the day. Seleucus reigned un- 
 til the year B. C. 280 when he was assassinated 
 at Lysimachia. He left his crown to his son 
 Antiochus I., c»alled Soter, second of the 
 Seleucid princes. The latter pursued the same 
 policy with his father, and became involved in 
 the same troubles. The administration of the 
 East was continued in the same manner, was 
 attended with the same dangers, and that of 
 the West was distracted with like quarrels 
 and battles, until, after the space of nineteen 
 years, Antiochus Soter was slain by a Gaul, in 
 a conflict near Ephesus. 
 
 The crown next descended to Antiochus 
 II., surnamed Theos, who, during the ten 
 jears of his reign, was engaged in almost con- 
 stant warfare with Asia Minor and Egypt. 
 The history of all three reigns, covering the 
 period from the accession of Seleucus, in B. C. 
 301, to the death of Antiochus Theos, in 
 B. C. 250, has a common feature — that of 
 neglect of the East and needless comjilication 
 with the affairs of the West. 
 
 During this period, the old kingdom of 
 Parthia, reduced for centuries to subordination, 
 first to Persia, afterwards to the successors of 
 Alexander, lay in comparative obscurity. But 
 the time had now arrived for an emergence 
 by rebellion into light and life and action. 
 At this epoch the actual history of Parthia as 
 an independent power begins. All the rest is, 
 as it wore, the setting of the picture. From 
 this time forth the movement, first toward free- 
 dom, and then to greatness, is rajiid and direct. 
 
 The administration of Antiochus the Di- 
 vine was of precisely the kind to furnish 
 the opportunity and the suggestion of a revolt. 
 About six years before the conclusion of his 
 reign, Theodotus, or Diodotos, the Greek 
 satrap of Bactria, perceived in the distance 
 between himself and Antioch and in the ef- 
 feminate administration of the king the hint 
 of successful rebellion. He accordingly at 
 once threw off the yoke, gave himself the title 
 of BasUeus, and entered upon an independent 
 administration. Thus did Bactria lead the 
 way in renouncing the sovereignty which had 
 been accepted since the Alexandrian conquest. 
 It appears that Antiochus had neither the am- 
 bition nor the courage to chastise his rebellious 
 governor, and Theodotus was accordingly per- 
 mitted to take his undisturbed course to inde> 
 pendence. 
 
 The example was contagious. The neigh- 
 boring satrapies felt the shock of the Bactrian 
 
 COIN OF THE0DOTD8. 
 
 revolution, and soon adopted a similar method. 
 Parthia was the first to follow in the wake of 
 the neighboring revolt. In this country, how- 
 ever, the movement took on a wholly different 
 character. In Bactria the revolution could 
 hardly be said to be national. The Greek 
 governor was simply permitted to raise him- 
 self to the rank and title of king ; but in 
 Parthia the revolt had a different source. 
 Here the spring of action was a national sen- 
 timent against the rule of the Europeans in 
 any form. The feeling was against the Greek 
 Dynasty in toto, so that instead of following 
 the lead of the governor in making himself 
 independent of Antiochus, the Parthians rose 
 against the governor himself, and the whole 
 system of foreign domination which he repre- 
 sented. 
 
 The circumstances and details of the revolt 
 have been differently told by different authors. 
 It has been narrated that a certain Aesaces —
 
 402 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 ■which name the leader of the revolution cer- 
 tainly bore — appeared out of Bactria, from 
 which country he had fled from the jealousy 
 of Theodotus. Coming into Parthia, he in- 
 duced the people to accept him for their leader 
 in a rebellion against their own Greek gov- 
 ernor. Successful in this, he was made king 
 of Parthia and founder of the dynasty. 
 Another account says that Pherecles, satrap 
 of Parthia under Antiochus the Divine, of- 
 fered an insult to Arsaces, who, according to 
 this tradition, was a native Parthian, sou of 
 Phriapites, and that he — Arsaces — and his 
 brother Tiridates drew five of their fellow- 
 noblemen into a con.spiracy and slew the 
 Batrap. This done, the people were easily in- 
 duced to rise and throw oft' the foreign domi- 
 nation altogether. The)' then chose Arsaces 
 for their king. Still another account makes 
 Arsaces to have been a Scythian of the nation 
 called the Dahte, who came by hostile invasion 
 into Parthia, overthrew the Greek government, 
 and made their leader king. 
 It is sufficient for historical pur- 
 poses to say that the rebellion 
 against the Greeks was led by 
 a patriot named Arsaces, who 
 COIN OF .as.cEs ,. ^^.^g perhaps of Scythian extrac- 
 tion ; that the foreign officers were expelled ; 
 that the pride of the nation was gratified by 
 the success of the insurrection ; and that its 
 leader was made king of Parthia, with the 
 title of Arsaces I. These events are assigned 
 to the year B. C. 256, but some have moved 
 the event forward to 250, being the year of 
 the death of Antiochus Theos. 
 
 The accession of Arsaces and the founding 
 of the Parthian monarchy were not wholly 
 peaceful. The expulsiim of the Greeks from 
 the country — the suppression of their in- 
 fluence — was not of easy accomplishment. 
 The Greek capital, Hecatompylos, built by 
 Alexander, had been peopled in the first place 
 by Macedonians and other men out of the 
 West. These and their descendants would, 
 out of the nature of things, resist the revolu- 
 tion and strive to regain their ascendency. 
 The party of the late government, great or 
 small, would follow the counter-revolution. 
 Arsaces, therefore, had to make battle with 
 
 the malcontents, and to put them down by 
 force of arms. Nor was he able to give per- 
 fect quiet to the kingdom before his death, 
 which came by a spear-thrust in the side, in 
 the year B'. C. 247. 
 
 The crown descended to Tiridates, brother 
 of the late king. But he took for his title 
 Arsaces II., and is generally referred to by that 
 name. It appears that the name Arsaces was 
 at once adopted as the designative title of the 
 Dynasty, which is thus known in history as 
 the Arsacid.e. It remained for the second 
 king of this great house to promote, establish, 
 and defend the kingdom planted in weakness 
 and uncertainty by his brother. His reign 
 lasted for over thirty years, during which time 
 Arsaces II. fully justified the expectations of 
 his country. The boundaries of Parthia were 
 enlarged. It was fortunate for the monarchy 
 that so strong a character was at its head, for 
 scarcely was the king established in power 
 until all of his energies and resources were 
 needed to protect the nation from conquest. 
 It was at this junctu'-e, namely, in B. C. 245, 
 that Ptolemy Euergetes, of Egypt, warlike 
 and ambitious, led an army into Asia, entered 
 the kingdom of Syria, overthrew Seleucus 
 Callinicus in battle, captured Antiuch, and then 
 made an expedition into Mesopotamia — as 
 though he would recover the whole Empire of 
 Alexander. The major countries in his i)ath 
 yielded with little resistance. Babylonia, Su- 
 siana, Assyria, Persia, and Media went down 
 successively before the invader. Indeed, the 
 restoration of the Asiatic dominion was com- 
 plete, with the exception of Bactria and 
 Parthia. 
 
 Tiridates thus found his kingdom threat- 
 ened by a new conqueror, between whom and 
 himself an unequal contest must be waged — 
 on his own side for existence, and on the 
 side of Ptolemy for Empire. But destiny had 
 prepared a different event. While Ptolemy 
 was engaged in rapidly reconstructing the 
 power which Seleucus had permitted to go to 
 wreck, his attention was suddenly recalled to 
 Egypt. In that country a rebellion had 
 broken out, and the king was obliged to hurry 
 back to Africa, lest his losses at home might 
 be gi-eater than his gains in Asia. The great
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 409 
 
 campaign which he had made with so much 
 apparent success became, historically consid- 
 ered, a campaign and nothing more. The 
 countries which he had conquered regained 
 their independence with the withdrawal of 
 the Egyptian army, and South-western Asia 
 resumed her former aspect. 
 
 But the lesson of the expedition was not 
 lost on Tiridates. He could but observe with 
 what ease the countries through which Ptolemy 
 had passed had been subdued. The wings of 
 his own ambition fluttered at the prospect. 
 Why should not a Parthian king make suc- 
 cessful warfare in the neighboring countries? 
 He accordingly organized an army, marched 
 into Hyrcania, overran the district, and added 
 it to his own dominion. This was an act of 
 direct aggression on the kingdom of Syria. • 
 Hyrcania was a satrapy of that Power, and 
 Selcucus Callinicus must either yield ignobly 
 to the aggression, or else fight for the recovery 
 of the jjrovince. Thus were prepared the 
 antecedents of a conflict between the Parthiaus 
 on the one side and the Graeco-Asiatic kings 
 on the other, which was destined to be trans- 
 mitted to the Romans, and by them perpetuated 
 for several centuries. 
 
 For the moment, however, Callinicus was 
 unable to attempt the punishment of his 
 enem)'. The king of Syria had a brother, 
 Antiochus Hierax, who troubled his dominions 
 in the West and paralyzed the powers of the 
 kingdom. But at length an accommodation 
 was reached between the two brothers, and 
 Callinicus found himself ready for his eastward 
 expedition. It appears that by this time the 
 Parthian cavalry had difTused a wholesome 
 fear of itself throughout South-western Asia. 
 At all events the Syrian king deemed it pru- 
 dent to approach the enemy with the support 
 of an ally. He accordingly drew the king 
 of Bactria into a league with himself against 
 Parthia — a thing most unnatural and most 
 dangerous to the latter kingdom. 
 
 Callinicus then advanced to the conflict, 
 which Tiridates was not well able to enter. 
 Courage was not wanting, but an adequate 
 force to contend with the combined armies of 
 Syria and Bactria. Tlie Parthian king found 
 it necessary to recede before the enemy, and 
 
 to fall back into Scythia, beyond the Oxus. 
 Parthia was penetrated by the foe, and it ap- 
 peared superficially that the independence of 
 the country was at an end. At this juncture, 
 however, Theodotus died, and the crown de- 
 scended to his son, more patriotic than his 
 father. Tiridates succeeded in detaching the 
 new king of Bactria from the unnatural 
 league, and brought him into alliance with 
 himself. The situation was so changed by 
 this event that Tiridates was able to meet 
 Callinicus in the field. A decisive battle was 
 fought, in which the Syrian army was routed 
 and driven from the country. 
 
 This success was perhaps the critical event 
 in the early history of the Parthian Kingdom. 
 It was regarded by the people as the definitive 
 achievement of independence. The day of the 
 battle became the day of the nation, and was 
 commemorated after the manner which peo- 
 ples in all ages have adopted in preserving 
 and transmitting the story of their liberty. 
 Nor was the eflfect of the victory to be disre- 
 garded as it respected the other countries of 
 Asia. The final delivery of Parthia by suc- 
 cessful battle from the dominion of the Greek 
 Kingdom of Syria was an example to the other 
 Asiatic States. It showed tliat the successors 
 of Alexander, in so far from being invincible, 
 might be repelled by valor and constrained by 
 overthrow to confine themselves to the borders 
 of the Western seas. Henceforth the discern- 
 ing eye might discover the unmistakable symp- 
 toms of the coming of a native Asiatic Empire 
 in the place of the vast dominion estaolished 
 by the Son of Philip. 
 
 The critical events to which we have just 
 referred happened about the year 237 B. C. 
 The purposes of Callinicus after his defeat and 
 expulsion may not be well discovered; but the- 
 difiiculties in his own dominions were so great 
 as to confine his attention henceforth to his 
 home affairs. Hierax was again an insurgent, 
 and with him the king had to decide the issue 
 by force. Parthia, delivered from apprehen- 
 sion, was left to pursue her own course, and 
 Tiridates employed the remainder of his reign, 
 full twenty years in duration, in consolidating 
 and establishing the kingdom. 
 
 By this time the Parthians had departed in
 
 401 
 
 UmVEESAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 the national evolution, from the ancient bar- 
 baric type, and had learned to avail themselves 
 of approved methods of defense. Instead of 
 trusting henceforth to the wild and audacious 
 charges of their cavalry, they began to fortify 
 the country against the possible recurrence of 
 such invasions as that of Callinicus. Several 
 positions of importance were converted into 
 fortifications and intrusted to regular garrisons 
 for defense. The king is himself represented 
 by Justin and other authors as active in these 
 enterprises. Among other works which he 
 promoted was the building of a new capital. 
 We may well believe that Hecatompylos was 
 not wholly a pleasant seat of government for 
 the first of the Arsacid princes. The place 
 had been built, as we have said, by Alexander. 
 It was a Greek city. It represented the 
 European domination — a thing which had now 
 become hateful to the nation. The tradition 
 of such a city was in the way of a peaceful 
 native administration. The 
 suggestions of the place were 
 against the existing order, and 
 the king sought to escape from 
 these surroundings and to 
 transfer his government to 
 the new city of Dara, which 
 he founded and promoted as the Parthian 
 capital. 
 
 For some reason, however, the enterprise 
 was not wholly successful. It is not certain 
 that Tiridates ever succeeded in removing the 
 Government to his new city. If so, the 
 transfer was of brief duration. We may con- 
 jecture tliat the Hecatompylonians, seeing the 
 Government about to slip away from them, 
 found it to their interest to become more loyal 
 to the existing order — less Greek and more 
 Parthian in their sympathies. It is possible, 
 moreover, that , there was an equalization of 
 forces. Even the Saxons of England were 
 not wholly proof against the refinement, the 
 culture, the graceful speech and manners of 
 the Normans. Though they succeeded in ab- 
 sorbing their conquerors, they were them- 
 selves, in a measure, absorbed in turn. The 
 Greeks were the Normans of Parthia. With 
 them were culture, artistic taste, elegant 
 speech, fancy and wit. These things are lov- 
 
 COIN OF 
 ARTABANU3 I. 
 
 able, even in our enemies. Our hatred of the 
 foreigner yields somewhat to our liking for his 
 ways. Women more than men are subject to 
 this infection. Probably the Parthian prin- 
 cesses and ladies of high rank had found in 
 the Greek residents of Hecatompylos a mere 
 graceful and charming folk than their own 
 brothers and lovers. At any rate the Greek 
 attraction finally prevailed over the repelling 
 forces, and Hecatompylos was retained as the 
 future capital of Parthia. 
 
 It was about the year 214 B. C. that 
 Tiridates, second of the Arsacidse, died, leav- 
 ing the crown to his son Artabanus I. He 
 also was an Arsaces, being the third of that 
 title. By this time Seleucus Callinicus had 
 also rendered his account, transmitting his 
 throne to Autiochus III., his second son. The 
 latter inherited the local troubles with which 
 the reign of his father had been distracted. 
 Scarcely had he taken the crown when 
 Achseus, one of his governors, rose in rebellion, 
 and civil war again ensued in Syria. 
 
 By this time the Parthian kings had learned 
 to be observant of the course of affairs in the 
 West and the South-west, and to take advantage 
 of any circumstance which might favor the de- 
 velopment of their own kingdom. Artabanus 
 I. was of this mood. Perceiving that the 
 king of Syria had as much as he could attend 
 to in his home dominions, the Parthian planned 
 the conquest of Media. This ancient State, 
 now fallen into decay, lay open to invasion, 
 and Artabanus undertook its conquest. He 
 carried a vigorous campaign into the country, 
 where he seems to have been received with 
 little hostility. He made his way to Ecbatana, 
 took the city, completed the conquest, and 
 added Media to his dominion. For the mo- 
 ment it appeared that a great kingdom or Em- 
 pire was about to be projected, under the aus- 
 pices of the ArsacidiB. 
 
 But Autiochus HI. could not well permit 
 his great dependencies in the East to be torn 
 away without an eflTort for their recovery. 
 As soon as he could bring afl^airs to quiet in 
 Upper Syria, he gathered a large army and 
 set out for Mesopotamia. The event showed 
 that the king was not incapable of great am- 
 bition. Passing rapidly beyond the Tigris
 
 PARTHIA— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 406 
 
 ■and the Zagros mountains, he entered Media, 
 recovered the capital, restored the Syrian au- 
 thority, and then moved forward against Par- 
 thia itself. lu doing so, he had to traverse 
 the Iranian desert, a region almost wholly 
 without water. Upon this circumstance Arta- 
 banus relied to keep his enemy at bay. He 
 kept detachments of cavalry in the desert in 
 front of the Syrian army, with orders to fill 
 ■up or poison the wells upon which Antiochus 
 must depend for water. But the progress of 
 -the latter could not be stayed. Hyrcania was 
 entered and its cities taken. The Parthiaus 
 •now confronted the enemy, but were unable 
 to check his course. They adopted the expe- 
 dient, however, of keeping out of his way 
 until what time the Syrian king, wearied with 
 campaiguing against a foe whom he could not 
 ■etrike down, consented to peace. 
 
 It is thought that Artabanus agreed to co- 
 operate with the Syrian monarch in a war 
 with Bactria. That country, the reader will 
 *emember, had also become independent. 
 Euthydemus, the king, had shown himself able 
 ■ia defend the country. Nor did he shrink 
 from the invasion of his dominions by Anti- 
 ochus. It is probable that Artabanus was se- 
 cretly in sympathy with the Bactrian king in the 
 •struggle that ensued with Antiochus. At any 
 rate, Euthydemus was able to uphold the for- 
 •tunes of his country until the Syrian king, see- 
 ing the impossibility of restoring the Eastern 
 Empire by war, withdrew from the country, 
 leaving both Parthia and Bactria to follow their 
 •own course of development. It would seem that 
 Antiochus scarcely regarded himself as a victor 
 in his Eastern wars, for the conditions of peace 
 which he conceded to those who had opposed 
 tira were such as follow a drawn battle rather 
 than a conquest. 
 
 It would appear, however, that Parthia was 
 ■considerably weakened by the struggle through 
 which she had passed. The history of the 
 kingdom becomes for many years obscure. 
 The remainder of the reign of Artabanus was 
 of little importance in a national sense. At 
 least the ancient historians have passed over 
 the closing years of the third century B. C, 
 •as though they were marked by no stirring 
 •event from the side of Parthia. In Bactria the 
 
 case was somewhat different. We may infer 
 that this kingdom was not so severely pun- 
 ished in the war with Syria as was Parthia. 
 At any rate, the remaining years of Euthy. 
 demus, and of his son and successor Demetrius, 
 were marked in Bactrian history as a period 
 of advancement and prosperity. Historically 
 considered, the forces were at this time bal- 
 ancing between the two kingdoms as to which 
 should finally take the lead in the restoration 
 of the A.siatic Empire under native princes. 
 
 We may, therefore, say no more in this 
 connection than that the subsequent reign of his 
 son, named Priapatius, otherwise Arsaces IV., 
 was more obscure than that of his predecessor. 
 The single fact remaius that he occupied the 
 throne from B. C. 196 to 181. The epoch was 
 in one sense important, for it was at this time 
 that the period in history assigned to the suc- 
 cessors of Alexander the Great comes to a 
 close. In the year 196 B. C. the Roman 
 Proconsul, Titus Quinctius Flaminius, made 
 his appearance at the Isthmian games, at Cor- 
 inth, and proclaimed the protectorate of the 
 Western Republic over Greece. It was the 
 end of Hellenic independence, and the begin- 
 ning of the end of all those divisions of po- 
 litical power which had been established in the 
 East by the Macedonians. Since it was from 
 the latter that Parthia had most to fear, and 
 since these were now to be completely over- 
 whelmed by Rome, we may note the time as 
 the crisis from which the Parthian Empire 
 and ascendency were to begin. It thus hap- 
 pened that in the obscurity of the reign of 
 Priapatius the antecedents were preparing of 
 a great dominion for his successors. 
 
 We may here make a brief pause and digres- 
 sion for the purpose of noting the condition of 
 afl'airs in the extreme eastern part of the former 
 dominions of Alexander the Great. If the 
 Macedonian governors had not been able to 
 hold their authority over the Asiatics in the 
 meridian of Parthia and Bactria, what shall 
 we say of their inability in the Indus valley ? 
 There lay the great region of the Puujaub, 
 cut off from all dictation of the AVest and 
 from all support by the Europeans. The will 
 of the Conqueror had indeed been sufficient to 
 hold the countries of Afahanistan and the
 
 406 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Upper Indus in subjection, but not so tlie will 
 of his successors. 
 
 The native Indian princes, like those of the 
 Great Plateau, soon revolted, and regained 
 their independence. Among these a king called 
 Chandragupta arose and established a dominion 
 in the Punjaub fit to be called a kingdom. 
 Already at the close of the fourth century 
 B. C, when Seleucus Xicator made his great 
 expedition into the East, he found Chandra- 
 gupta reigning over the countries between the 
 two great rivers of India. Nor was it deemed 
 advisable by the Macedonians to enter into a 
 war with him for the recovery of the country. 
 The Indian prince was left in authority under 
 treaty stipulations defining the extent of the 
 Indian Kingdom. Nearly a centurj' went by, 
 and Antiochus III. crossed Asia on his expe- 
 dition to the East. But on approaching India 
 he also made a pause, and renewed with the 
 successors of Chandragupta the treaty of Se- 
 leucus. Amicable relations were established 
 between the Syrian Kingdom and the far East, 
 and gifts were interchanged between the mon- 
 archs in the manner of ancient royalty. 
 
 But these things were displeasing to the 
 king of Bactria. It was little agreeable to 
 his feelings to be overspauned by so wide an 
 arch as that between Antioch and the Pun- 
 jaub. Euthydemus determined to break this 
 far-reaching connection between the East and 
 the West, and himself made war on India. 
 After him Demetrius, the succeeding Bactrian 
 king, took up the cause. He carried a vic- 
 torious army into Afghanistan, and afterwards 
 into India. On the Kiver Hydaspes he built 
 the city Euthymedeia, long known in ancient 
 geography. He established his supremacy in 
 the countries dominated by his arms ; and the 
 historian of the day might well have been 
 on tiptoe to witness the further expansion of 
 the Bactrian power into a universal Asiatic 
 Empire. 
 
 This period, however, covered the climax. 
 The Bactrian ascendency could reach no 
 higher. It is believed that the success of the 
 kingdom in the times of Euthydemus and 
 Demetrius was correlated with the unsuccess 
 of Parthia at the same epoch. It may have 
 been that the Parthian kincrs of the period 
 
 were unable to do more than to maintain the 
 status in quo until what time the nation might 
 revive from the effects of the Syrian war, and 
 until Bactrian ambition should run its course. 
 
 We may pass at once from the unknown 
 reign of Arsaces IV. to that of his son and 
 successor Phraates I., otherwise Arsaces V. 
 The'latter acceded to power in the year B. C. 
 181, and his coming marked an epoch of re- 
 vival in the fortunes of the kingdom. It were 
 difficult to say how much under such circum- 
 stances is due, on the one hand, to the re- 
 newal of spirit among the people, and how 
 much on the other should be attributed to the 
 ambition of the monarch. Neither is available 
 to any great extent without the aid of the 
 other. Of a certainty an ancient king could 
 not of himself make a successful war. Equally 
 certain it is that an ancient people, accus- 
 tomed to the forms of monarchy, used to re- 
 ceive mandates, and to look to its head for 
 orders and inspiration, could not make suc- 
 cessful war without the leadership of a com- 
 petent king. 
 
 In this case we may assume that the people 
 of Parthia had recovered from their period of 
 depression, and that Phraates was ambitious 
 of conquest. At all events he began his reign 
 by making war on the Mardi. The.se were a 
 mountain people living iu the fastnesses of the 
 Elburz range — a kind of Swiss of the sub- 
 Caspian hills. Their position was almost in- 
 accessible, and their spirit the spirit of mount- 
 aineers. We may perceive, moreover, that 
 Phraates was much at fault in making his 
 first war from his inability to use the Parthian 
 cavalry in the country which he must pene- 
 trate. Nevertheles.s, the invasion of Jlardia 
 was successful. The tribe was conquered and 
 combined with the Parthians. 
 
 The reader must bear in mind that the 
 authority of the kings of Antioch still nomi- 
 nally extended to the borders of Parthia and 
 Bactria. Any movement of the Parthian 
 king, therefore, beyond the limits of his own 
 territory was aggressive, and might well pro- 
 voke the hostility of the Seleucid monarch. 
 The latter at this time was Seleucus IV., sur- 
 named Philopator. At the time of the con- 
 quest of the Mardians by Phraates, the Syrian
 
 PARTEIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 407 
 
 monarch was deeply involved with Rome. 
 The sliadow of that colossal power had already 
 fallen on Greece and Egypt and the East. It 
 was therefore out of the question for the king 
 of Syiia, whatever may have been his resent- 
 ment, to proceed against the Parthian King- 
 dom in punishment for its aggression. Per- 
 haps the loss of the country of the Mardi was 
 not much regarded. The great Powers of 
 Western Asia were liearly all established on 
 the plain. The massive peoples which were 
 wielded by the kings of Mesopotamia, of Asia 
 Minor, and of Syria were adjusted to the low- 
 lands, to the alluvial countries, and knew not 
 how to deal with mountain tribes any more 
 than the ostrich understands the eyrie of the 
 eagle. So the Mardi were permitted to go to 
 the conqueror. 
 
 Phraates, gratified with his success, soon 
 made a bolder move. It would appear that 
 he was able to consider geography in its rela- 
 lations with political development. It hap- 
 pened that his point of view took in easily 
 one of the critical positions of Asia. The 
 Greek writers have dwelt with much interest 
 on the celebrated pass called the Caspian 
 Gates. We have already had occasion, in the 
 histories of Media and Persia, to refer to this 
 famous gap left by nature between the mount- 
 ains on the one hand and the desert on the 
 other. In modern geography the place is 
 designated as the Pass of Girduni Sudurrah. 
 It is, in a word, the gateway between Ar- 
 menia, Media, and Persia on the one side, and 
 Turkistan, Khorassan, and Afghanistan on the 
 other. Nor is there any other way by which 
 convenient or even practicable passage between 
 the East and the West can be found. The 
 situation seems almost to have been contrived 
 as a military expedient in the strategy of the 
 Asiatic nations. 
 
 For here thcElburz mountains stretch their 
 impassable barrier from the Caspian on the 
 north to the desert regions of the Great Pla- 
 teau on the south. At the termination of the 
 range in this direction a spur projects to a 
 considerable distance desertward, as if to ex- 
 tend the barrier beyond the natural limit. 
 This mountain spur is broken from the prin- 
 cipal range in such manner as to make 
 
 human transit possible, but hardly practicable 
 through the northern gap. At the lower ex- 
 tremity, however, where the oflshoot abuta 
 against the desert, stand the so-called Caspian 
 Gates. The approach from either side seems 
 to be absolutely barred by the mountain wall, 
 but an army winding carefully along finds a 
 narrow and unobstructed pass from Media 
 Rliagiana on the west into the country of the 
 ancient Sagartians on the east. 
 
 The importance of the Caspian Gates wa» 
 well known to the ancients. Phraates per- 
 ceived it. Having conquered the Mardi, he 
 next turned his attention to Media Rhagiana ; 
 for, could he but succeed in conquering that 
 country, he could gain possession of the westera 
 entrance to the Gates, and thus be able to bar 
 henceforth the progress eastward of a Syrian 
 army. The enterprise was one of hazard. It was 
 undertaken by Phi-aates by transferring a part 
 of the tribe of the Mardi into the open country 
 westward from the Gates. The movement 
 was successful. Phraates and his ParthianS' 
 made their way through the pass and overran 
 at least a portion of Media Rhagiana. The 
 country west of the Gates was occupied by 
 Parthian garrisons, and the strategic position 
 was secured by Phraates. His reign, however, 
 was not marked by any other important 
 events. He wore the crown for only sevea 
 years, dying in B. C. 174. 
 
 Thus far the dynasty had been tolerably 
 regular as to the descent of the crown. Tiri- 
 dates is reckoned as the brother of the first 
 Arsaces. The succession was then to the son 
 and to the son's son. With the death of 
 Phraates, however, the crown, in accordance 
 with the purpose of the late king, was trans- 
 mitted to his brother Mithridates, as against 
 the claims of his own son. It is probable that 
 Mithridates had been a strong stay of the 
 monarchy during the late reign. Phraates had 
 honored himself with the title of Philadelphus, 
 which would indicate his reliance upou his 
 brother. If we are to judge by results the 
 lateral transmission of the crown was beneficial 
 in the highest degree, for we here come to the 
 sudden rise of Parthia to the rank and char- 
 acter of an Empire. 
 
 IMore than any other name among Parthian
 
 408 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 monarchs is that of Mithridates known to the 
 peoples of the West. Those historians who 
 are willing to allow tc individual agency the 
 general results which in the aggregate go by 
 the name of History, have been wont to 
 ascribe to Mithridates the place among his 
 countrymen which the same writers assign, 
 each in his respective sphere, to Alexander and 
 Caesar. More properly we may regard this 
 
 dinary as to impress itself strongly upon the 
 Greeks and Romans, whose historians have 
 done tolerable justice to the builder of the 
 Parthian Empire. 
 
 The conditions of success, however, had been 
 prepared for Mithridates before his coming. 
 The state of South-western Asia and Eastern 
 Europe was now favorable, as it had not been 
 before, to the construction of a great political 
 
 ARSACBS. 
 
 1. AbsaCES I., B. C. 247. 
 
 2. TiKIDATES I., 214. 
 
 3. Artabanus I., 196. 
 
 I 
 
 4. Pbiapatius, 181. 
 
 5. Pheaates 1., 174. 
 
 6. Mithridates I., 136. 
 
 I 
 7. Phkaates II., 127. 
 
 8. Abtabanus II., 124. 
 
 I 
 
 9. Mithridates II., 89. 
 
 10. Mnasciras, 76. 
 
 I 
 
 11. Sanatrceces, 67. (7) 
 
 I 
 12. Phbaates III., 60. 
 
 DYNASTY 
 OF THE ARSACID>E. 
 
 EXPLANATION: 
 
 Kings numbered in nrder. thus. 1.2,3. etc. 
 
 Regular descent indicated thus . 
 
 Doubtful descent indicated thus 
 
 Arabic numbers after names indicate 
 date of death or dethronement. 
 
 18. Mtthridates III., 55. 
 
 14. Obodes I., 37. 
 
 I 
 
 15. Phkaates IV., 2. 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 17. Orodes II., 13. 19. Aktabancs III., 42. 23. VoNONES II., 52. 
 
 18. VONONES I., 16. RhoJaspes. 16 Phraataces, 12 A.D. 21 Gotarzes, 51. Artabanus. 22. Vaedanes, 46. 
 
 Mithndates. 20. TiEIDATES II., 35. 
 
 24. VOLAGASES I., 78. 
 
 Tiridates. 
 
 Pacoms. 
 
 25. PACORns, 108. 
 
 I 
 
 Exedares. 
 
 26. Chosroes, 130. 
 
 1 27. VoL.*GASEs n., 149. 
 
 Parthamasiris. „ ,, I .,,, ,„, 
 
 28. VOI.AGASES III., 191. 
 
 29. VOLAGASES IV., 209. 
 
 30. ARTABANl'S IV., 226. 
 
 Volaga.ses. 
 
 sixth representative of the Arsacid Dynasty 
 as the personal expression of the historical 
 growth and purpose of the Parthian nation in 
 his age. To him undoubtedly great abilities and 
 great ambitions must be ascribed. His cour- 
 age and strength were equally manifested in 
 civil administration and in war. His reign, 
 covering a period of thirty-seven years, is the 
 most important and interesting of Parthian 
 history. His career as a ruler was so extraor- 
 
 power on the scene of what had been the 
 Persian Empire. In the first place, the con- 
 dition of Bactria invited the Parthians to 
 achieve what the neighboring kingdom had 
 not been able to accomplish — the consolidation 
 of Asia. True, the Bactrian kings had, as we 
 have seen, aspired to dominion. They had put 
 out their hands by conquest over the East to 
 the extent of grasping the country as far aa 
 Upper India. They had also crossed the Pare-
 
 PARTHIA.—CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 409 
 
 pamisus Mountain chain to the south, aud 
 had brought Arya, Sarangia, aud Arachosia 
 under their sway. 
 
 Eucratidas was now the king of Bactria. It 
 appeared that during his reign the full polit- 
 ical and military energies of his people had 
 been put forth, and that victory and organi- 
 zation could go no further under the Dynasty 
 cf Euthydenius. A great difficulty existed in 
 holding in one even the countries already 
 brought into union. The student of history 
 ■will not have failed to note among the ancient 
 nations to what an extent a mountain barrier 
 was a bar to the political unity of the peoples 
 on the two sides of the chain. At the time of 
 which we speak it was fouud difficult to hold 
 together the nations lying on the south and the 
 north of the Paropamisus While Eucratidas 
 was absorbed with the work of unifying the 
 Southern races, the Northern races rose against 
 him. There the Scythians made invasions, 
 and the nomadic life reasserted itself in rebell- 
 ion. Turning his attention to these distrac- 
 tions, the king soon found tliat the tribes of 
 the South were not to be trusted in his ab- 
 sence. Thus between the two the energies of 
 Eucratidas were \rasted, and the kingdom 
 vexed with disunion and war. 
 
 In the direction of Syria there was equal 
 confusion. The great dominion established by 
 Seleucus was gradually receding and contract- 
 ing around Autioch. Even in those foreign 
 parts still dependent upon the Seleucid king 
 there was a loosing of the bands wherewith 
 they were bound to the center. At this time 
 Seleucus I'hilopator had become king aud had 
 involved himself in foreign wars. Now it was 
 that Ccele-Syria became an object of conten- 
 tion between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidaj. 
 It was said that Antiochus the Great in giving 
 his daughter Cleopatra to Ptolemy V., bad 
 promised to dower her with Ccele-Syria, which 
 would have transferred the country to Egypt. 
 The reigning Seleucus also found cause of 
 ■quarrel and war with the Grecian section of 
 the Alexandrian Empire and with Armenia, 
 now in revolt against himself Of a certainty 
 a prince thus distracted by serious conflicts on 
 three sides of his dominions was in no condition 
 successfully to resist a determined movement 
 
 for nationality among the Asiastics beyond 
 the Tigris. 
 
 It thus happened that Mithridates found 
 on his accession to power a fair field for his 
 ambitions. He found Eucratidas, his Bactrian 
 rival, iuvolved iu a war on the side of India. 
 This circumstance seemed to invite the Par- 
 thian to his first aggression. He led an army 
 into the adjacent parts of Bactria, and seized 
 the two provinces of Turiua and Aspionus. 
 It is believed that by this, his first successful 
 foreign campaign, the king of Parihia possessed 
 himself of the regions out of which theScythic 
 elements of the Parthian nation had been de- 
 rived. A source of disturbance was thus cut 
 off, and its fountain drawn up by absorption. 
 The king made himself secure in his conquest, 
 and then wheeled about towards Media. Wo 
 have seen how the latter province had already 
 l)een partly takeu away from the Syrian kings. 
 But the latter still held 
 their sway over Media 
 Magna, aud it was against 
 this district that Mithri- 
 dates now advanced. 
 
 The Syrian crown at 
 this time had descended 
 to Antiochus Eupator, 
 a mere youth, incapable 
 
 of aflJairs. The kingdom was in the hands 
 of the regent Lysias ; but his energies were 
 for a while exhausted in a war with the 
 Jews. At the court also he found opposition 
 iirthe designs of a certain Philip, who, as the 
 teacher of Eupator, cl.aimed the right of con- 
 trolling the boy-king's actions and policy. 
 Civil war broke out until what time Philip 
 was overthrown and slain. By this time 
 Prince Demetrius, a cousin of Seleucus, laid 
 claim to the throne in virtue of their common 
 descent. Demetrius bad been given by one 
 of the former Seleucids as a hostage to Kome. 
 His youth was spent in the city of the Tiber. 
 At length he made his escape from Italy, re- 
 turned to Syria, headed a revolution against 
 his cousin, and gained the throne. 
 
 It was during this confused and confusing 
 condition of affiiirs that Mithridates threw his 
 army upon the Medes. It was of littie avail 
 that the Syrian claim to the dominion of the 
 
 COIN OF MITHRIDATES I.
 
 410 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 country was asserted. Even before the be- 
 ginning of the invasion the Median tribes had 
 become virtually independent. Indeed, the 
 spirit of the people was a more serious ob- 
 stacle to the ambitions of Mithridates than 
 was the Syrian army. The details of the war 
 with Media have not been preserved, but the 
 general result was manifested Iq the transfer 
 of Media Magna to the Parthian king. Per- 
 haps the condition cf the country thus sub- 
 jugated was not greatly changed. It is be- 
 lieved that the same prince who had ruled 
 under the king of Syria was retained iu office 
 by Mithridates as his representative among 
 the subject peop!e. 
 
 It was now evident that the kingof Parthia 
 was about to begin his career as Imperial con- 
 queror. Such premonitions are always alarm- 
 ing to the surrounding peoples. Whoever 
 plays the part of Alexander or Cresar has a 
 hard struggle at the outset. It is only after a 
 period of victory, when the volume of con- 
 quest begins to roll on by its own momentum 
 that the conqueror rides majestically on the 
 rising wave. In the present instance the 
 Hyrcauians took the alarm and set themselves 
 against the Parthian king. The latter was 
 now ready for any emergency, and made haste 
 to advance against the hostile nation. The 
 Hyrcanians sought to induce the Medes and 
 the Mardian mountaineers to join them in the 
 war, but their efforts were unavailing. Hyr- 
 cania was thus exposed without support to the 
 wrath of Mithridates, who soon succeeded in 
 reducing the province to submission. Thus in 
 at least three directions the Parthian monarch 
 stretched his cords and strengthened his stakes. 
 
 Scarcely had these movements been ac- 
 complished when a revolt broke out in Ely- 
 mais. It is believed that the prince or king 
 of this country had already made himself in- 
 dependent of the Syrian monarchy before his 
 war with Mithridates. The latter now, for 
 the first time, had opportunity to test his abil- 
 'ities as leader of an army in a truly foreign 
 war. Thus far he had contended with nations 
 whose dominions bordered on Parthia. Now 
 he was obliged to lead his forces to a distance 
 through a desert country, and meet the Ely- 
 msans in battle. But the event was auspi- 
 
 cious to the Parthian, who overran Elymais 
 and added it to his dominions. This successful 
 campaign had thrown him between Persia and 
 Babylonia. It was not likely that a victorious 
 monarch would fail to make the most of his 
 advantageous position. It appears that both 
 the Persians and the Babylonians recognized 
 the peril of their situation, and, perceiving the 
 weakness of the ties hj which they were bound 
 to Antioch, deemed it prudent to cast in their 
 lot with the conqueror. It thus happened that 
 an extensive region in the South-west, includ- 
 ing the Babylonian plain and the whole 
 country eastward to the Carmanian desert, 
 was added by a single campaign to what may 
 now be called the Parthian Empire. 
 
 A period of more than twenty years was 
 occupied by Mithridates in these wars. Dur- 
 ing the whole of this time the Syrian kings 
 had been unable to disentangle themselves 
 from tlieir troubles in the West and give at- 
 tention to the Eastern revolution. Nor had 
 the king of Bactria found opportunity or dis- 
 position to attempt the recovery of what had 
 been lost by conquest. The attention of Eu- 
 cratidas had been constantly occupied with 
 troubles and revolts on the side of India. He 
 w'as thus obliged to assent to the loss of his 
 western provinces to his rival. It would seem 
 that the two kings, one pressing his way to- 
 wards the Indus and the other towards the 
 Babylonian plain, had come to amity and 
 common purposes. But to a part of the Bac 
 trian nation this concord with Parthia was 
 distasteful. Prince Heliocles, son of the Bac- 
 trian monarch, represented the discontent, 
 and sought to recover from Parthia the lost 
 provinces. Believing that his father, the 
 king, was in the way of his ambitions, he 
 secured his taking off by violence, and seized 
 the crown for himself This he did with the 
 evident purpose of going to war with Mith- 
 ridates. 
 
 But the latter was on the alert. Perceiving 
 the designs of his antagonist, the Parthian 
 king turned into Bactria, quickly overthrew 
 Heliocles, subverted the kingdom as to all its 
 western provinces, and added them to his 
 Empire. He then carried his victorious arms 
 to the east, forcing the Bactrian monarch to
 
 PAETEIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 411 
 
 the mountains, and compelling him and his 
 successors to accept henceforth the restricted 
 region adjacent to Upper India. Thus between 
 tiie years B. C. 163 and 140 were tlie widely 
 extended countries of South-western Asia re- 
 stored by revolt and war to Asiatic domina- 
 tion. The drama as a whole was virtually a 
 restoration of the Persian Emj)ire under the 
 auspices of Parthia. Of the extent and char- 
 acter of the Imperial territories we have already 
 given an account in the first chapter of the pres- 
 ent Book. The Imperial domain now consisted 
 of at least twelve provinces, and embraced an 
 area but little less than five hundred thousand 
 square miles in extent. It only remained for 
 Mithridates to consolidate, organize, and de- 
 fend the countries and nations that had fallen 
 under his sway. 
 
 As for foreign violence, little was to be 
 feared except from the side of the kingdom 
 of Syria. Doubtless the reigning princes at 
 Antioch had been deterred for nearly a quarter 
 of a century from invading the East by the 
 distractions of the West. Doubtless the npws 
 of Eastern rebellions, wars, conquests, and 
 transformations smote dismally on the ears of 
 the Syrian kings. Doubtless the loss of their 
 revenues was to them a source of extreme 
 annoj'ance and discomfort. But the struggles 
 of the rulers around the eastern shores of the 
 Mediterranean, from the Libyan desert to the 
 Grecian archipelago, were sufficient to keep 
 the Syrian mouarchs from any effort at the 
 recovery of their provinces. AVe have seen 
 how the Regent Lysias and the teacher Philip 
 contended for the mastery of the government 
 and the young king of Antioch ; how Deme- 
 trius Soter came from Rome and took the king- 
 dom, and how Syria was obliged to contend 
 with Egypt for the recovery of the territory 
 given away with the first Cleopatra. 
 
 At length the crown of what remained of 
 the Syrian monarchy descended to Demetrius 
 II., a prince not without ambition. Reaching 
 a hdl in the Western wars he cast his yes to 
 the East, and ali:nit the year 140 B. C 
 planned an expedition for the recovery of the 
 fortunes of his house by war. Jlithridates 
 bud not found everything comformable to his 
 will in the administration of the new Empire. 
 
 Among the conquered Bactrians there were 
 mutterings, discontent, incipient rebellions. 
 In all the countries which he had conquered 
 were Greek cities jilauted either by Alexander 
 himself or by his successors. These seats of 
 power and influence had been built up by im- 
 migration from Europe. Thither had come 
 thousands of Greeks and Macedonians from 
 the European main-land, from the archipelago, 
 and from Asia Minor. These had increased, 
 multiplied, expanded. They had become the 
 intellectual class throughout all South-western 
 Asia. They had taken, in marriage or in 
 illicit relations, the choice princesses of the Asi- 
 atics. There had thus appeared a large and 
 influential Grteco-Asiatic element in the popu- 
 lation. 
 
 On the whole, the sympathies of this class 
 were hostile to the Parthian ascendency. 
 Through a hundred and sevent}' years the 
 Seleucid kings had held sway, real or nomi- 
 nal, over the countries this side of India. 
 Even the Asiatics, pure and simple, had be- 
 come at last accustomed to the European and 
 Syrian dominations. All of these conditions, 
 sympathies, and tendencies had to be overcome 
 and reversed by Mithridates beftu-e his Im- 
 perial rule could be accepted with cordiality by 
 the diverse peoples whom he had conquered. 
 
 It thus came to pass that when Demetrius 
 II. entered upon his war with Parthia, he was 
 assisted somewhat by the social and political 
 condition of Asia. He began his campaign 
 under favoi'able auspices, making his way first 
 into Babylonia, where he received the submis- 
 sion of the country. It will be understood 
 by the reader that the peoples of these Asiatic 
 dominions had little choice among their mas- 
 ters. They could therefore be delivered from 
 hand to hand as merchandise of the mart. 
 But Demetrius now began to encounter op- 
 position. The Bactrian cavalry was in his 
 front. He was able, however, to continue 
 his advance and to win several battles be- 
 yond the Mcso]M)taniian rivers. Elymais was 
 overrun and temporarily recovered to tlie 
 Syrian monarcliy. Other districts were re- 
 taken, and Mitiiridates found himself receding 
 before tlie superior forces of his enemy. 
 
 It appears that at this lime, if we are to
 
 412 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 trust the testimony of Justin, the Parthian 
 king overreached his rival b)' proposing ne- 
 gotiations. While these were pending he at- 
 tacked and routed the Sj-rian army, capturing 
 Demetrius himself and leading him away into 
 the interior. It seems that the whole expedi- 
 tion was blown away. Nor was Mithridates 
 satisfied until he had taken the captured king 
 from capital to capital through the provinces, 
 showing him in the cities to the Grteco- 
 Asiatics as an example of what might be ex- 
 pected of those who dared to raise the arm 
 against his Empire and himself. 
 
 Of a certainty the victory of Parthia was 
 sufficiently decisive. So much, however, 
 could hardly be said for the scheme of the 
 king to unite his dynasty with that of Syria 
 by intermarriage. It appears that he placed 
 his royal prisoner, Demetrius, in a suitable 
 residence in Hyrcania, where he maintained 
 him in a style befitting his rank. He also 
 sought to have his daughter given to the 
 Syrian monarch, in order that the destinies 
 of the two houses might be blended in the 
 issue. But the project came to naught. 
 Mithridates himself was now well advanced in 
 years. He' was exhausted by the vicissitudes 
 and str.uggles of a reign more than thirty-seven 
 years in duration. Soon after he had put his 
 royal prisoner into Hyrcania for safe-keeping 
 he sickened and died, in B. C. 136. 
 
 As we have said, the Parthian Empire had 
 now reached its greatest territorial extent. 
 It had become the great power of Western 
 Asia. The Old Era was drawing to a close. 
 Rome was making her way through an aristo- 
 cratic republicanism towards Imperial world- 
 wide dominion. Already by the time which 
 we have now reached, namely, the last quarter 
 of the second century B. C, the two rival 
 powers of the world were the Roman Republic 
 in the West and Parthia in the East. Before 
 entering upon an account of the struggles be- 
 tween these two, covering several centuries 
 about the beginning of our era, it may be of 
 interest and instruction to note with some par- 
 ticularity the civil and political constitution 
 of the Parthians. 
 
 The Government of the Empire was in its 
 leading features an amplification and adapta- 
 
 tion of the old Parthian monarchy to the 
 new Imperial conditions. We have many 
 such examples in history of an aspiring State 
 imposing by war and diplomacy its civil insti- 
 tutions upon surrounding and subject peoples. 
 In our own day we need go no further than 
 the recent establishment of the German Em- 
 pire, under the hegemony of Prussia, in illus- 
 tration of this form of political development. 
 Ancient Parthia — Parthia Proper— imposed 
 herself and her half-barbaric forms of admin- 
 istration upon the nations whom she conquered, 
 insomuch that the Empire was but an enlarge- 
 ment of institutions which had already existed 
 for four or five centuries. 
 
 The first point to which we may refer in 
 the explication of the political life of the Par- 
 thians, is the ascendency and strong counter- 
 check of the Nobility on the Monarchy. The 
 secular nobles were known as the Megistanes. 
 The body so called might well be compared to the 
 British House of Lords in embryo ; that is, it 
 was composed of two groups of notables, the one 
 secular, and the other of a religious derivation. 
 The former were called, in the Grseco-Asiatic 
 tongue, the Sophoi, that is, the "Wise," and 
 the latter were the Magi, or degenerated Zo- 
 roastrian priesthood. These two branches of 
 nobles combined to form one of the great 
 councils by which the Parthian monarch was 
 advised and, in at least a negative sense, di- 
 rected. Besides the Megistanes there was an- 
 other body, made up for the most part of 
 members of the royal family, and known as 
 the Domestic or Privy Council. In these ar- 
 rangements we see the germs in the one of 
 the modern Senate, and in the other of the 
 modern Ministry, or Cabinet. After all, an- 
 tiquity is not so far away ! 
 
 The head of the Parthian monarchy was 
 chosen by election of the Megistanes. The 
 naming of the king required the concurrent 
 voice of the Megistanes and the Domestic 
 Council. But over and above these bodies 
 was the constitution, in which heredity was 
 recognized as the best law of choice. That is, 
 the councils must choose by law, among the 
 Arsacid princes, that one whom the constitu- 
 tion pointed to as the legitimate sovereign. 
 I This was generally the eldest son of the late
 
 PARTHIA.—CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 418 
 
 kiiig; or iu lieu of liiiii, his next brother 
 must be chosen. In default of sons, then the 
 eldest surviving brother of the last monarch 
 was the one designated for the crown ; after 
 him, his brother. In default of sous and 
 brothers, then the choice rested on the uncle 
 of the last ruler. In case the descent was 
 thus diverted from the direct line, it could 
 not be recovered by representatives of that 
 line except in default of the_ younger branch 
 whereon the crown now 
 rested. Here again we dis- 
 cover aa almost identical 
 prototype of the English 
 law of royal descent and 
 inheritance. 
 
 In some instances the 
 Parthian councils felt war- 
 ranted in deposing their 
 sovereign. Such proceed- 
 ing, however, could but be 
 revolutionary in character. 
 Only an imbecile or idiot 
 prince would permit him- 
 self, without an appeal to 
 the sword, to be put aside 
 by the act of the Megis- 
 tanes. If James 11. proves 
 recreant to his trust — is no 
 longer tolerable by the na- 
 tion — we will put him aside. 
 We will declare that he has 
 himselfabdicated the throne. 
 We will call over William to 
 be king in his stead. But 
 of a certainty James and his 
 adherents, not accepting our 
 decision in the matter, will 
 fight for the recovery of his 
 crown and kingdom. 
 
 As to induction into office, we might have 
 expected that the Magi, more particularly the 
 Magus Megistos, or High Priest, would be called 
 upon, or would assume the right, in virtue of his 
 religious office and after the manner of his kind, 
 to crown the sovereign and consecrate him to 
 his royal duties. But this office, on the con- 
 trary, was reserved for the Surena, or General- 
 issimo of the army. He it was who was sum- 
 moned on the day of coronation to put the 
 
 crown upon his sovereign's head, a fact which 
 fully establishes the strongly military character 
 of the monarchy. 
 
 In common with the other great despotisms 
 of the East, the Parthian Government was 
 little changed from age to age. There was in 
 it much of the same quality which made the 
 laws of the Medes and Persians the synonym 
 for unchangeableness in both ancient and 
 modern times. As a rule the king governed 
 
 MAGUS MEGISTOS, OR HIGH PRIEST. 
 
 according to his own judgment, executing his 
 own decisions as though they were the decrees 
 of a Parthian Congress. The reader must 
 understand, however, that in all personal gov- 
 ernments there are traditional checks and re- 
 straints upon the absolutism of the sovereign, 
 the nature and force of which it is difficult for 
 citizens of a modern republic or kingdom to 
 understand. It appears that the nature of 
 man is of itself a constitution whose provisions
 
 414 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 are as well understood and as mandatory as 
 the most formal articles in the written code of 
 nations. Added to this unalterable principle 
 of human nature, as shown in the unwritten 
 restraints imposed by public opinion on the 
 wills of barbaric kings and emperors, we must 
 allow, in the case of Parthia, a restraining in- 
 fluence to the Magian priesthood. This body, 
 whose numbers, in the latter times of the Em- 
 pire, Gibbon has estimated at eighty thousand, 
 could not fail to hold the rod of religious au- 
 thority over the secular rulers. The sovereign 
 himself, according as his nature was of a re- 
 ligious or a secular bias, must have felt in 
 greater or less degree the common awe which 
 the traditional representative of the ancient 
 Iranian feith exercised over the minds and 
 conduct of the common people. 
 
 In lieu of a representative Government, com- 
 posed of delegates assembling from all parts 
 at the capital — in lieu of a system of adminis- 
 tration by which revenues were regularly gath- 
 ered and authority dispensed from the central 
 Government to its remotest members — the an- 
 cient provincial system, developed by the 
 Achasmenian kings into the well-known sa- 
 trapial form, was adopted and adhered to by 
 the Parthian monarchs. The plan was, in 
 brief, to regard the different provinces as a 
 sort of quasi independencies, over each of wliich 
 a satrap, or governor, was appointed by the 
 king. There was, however, among the de- 
 pendencies much inequality. Some of them 
 consisted merely of the territories of a tribe 
 only half emerged from the barbaric state. 
 Others rose as high in the scale as regular 
 kingdoms. There was a great difference in 
 rank between the rulers of the latter and 
 those of the former. The latter were in real- 
 ity sub-kings, tributary monarchs to the great 
 sovereign, who now took upon himself the title 
 of King of Kings. Over the smaller and less 
 important provinces mere satraps, holding office 
 during the pleasure of the sovereign, were sent 
 out. In such countries as Media, Persia, Arme- 
 nia, and Babylonia, the viceroys were rultrs of 
 royal rank and hereditary rights. They had, 
 of course, been obliged to accept a tributary 
 relation to the Parthian Emperor; but beyond 
 this the administration of the sub-kings was 
 
 comparatively free from interference. There 
 was, indeed, no general administration for the 
 whole Empire, but a sort of feudalism, under 
 which connections and subordinations were es- 
 tablished on the principle of protection from 
 above down, and of military service and 
 tribute on the part of the subject States. 
 
 Besides the two kinds of government here 
 referred to, namely, the common satrapy and 
 the half-hereditary viceroyalty, there was still 
 a third variety of political organization within 
 the Imperial dominions. This was the free 
 city. It was not within the desire, and prob- 
 ably not within the ability, of the Parthian 
 monarchs to eradicate the Grreco-Macedonian 
 municipalities which for nearly two centuries had 
 constituted the nests of Europeanism in Asia. 
 These cities had for six generations lain like 
 gems of culture on the immoderate breast of 
 barbarism. In many respects they were in 
 Asia, but not of it. In the natural order of 
 things they became detached from the sur» 
 rounding provinces. At'length permanent re- 
 lations were established between them and the 
 monarchy. Many of the cities paid tribute 
 directly to the royal treasury, and were hence- 
 forth isolated from the local government of the 
 satrapy. 
 
 It was the policy of the Empire not to dis- 
 turb the provincial governments, of whatever 
 kind they were, so long as the tribute was paid 
 regularly and in full amount. The same 
 principle held with the cities. The latter 
 were allowed to proceed on their own lines of 
 development. Thus, for instance, Seleucia 
 grew to greatness. According to Pliny, the 
 population waxed to si.x hundred thousand. 
 Fortifications were built, and the place be- 
 came a sort of Hamburg of antiquity. A 
 municipal government was constituted after a 
 plan that might well remind the reader of 
 MediiBval Venice under the Doges. Of course 
 the arts and learning of the Parthian Empire 
 fled for covert to these Grseco-Asiatic strong- 
 holds. Each became a sort of Constantinople 
 of the desert, wherein Culture might peaceably 
 examine her still beautiful features in the 
 mirrors which had been preserved from the 
 days of the Grecian ascendency. 
 
 To destroy such places was a thing not t^
 
 J'ARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 415 
 
 be considered bv the Parthian kings; and so 
 they were spared from violence. More than 
 this, we may discover in the situation one of 
 the prevailing habits of the Parthian court. 
 We have already remarked upon the unfixod- 
 ness as to the locality of the seat of govern- 
 ment. Hecatompylos, the old cajiital of Par- 
 thia Proper, ceased to be regarded as the seat 
 of the Empire. Ctesiphon was preferred, par- 
 ticularly for the winter months. The milder 
 climate of the Soutli and the half-Greek re- 
 finements of the metropolis wx)oed the kings 
 and their courts out of the boisterous North. 
 .Not far away was the city of Vologesocerta, 
 which likewise invited at certain seasons a 
 visit from the sovereign. Then, with the re- 
 turn of summer, the Emperor and his retinue 
 would hie away into Media and fix themselves 
 for awhile at Ecbfitana, the ancient capital. 
 Sometimes the royal residence was at Tape 
 in Hyrcania; and during the spring months 
 the monarch was wont to enjoy himself at 
 Uhages. which had been one of the first con- 
 quests of Mithridates. 
 
 Could the observer look in once more upon 
 this ancient Parthian court, as it was consti- 
 tuted in the days of the King of Kings, he 
 should behold an assemblage of splendid per- 
 sons clad in the style of the Orient, having 
 the manners of a half-redeemed barbarism, 
 and living in sueii luxurious habit as war 
 and pride and appetite had engendered. The 
 manner of the royal establishment was virtu- 
 ally the same as that of Assyria and Persia. 
 The story of the kingly courts in those coun- 
 tries has already been recited. In general, 
 there was about the king's residence much 
 passion and treachery. It might almost ap- 
 pear that there is something climatic about 
 the sentiments and customs of men, by which 
 they are controlled in the different epochs of 
 history and the different localities of the 
 world. It might be difficult to conceive of 
 the existence of the Hellenic democracy on 
 the Plateau of Iran, and equally difficult to 
 imagine the existence of a Persian or Par- 
 thian court in the Grecian Islands. 
 
 However this may be, we may assure our- 
 selves that the Arsacid princes virtually re- 
 vived and restored the style of government 
 
 which had been practiced by the Acha?menian 
 kings. But in one respect Parthia appears to 
 have outdone the Orient in the way of bar- 
 baric grandeur. In time of war, not only the 
 king, but his court, his Government, went 
 into the field. The State was encamped with 
 the army. An immense retinue of non- 
 combatants followed in the wake of the expe- 
 dition. A caravan of camels carried not only 
 the military equipage, but a half cityful of 
 articles belonging to peace. The king and his 
 generals had no thought of leaving any grati- 
 fication behind them. The wives and concu- 
 bines of the monarch and his nobles were borne 
 on litters from camp to camp, and all the 
 means of revelry, all the accoutrements of 
 pleasure, were bountifully supplied at every 
 stage of the campaign. The royal society re- 
 moved from place to place with only the cav- 
 alry interposed between itself and the enemy. 
 
 Conquest had now reached its territorial 
 limit except on the side of Syria. In that 
 direction the country was still open to inva- 
 sion, and the motives were present for the 
 renewal of war. Time and again the Grseco- 
 Syrian kings had thought to recover by the 
 sword their Eastern provinces. Time and 
 again the Parthians had succeeded in beating 
 them back. Would not the latter now turn 
 upon their foe, and drive an expedition in the 
 direction of the Mediterranean? At this very 
 time Demetrius, one of the Syrian kings, was 
 a prisoner in the hands of the Parthians. We 
 have seen how Mithridates confined him in 
 regal state in Hyrcania, and how he sought to 
 give him his daughter Rhodogun(5 in mar- 
 riage. This project went over unfulfilled to 
 Phraates II., who, in the year 136 B. C, 
 succeeded his father on the throne. 
 
 Meanw^hile the Syrian crown had, when the 
 captivity of Demetrius was known, descended 
 to Antiochus Sidetes, brother of the prisoner. 
 It appears that as soon as Phraates came into 
 power he began to consider the question of 
 conquering Syria. He first sought to promote 
 his purpose by an intrigue. Having succeeded 
 in inducing the captive Demetrius to accept 
 Rhodogun^ as his wife, he attempted to enlist 
 his prisoner in his cause. To this end he 
 tempted him with the prospect of liberation,
 
 «18 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 hoping tbat as soon as Demetrius was free he 
 would reclaim the Syrian throne. The cap- 
 tive was himself not innocent of such a dream, 
 but he sought to consummate his hopes with- 
 out the connivance of his brother-in-law. He 
 accordingly made one or two unsuccessful ef- 
 forts to escape, but was in each instance pur- 
 sued, retaken, and brought back to captivity. 
 
 Meanwhile feelings of correlative antago- 
 nism were cherished by the Syrian king against 
 the Parthians. He too bided his time. For 
 the present Antiochus Sidetes was engaged in 
 a war with the Jews. That rebellious people, 
 under the leadership of the High Priest Simon, 
 attempted to maintain the independence which 
 had been conceded by Demetrius before his 
 overthrow and captivity. In course of time 
 the Jews, under the command of John Hyr- 
 canus, who had succeeded his father Simon, 
 were reduced to submission, and Antiochus 
 found himself free to make war on the Par- 
 thians. He organized a powerful army, and 
 set out in the direction of Babylonia. The 
 king of Syria was still able, notwithstanding 
 the losses of territory which his predecessoj-s 
 had met, to bring into the field a force greatly 
 superior to that with which Phraates was able 
 to confront him. The latter, however, came 
 forth as far as Mesopotamia, and time and 
 again joined battle with his antagonist. But 
 in each engagement the victory remained with 
 the Syrians, and the Parthian king was obliged 
 to recede toward the central parts of his Empire. 
 
 The successes of the Syrians in the field 
 were, in the next place, increased by the 
 chronic disaffection of the Greek cities. The 
 latter, together with many of the provinces on 
 the side of Babylonia, rose and went over to 
 Antiochus. It was the same old story of ex- 
 changing masters under the expediency of 
 the hour. For the time, the western horizon 
 seemed to bear nothing but thunder-clouds 
 and tempest for Phraates; but he was un- 
 daunted, and set himself against further dis- 
 aster. The time had now come for making 
 the most of the captive Demetrius. The Par- 
 thian king set him at liberty, and he sped 
 away like an arrow in the direction of Syria. 
 It seems, however, that Antiochus did not learn 
 of the flight of the dangerous bird, and so he 
 
 pressed on, gaining additional advantages 
 until what time winter set in, and the Syrian 
 army was distributed into the cities for 
 quarters. 
 
 The forces of the invasion were thus scat- 
 tered over a wide extent of country ; but the 
 situation seemed one of security, and no un- 
 easiness was felt by the king. On the side of 
 Parthia, however, the case was viewed with a 
 keener eye. The Parthian soldiers were able 
 for winter service, being inured to the climate. 
 The case, moreover, was well-nigh desperate, 
 and Phraates determined to make the most olf 
 the opportunity. At first the different de- 
 tachments of the Syrian army were well re- 
 ceived in the cities to which they were sent; 
 but military occupation is always a wearines.s 
 of the flesh. The soldiers ate and drank antil 
 caroused, after the manner of their kind, untill 
 the citizens became heartily sick of having 
 gone over to Antiochus. 
 
 As the winter wore on Phraates, learning 
 of the universal discontent, sent trusted agents 
 into all the cities where the Syrians were 
 quartered, and contrived a great conspiracy. 
 It was arranged that on a given day each 
 city should rise against the soldiers and de- 
 stroy them, while at the same time Phraates 
 himself should make a rush for the head- 
 quarters of the Syrian army and overwhelm 
 his enemy in battle. The plot was carried into 
 execution. At the given time the citizens 
 sprang to arms, surrounded the quarters of 
 the soldiers, and slew and massacred until 
 scarcely a Syrian was left to tell the story. 
 The rumor of the insurrection flew to Anti- 
 ochus, and he led forth his central division to 
 the rescue, only to be met by Phraates in the 
 field. In this struggle also the issue was 
 against the Syrians. The Parthian cavalry 
 swept everything before it, and Antiochus 
 himself was slain. Almost the entire force, 
 enormous as it was, was destroyed. Accord- 
 ing to Diodorus Siculus, three hundred thou- 
 sand of the Syrians perished. 
 
 At all events the expedition was brought 
 to utter ruin. Not a vestige of the invading 
 force was left in the field. The triumph of 
 Phraates was complete in every particular. 
 He succeeded in capturing the son and
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 411 
 
 daughter of his adversary. The rapid res- 
 toration of Parthian authority ensued in all 
 those parts of the country which had been 
 overawed by the Syrians. The Parthian king 
 made strenuous efforts to overtake and bricg 
 back Demetrius, hoping thus to secure all the 
 Seleucid princes, and thus perhaps extinguish 
 the Dynasty. But Deraetri^is had already 
 fled beyond his reach, and cculd not be re- 
 taken. 
 
 As to the Syrian monarchy an additional 
 disaster was in waiting. No sooner was it 
 known in Judaea that Autiochus was slain 
 than the people rose against their masters and 
 achieved their independence. The kings of 
 Antioch, in the remaining sixty-three years of 
 their power, were not able again to subdue 
 the Jews, and Palestine remained an inde- 
 pendency until what time the scepter of Rome 
 was passed over the countries east of the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great advantages of 
 victory, Phraates found serious obstacles in his 
 path. An enemy, not indeed so numerous, 
 but far more terrible in war than the Syrians, 
 rose on the opposite borders of the Empire. 
 For several generations the Scythians had 
 been in league with the Parthiaus. The old- 
 time kinship and affinity of the two peoples 
 have been more than once referred to in the 
 preceding pages. Friendship existed, and 
 common cause was frequently made by the 
 Scyths with the people and king of Parthia. 
 When Antiochus Sidetes, the late invader, 
 came into Babylonia with his army, Phraates 
 had solicited the aid of the Scythians, and a 
 great body of the wild warriors had accepted 
 the call. They set out on their march to join 
 Phraates, but did not succeed in doing so until 
 after the defeat and destruction of the Syrian 
 army. Then, forsooth, Phraates had no further 
 use for the Scyths or for their belated offers 
 of aid. The Northern warriors then demanded 
 their pay, and when this was refused they 
 turned about and began to take by ravage in 
 the districts of Parthia a liberal compensation 
 for tiieir alleged services. 
 
 Agaiust these disturbers of his Empire 
 Phraates was now obliged to turn about from 
 the scene of his great victory. He had mean- 
 
 while forgiven the Greek cities, and had ac- 
 cepted from them a contingent of soldiers. 
 He had also incorporated with his own army 
 the prisoners whom he had taken from An- 
 tiochus. There was thus a considerable di- 
 vision of his forces made up of foreign ele- 
 ments. With this army he advanced agaiust 
 the Scyths, and came to battle. In the midst 
 of the conflict the Greeks, on the Parthian side, 
 treacherously rose against their general and 
 went over to the Scythians. The Parthians, 
 thus weakened by defection, were routed and 
 swept from the field. Phraates himself was 
 among the slain. 
 
 Had the Scythians possessed the instincts 
 of conquest and reorganization, they might 
 now, to all appearances, have gone forward to 
 the overthrow of the Empire ; but their method 
 was simply the method of plunder. As fot 
 the Greeks, by whose aid the victory had been 
 achieved, finding themselves suddenly liber* 
 ated from military captivity, they broke up 
 and rolled away towards the West, recovering 
 as best they might their homes in Mesopo- 
 tamia and Syria. The reign had been brief, 
 extending only to the year B. C. 127. Nor 
 might it be claimed that the Empire had, on 
 the whole, been improved or strengthened by 
 the agency and valor of the sixth of the Ar- 
 sacid kings. 
 
 Phraates at the time of his death was still 
 a young man. It appears that he left no son 
 to succeed him. At any rate the crown was 
 transferred to his uncle, Artabanus II. The 
 latter, on coming to power, had to face the 
 most serious responsibilities. The victorious 
 Scythians and their Greek auxiliaries were still 
 in the heart of Parthia. The native army 
 had been almost destroyed. At the same time 
 serious difficulties arose on the side of Baby- 
 lonia. The satrap of this country had by his 
 oppressions goaded the people into rebellion 
 and war. But the clouded aspect of affairs 
 soon gave place to a clearer sky. The Greeks, 
 as we have seen, were more anxious to escape 
 from the country than to continue the conflict. 
 As for the Scythians, they in all ages were 
 satisfied to stuff themselves with coarse food, 
 to heat their blood with strong drinks, and to 
 enjoy the ineflable sleep of bai-barism. In the
 
 418 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 present instance they plundered until they 
 were satisfied, and then withdrew from the 
 country, leaving the Parthiaus to reflect upon 
 the costliness of refusing military pay to half- 
 savages. . 
 
 But while the Empire thus happily emerged 
 from the dangerous local complications which 
 had thickened around the last years of Phra- 
 ates, another and more general peril came in- 
 stead. This was the pressure which now be- 
 gan to be felt CD the northern and eastern 
 frontiers from the impact of human hordes 
 bearing down out of the unknown regions be- 
 yond the Jaxartes. It were long to give an 
 account of this extraordinary movement. In 
 its origin, its character, and tendencies, it was 
 one of the many irruj>tions of the barbaric 
 upon the civilized or half-civilized races of 
 men. The philosophy of such ethnic agita- 
 tions is better understood as it respects the 
 after-parts and results of the movements than 
 with respect to their origin. The true begin- 
 ning of the migration of tribes is a thing ex- 
 ceedingly hard to discover. After the war- 
 like migrations have once been started, it is 
 easy enough to note the process by which one 
 barbarous nation after another is jostled from 
 its seats until the last of the series is thrown 
 across the borders of civilization. Again, we 
 may say that the primal impulse is partly 
 cosmic and partly ethnic in character. Time 
 and again we have had occasion to remark 
 upon the operation of those subtle forces in the 
 natural world by which the human race is 
 pressed westward through all continents and 
 across all seas. Again, some races of men ex- 
 hibit a peculiar aptitude for movements of this 
 kind. It might be said with truth that they 
 are most susceptible in their constitution to 
 the influence of those far-reaching physical 
 laws to which we have just referred. 
 
 But as we have said, the origin, the source, 
 the fountain of the disturbance is hartlly dis- 
 coverable. The impulse rises far ofi" in the 
 regions of utter barbarism. Perhaps we might 
 find it in the peculiar fecundity of certain 
 tribes, in certain stages of their development. 
 Such movements always precede the mo- 
 nogamic stage in the human evolution. At 
 any rate, we may contemplate a certain spot 
 
 in barbarism as overstocked with human be- 
 ings, having the aggressive instinct and the 
 nomadic character. Migration ensues, and 
 the neighboring tribes are propelled in a di- 
 rection a little to the south of west. This 
 course is sought under the same influence 
 which carries the colony of bees to its des- 
 tination after leaving the parent hive. Eu- 
 rope has been many times troubled, and at 
 least once extinguished, by a barbarian ava- 
 lanche precipitated under the influences here 
 described. 
 
 At the time of which we speak Asia, as 
 well as Europe, began to feel the pressure. 
 Bactria was the first to be smitten in the flank 
 by the ram's-head of barbarism. About the 
 time of the accession of Artabanus II. the 
 Bactrian provinces were despoiled by barba- 
 rians of the nomadic order. A large part of 
 the country was actually taken by tribes out 
 of the North, breaking in as though they had 
 been fired from a catapult. But Bactria was 
 not the only part so threatened and assaulted. 
 Arya was also invaded, and the Hyrcanian 
 borders felt the pressure. All along the line 
 of the Oxus, from its Caspian delta to its 
 head-waters in the mountains of Upper India, 
 the horde surged back and forth to find an 
 entrance into the Empire. 
 
 The tribes were nameless and numberless. 
 Their character has been depicted by Herod- 
 otus and Strabo. Tlie nomadic habit was the 
 dominant trait. The tribesmen had wagons 
 and carts and the other apparatus peculiar to 
 races of the woods and steppes ; and the 
 women and children of the race were borne in 
 these vehicles from one station to another. 
 The vocation was hunting, war, plunder. Do- 
 mestic animals, especially cattle and horses, 
 were carried along with the movement. The 
 milk-driuking and cheese-eating appetite of the 
 Scyths is known wherever Ancient History 
 has been read. The social structure was based 
 on polyandria, the sexual union being much 
 the same in manner as that of the North 
 American Indians. 
 
 The Asiatic barbarians were famous in their 
 day for their .=kill in horsemanship and archery. 
 Their weapons were the bow and arrow, the 
 spear and the lance, the knife, or short sword,
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AJs^D MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 419 
 
 and the battle-axe. These, as to their metal- 
 lic parts, were of bronze. War was waged in 
 the style of savages. Many usages which have 
 been eliminated iu civilized warfare prevailed. 
 Arrows were poisoned with the venom of ser- 
 pents or the diseased discharges of animal 
 bodies. The enemy might be destroyed iu 
 any manner fatal to human life. Not only 
 ehould the foe be slain, but his body might be 
 cooked and eaten, as if it wei-e the product of 
 the chase. Nor did the cannibalism of the 
 barbarians stop with devouring the fallen foe. 
 Friends and kinsmen might be eaten if only 
 the rules of the Scythian constitution should 
 be observed. The young and middle-aged 
 were not for food; but with the failure of the 
 bodily powers in advanced life, the father or 
 uncle of the polyandriau family was taken, 
 killed by his household, and eaten with grati- 
 tude. Nor does it appear that the victims under 
 such circumstances regarded their fate as a 
 hardship. It was the usage of the nation. The 
 hardship came in the form of disease which 
 sometimes prevented the law from having its 
 course in the final disposition of the body. 
 
 It was against such a race as this that 
 Artabanus II. was called to contend. Nor 
 was he slow to accept the challenge which 
 came roaring out of the country of the Jax- 
 artes. Soon after his accession to the throne 
 he made successful warfare first upon those 
 tribes that had already broken into his domin- 
 ions. Bactria was expurgated of her savage 
 contents, and the king then led his army vic- 
 toriously into the enemy's country. The na- 
 tion of the Tochari was turned back by battle, 
 and the cohort of barbarism felt a sudden jar 
 in its progress, at which the tribes were 
 Startled and stood still. But while Artabanus 
 was thus carrying on successful warfare with 
 the hostile races beyond his own borders, he 
 was wounded in battle, and died from the in- 
 jury. The event, while not at once decisive 
 as to the general issue of the war, ended the 
 campaign, and the Parthians receded from the 
 barbarian countries. As for the crown, it was 
 at once transferred to Mithuidates II., son 
 and successor of the late king. 
 
 The volume of barbarism, like a stream of 
 ffatur, on meeting an obstacle turns to right 
 
 or left, and makes its way into a devious 
 channel. It appears that the war of Arta- 
 banus in the country north of the Oxus had 
 had some such physical effect on the savage 
 races. At least the new king found less 
 difficulty than might have been anticipated in 
 staying the further progress of the nomads. 
 The beast of barbarism reared, plunged, and 
 took another course. Mithridates II. had 
 little trouble in re-establishing his northern 
 frontier. The Scythic tribes were turned to 
 the east, as if to make a detour around the 
 Empire. The historical forces had been strong 
 enough to deflect the cosmic forces, and to 
 discharge the river of savagery far to the east 
 in Afghanistan and Upper India. Bactria was 
 wholly recovered by the king, and it waa 
 evident that the barbarians, finding a vent in 
 another direction, would trouble him no 
 further. 
 
 It was equail) manifest that the kingdom 
 of the Seleucidse would not again send out an 
 army to interfere with the natural course of 
 events in the countries bej'ond the Euphrates. 
 This condition of affairs invited the ambitious 
 and capable Mithridates to enlarge his borders 
 by war. Of the surrounding countries Ar- 
 menia was at this time the most inviting. Thus 
 far only a part — the smaller and less impor« 
 tant part — of the country had been brought 
 under the sway of the Parthian kings. Ar» 
 menia JVIagna, as the country between the 
 Euphrates and the Araxes was called by the 
 Romans, still retained its independence. More 
 properly, it had been included as a part of the 
 kingdom of Syria, and had not been wrested 
 therefrom by the Parthians. The country 
 was of ancient renown. Itjiad been an object 
 of contention and conquest among the great 
 conquerors. Alexander had taken it. Seleu- 
 cus had received it. With the decline of the 
 S.yrian monarchy, Armenia attained a quasi in- 
 dependence. A branch of the House of Ar.saces 
 was recognized in authority over the Arme- 
 nians. There had evidently been an uncertain 
 war between the country and Partbia. The 
 Prince Tigrancs was, in his youth, a hostage at 
 the Parthian court. Now, at length, the time 
 had arrived when a great contention was to 
 determine whetber Armenia should be joined
 
 420 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 in political fortunes with the East or the West — 
 with the Empire having its seat beyond the 
 Caspian, or with the Republic havitjg its seat 
 on the Tiber. 
 
 For Rome had now appeared. She had 
 boldly put forth her claim to the mastery of 
 Europe. One after another of the adjacent 
 countries had yielded to her sway. Greece, 
 in 196 B. C, had become a Roman i^roviuce. 
 Just fifty years later Carthage was finally ob- 
 literated. The countries of the Western and 
 Central Mediterranean presented no further 
 obstacle, and Roman ambition must pass over 
 into Asia Minor and the still remoter East. 
 As far back as B. C. 190, Antiochus III., of 
 Syria, was ruinously routed on the field of 
 Magnesia. He was obliged to accept what 
 terms soever the conqueror imposed. He was 
 compelled to relinquish his 
 authority over a large part 
 of his kingdom; to give 
 up his elephants of war; 
 to surrender — or promise 
 to surrender — the fugitive 
 Hannibal of great renown ; 
 and to give his own son 
 as a hostage for the ful- 
 fillment of the treaty. 
 Thus did the Roman Re- 
 public succeed in obtain- 
 ing a foothold in Asia, and 
 tt was the custom of that stern Power not to 
 relinquish what had once been acquired. As 
 soon should we expect the She-wolf nurse of 
 the Twin Robbers to give up her prey through 
 the possession of sentiment. 
 
 We pause not in this connection to narrate 
 the progress of events among the States of 
 Asia Minor whereby Rome and Parthia were 
 first brought into relations. At the first the 
 connection brought friendship rather than an- 
 tipathy. Mithridates V., king of Pontus, had 
 suddenly risen to great power, and about the 
 close of the second and the beginning of the 
 first century B. C. had constructed an Empire 
 out of a petty kingdom in Asia Minor. He 
 had made himself and his armies a terror in 
 all the countries west of Armenia. A part of 
 that kingdom was added to his dominions. 
 Half of Paphlagonia was snatched away. 
 
 Galatia was overrun and conquered, and Cap* 
 padocia was threatened by his ambitions. 
 
 The king of Armenia was at this time that 
 Tigranes whom we have mentioned above. 
 He seems to have favored the project of the 
 king of Pontus, and to have made an alliance, 
 political and matrimonial, with him. Now it 
 was, namely, in the year B. C. 92, that the 
 Roman Proconsul Sulla was sent with an army 
 into Asia to thwart the Pontine monarch ia 
 his plans. It happened that the Eastern army 
 with whom the Consul first came to battle 
 was the Armenian contingent. This force was 
 routed by the Romans, and Cappadocia was 
 saved from the grip of Mithridates V. As 
 for Tigranes, king of Armenia, he had in the 
 meantime renounced any ties of friendship or 
 political relation with the king of Parthia. 
 He had gone to war with that personage, and 
 had succeeded for the time in making himself 
 master of so much of Armenia as had belonged 
 for nearly a century to the Parthian Empire. 
 Thus did Tigranes become an enemy to both 
 Mithridates II. and Rome. 
 
 He who is the enemy of your enemy is, in 
 politics and war, j'our friend. It thus came 
 to pass that an amicable relation was estab- 
 lished between the Parthian king and the 
 Roman Proconsul in Asia. The former sent to 
 the latter as his ambassador a nobleman named 
 Orobazus, bearing a proposal for a league be- 
 tween Parthia and Rome. The well-known 
 policy of the Roman Senate of reserving all 
 treaty rights to itself, forbade Sulla to do 
 more than to entertain the Parthian ambassa- 
 dor and to encourage by friendliness the over* 
 tures made by his master. But before any 
 positive treaty could be efiected between the 
 leading powers of Europe and Asia, the am- 
 bitious and aggressive Tigranes was able to 
 work much havoc along the western borders 
 of the Parthian Empire. A war of nearly 
 ten years' duration, extending to the year 
 B. C. 83, ensued, in the course of which the 
 Armenian king was almost uniformly victo- 
 rious. He made successful campaigns into 
 Upper Mesopotamia, and tore away no incon- 
 siderable territory from the dominions of 
 Mithridates. He established and consolidated 
 his kingdom on an independent basis. For a
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 421 
 
 e>eason he exercised sovereignty without the 
 slightest obeisance in the direction of Antioch 
 or Ctesiphon or Rome. 
 
 Mithridates II. went down to death six 
 years before the conclusion of his war with 
 the Armenians, in which his unsuccess was so 
 conspicuous as to cast some shadow on his 
 title of "The Great," won in his youth by 
 victorious battle with the Scyths. His reign 
 covered a period of about thirty-five years, and 
 was principally noted in its latter days on ac- 
 count of the contact and first relations of the Em- 
 pire which he ruled with the Roman Republic. 
 
 It happens in the history of most nations 
 that after what may be called the first Im- 
 perial epoch a period of distraction and de- 
 cadence ensues. Success to a nation brings 
 the same trials and dangers which it brings to 
 the local society or to the individual. The ex- 
 ercise of power and the means of gratification 
 entail perils and plant pitfalls, and rarely do 
 a people escape the one or avoid the other. 
 There now supervened in the history of the 
 Parthian Empire such a time of retrogression 
 and confusion. This was manifested, first of 
 all, on the dynastic side. The reader will have 
 observed with what regularity the crown had 
 thus far passed to the ninth prince of the Ar- 
 sacida;. No break or serious disturbance had 
 occurred in the Dynasty. But a time now fell 
 out when obscurity came to the royal house, 
 and it is not known positively who was the 
 next king in order after Mithridates II. It is 
 believed, however, that a prince of little repu- 
 tation, bearing the name of Mnasciras, prob- 
 ably the son of the late monarch, came to the 
 throne. Neither from the Behistuu inscrip- 
 tions nor from the Parthian coins are we able 
 to know definitely the course of the succession. 
 The events of the years extending from B. C. 
 89 to B. C. 76 are str obscure that one may 
 almost pass the gap as though it were uot. 
 
 In the latter part of this period, however, 
 the light returns sufficiently to enable us to 
 see men as trees walking. In B. C. 7G a new 
 king, named Sanatrceces, whom we may con- 
 sider as the eleventh of the Dynasty, came to 
 the throne, an<l the administration, whatever 
 it had been, was quickened into greater ac- 
 tivity. It is known that the new monarch was 
 
 already an octogenarian on his coming to 
 power. It is also known that he had been for 
 a great time a prisoner, or possibly a hostage, 
 among the Scythians; and it is believed that 
 his accession to the throne of the Empire waa 
 effected by the aid of a body of Scythian war- 
 riors who returned with him in his old ag9 
 from the country beyond the Oxus. Front 
 this circumstance we get a glimpse of a con 
 dltion which had evidently come to pass in the 
 Empire. Civil war had ensued, and part of 
 the people had no doubt joined in the recall of 
 Sanatrceces. At any rate, the aged hero 
 gained the crown, and did something before 
 his death to restore the fortunes of his country. 
 
 The period at which we have here arrived 
 might almost be designated in Asiatic history 
 as the age of the Armenian ascendency. We 
 have seen above with what vigor Tigranes, the 
 Armenian king, son-in-law of Mithridates II., 
 had followed his ambitions and added to his 
 conquests. By him Armenia Minor was con- 
 quered aud absorbed. From Parthia the 
 great and valuable province of Northern 
 Mesopotamia was taken. Adiabene also, in- 
 cluding, according to the current organization, 
 the ancient Assyria, was in like manner torn 
 from the Empire by conquest. Parts of Media 
 were added to the Armenian dominion, inso- 
 much that Tigranes sent the dread of his name 
 into all the surrounding countries. 
 
 While thus by successful war Armenia was 
 advancing to the rank of a first-class Power in 
 South-western Asia, Rome was strengthening 
 her position and advancing her interests in all 
 the hither parts of the continent. The army 
 of the Republic and that of Tigranes were face 
 to face, and it was only a question of time 
 when one or the other must go to the wall. 
 The king of Parthia had cause to fear each 
 aud both of these tremendous forces as vhey 
 rose on his western borders. He was in doubt 
 whether it were best for him to take his 
 chances by allying himself with the Armeni- 
 ans, and thus recognizing the violence by which 
 Tigranes had taken away a portion of the Par- 
 thian Empire, or to make a union with Rome. 
 In his embarrassment he dealt doubly with 
 the question, holding out to each party the 
 promise and expectation of favor.
 
 422 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 It is said that Lucullus, the Roman Consul, 
 now engaged iu war with Tigranes, was so 
 much offended at the uncertain course taken 
 by the Parthian king, that he contemplated 
 the abandonment of the Armenian war until 
 what time he should make an expedition be- 
 yond the Tigris and teach Sanatrceces the folly 
 of temporizing with Rome. This, however, 
 was not done. Tigranes at length fell back 
 before the Roman legions, and Parthia was 
 delivered from her peril. The reign of Sana- 
 trceces ended with his life, about the year 67 
 B. C, when he was succeeded by his son, 
 Phraates III. 
 
 Pompey the Great had now come into 
 Asia, and with him the new king was obliged 
 to deal. The Roman was engaged in a war 
 with Pontus, but he solicited and gained the 
 friendship of Phraates, to whom in return he 
 
 t^^^CX'iy 
 
 s»i^i3«- 
 
 ROMAN LECIONAEIES. 
 
 pledged the restoration of the provinces which 
 had been conquered by th Armenians. By 
 this means the Parthian king was induced to 
 make an alliance with Rome. At the same 
 time he became deeply involved ith Armenia. 
 In that country civil dissension had come as a 
 paralysis to Tigranes. His son, bearing his 
 own name, had entered into a conspiracy and 
 become leader of a rebellion against the throne. 
 The insurrection soon cam to naught, and the 
 young Tigranes fled to the court of Parthia for 
 refuge and protection. Phraates espoused his 
 cause, and being under promise to Pompey to 
 prevent Armenia from joining Pontus in the 
 field, the Parthian king now fulfilled his 
 promise by taking up the quarrel of the refugee 
 prince and marching into Armenia to support 
 him against his father. 
 
 For the time this movement was successful. 
 
 The elder Tigranes fled to the mountains foe 
 safety, and the younger was proclaimed king. 
 But on the withdrawal of Phraates into his 
 own dominions, the tide turned, and the re- 
 bellious prince was defeated in battle and 
 obliged to save himself by flight. By this time, 
 however, the Romans had ended the war with 
 Pontus, and turned with crushing force against 
 Armenia. Tigranes was obliged to yield tc 
 the Proconsul and to accept his arbitration in 
 the affairs of the East. It thus happened that 
 by battle and diplomacy Pompey managed 
 with Roman energy and skill to gain a place 
 from which he was able to balance up Ar 
 menia and Parthia, the one against the other, 
 in such manner as to make the hostility jf 
 either of little account as it respected his own 
 purposes in the country. It has been con- 
 jectured that the Roman contemplated an im- 
 mediate war on Parthia as the stronger and 
 more dangerous of the two Powers with which 
 he must ultimately contend. But he was de- 
 terred from such an undertaking, and chose to 
 mploy craft and talent rather than the sword 
 in holding his position as arbiter of Western 
 Asia. 
 
 Meanwhile in Parthia a deplorable civil con- 
 dition f llowed in the wake of Imperial great- 
 ness. The time had arrived when the poly- 
 gami system and the personal passions of the 
 royal princes brought in the age of conspiracy 
 and murder in the king's house. A condition 
 supervened not unlike that which has dis- 
 graced the history of modern times in the 
 courts of Persia and Turkey. Phraates III. 
 was not permitted to end his reign in the order 
 of nature. His two sons, Mithridates and 
 Orodes, formed a plot which reached as high 
 as their father's life. He was assassinated by 
 them. Th elder of the two took the throne 
 in B. C. 60, and, like other murderers, found 
 it desirable to obliterate the memory oi his 
 crime with the glory of foreign war. 
 
 The complaint whlh he had made against 
 his father was the alliance of the latter with 
 the Romans, and the tameness with which the 
 late king had permitted himself to be robbed 
 by the Armenians under the arbitration of the 
 Roman Proconsul. Mithridates III. therefore 
 proceeded to make war on the Armenians for
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 438 
 
 the recovery of Northern Mesopotamia. He 
 thus became a breaker of the peace. He was 
 enabled, however, to gain his object, and the 
 ancient boundary of the Parthian Empire on 
 the north-west was restored. The Armenians 
 were no longer able to meet the Parthiaus in 
 battle. As for the king, arrogance came with 
 conquest. His home administration at once 
 revealed the essentially criminal character of 
 Mitliridates. He became jealous of his 
 brother — brother by blood and brother in 
 crime — and drove him from the country. 
 Other measures of like character followed, and 
 it was not long until the Megistaues, whipped 
 into courage by the king's folly and wicked- 
 ness, rose to the height of action and hurled 
 Mithridates from the throne. 
 
 Orodes was now recalled from banishment 
 and raised to power. As for the deposed 
 monarch, he and his party were placated by 
 conferring on him the governorship of jMedia ; 
 but his conduct made it impossible for Omdes 
 to tolerate him longer, and he was expelled. 
 He hereupon went over to the Romans, where 
 he besought the Proconsul Gabinius, successor 
 of Pompey, to aid him in recovering the Par- 
 thian throne. The Roman was about to ac- 
 cept his overture, and would doubtless have 
 begun w^ar on Parthia had not a dynastic 
 complication arisen in Egypt which promised 
 a fairer field and a richer reward for Roman 
 interference. Mithridates was thus left to di- 
 gest ids choler in exile. Presently, iiowever, 
 he sought reconciliation with his brother, re- 
 turned to Parthia, threw himself upon the 
 mercy of the king, and was affectionately be- 
 headed for his pains. 
 
 This event ended for the time the civil dis- 
 sensions of the Empire, and enabled Orodes I. 
 to exercise undisputed sway over the nation. 
 The attention of the Romans had now been 
 drawn away from the Mesopotaraian border, 
 and the Parthian king found opportunity to 
 foster his ambitions and develop his jilaiis. 
 His abilities were of a large order. He nspired 
 to become a great conqueror, like the early 
 Arsacid kings. His fame grew, and ho was 
 presently able to gain sundrj' advantages in 
 the way of detaching the petty princes on his 
 western border from their allegiance to Rome. 
 
 But the time had arrived when in the order 
 
 of events, if not in the necessity of things, the 
 growing animosity of the Republic and Parthia 
 must be referred to the decision of battle. 
 
 Marcus Lucinius Crassus, member of the 
 first Triumvirate of Rome, had now been sent 
 out as Proconsul of Syria. He came to his 
 province with the intention of a Parthian war. 
 Arriving in the year B. C. 54, he deliberately 
 formed his plans for the invasion of the Em- 
 pire. He organized a great expedition, 
 crossed the Euphrates, and began to overrun 
 the country. Several of the Greek cities 
 yielded without a conflict. Zenodotium, how- 
 ever, resisted his progress, but at length con- 
 sented to receive a Roman garrison. This was 
 admitted, and Crassus continued his campaign. 
 But the people if the city rose on the gar- 
 rison, and put them to the sword. The Pro- 
 consul then tuined about, destroyed the city, 
 and sold the inhabitants into slavery. 
 
 Thus far the Parthiaus had kept at a dis- 
 tance. With the coming of winter there had 
 been tio serious conflict. On the whole, the 
 Parthiaus had cause to congratulate themselves 
 on the small progress and success of the 
 Roman army. It appears that Orodes came 
 to the conclusion that little was to be feared 
 from the invasion. He conceived a contempt 
 for Crassus, and sent to him an embassy with 
 such proposals as might well have aroused the 
 animosity of an Oriental, to say nothing of a 
 Roman Proconsul. Among other things 
 Orodes referred with mock sympathy to the 
 advanced age of Crassus, and promised in cer- 
 tain contingencies to deal with him as he would 
 with a dotard. The interview might well be 
 made the subject of a drama. Crassus en- 
 raged, but still restraining himself, replied that 
 on Ills arrival at Seleucia he would send an 
 answer to the Parthian king. Hereupon Va- 
 gises, ambassiidor of Orodes, tapped the palm 
 of one of his hands with the forefinger of the 
 other, and exclaimed: "0 Crassus, the hair 
 will grow here before ever you come to Seleu- 
 cia I" Such were the amenities of the winter 
 season, when neither party could verify in the 
 field the threats and hatreds of the council. 
 
 For the Roman commander the situation 
 had become embarrassing. He had projected
 
 424 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 his campaign centrally across Northern Meso- 
 potamia. In different parts of the country he 
 had been obliged to establish garrisons of oc- 
 cupation. Each remove reduced the number 
 of his effective forces. Added to this was a 
 certain waut of knowledge of the enemy's 
 country, which confused the Proconsul in de- 
 termining his line of advance. It was finally 
 determined that the route of the expedition 
 should be through Upper Mesopotamia. This 
 country had already been entered by the army 
 in the preceding summer, but had been given 
 up for the winter. This course would bring 
 the expedition into supporting distance of Ar- 
 menia, and it was expected that the Romans 
 would receive from that country a large ac- 
 cession of force. 
 
 Meanwhile Orodes had organized his army 
 and thrown it forward to confront the enemy. 
 His forces were under the immediate com- 
 mand of the Surena or Generalissimo, who in 
 this instance — though his name has not been 
 preserved — appears to have been a military 
 captain of the greatest ability and courage. 
 For many years he had been one of the princi- 
 pal stays of the Empire. Through his agency, 
 indeed, Orodes had been confirmed on the 
 throne. He had already recovered several 
 important places, including the rebellious city 
 of Seleucia. The army now sent out to meet 
 the Romans under his command was composed 
 entirely of cavalry. It had perhaps been 
 foreseen that it was by this branch of the 
 service that victory might be expected rather 
 than from the Parthian infantry. The latter 
 was no match for the Roman legionaries, 
 whose valor had spread a wholesome fear 
 throughout the civilized world. 
 
 The winter quarters of the Roman army 
 bad been on the Upper Euphrates. Here lay 
 the province of Osrhoene, whose prince, Abga- 
 rus, though in alliance with the Romans, was 
 secretly in sympathy and communication with 
 the Parthians. He was intrusted by Crassus 
 with a command of light-horse, and was as- 
 signed to the duty of scouring the country in 
 advance of the army, and of determining the 
 >oute across Mesopotamia. It has been as- 
 serted by Plutarch and others that this treach- 
 erous guide purposely led Crassus and his 
 
 forces into a desert region, where water could 
 not be found, and where every advantage 
 would be on the side of the Parthians in 
 battle. Perhaps the inhospitable character of 
 the region was exaggerated. But at any rate 
 the advance now lay through an open country 
 little obstructed by rivers or hills, and well 
 fitted for the operations of the Parthian cavalry. 
 Of the character of the latter and its method 
 of giving battle, sufficient has already been said 
 in a former chapter. 
 
 At the same time of the advance of Crassus 
 the Parthian army was brought to the front, 
 and the two forces rapidly approached with 
 every element of determination and passion on 
 both sides. At length the conflict was pre- 
 cipitated on the River Belik, about midway 
 between Carrhre and Ichnte. It was the 6th 
 of May, in the year B. C. 54. The Parthian 
 army, under the command of the Surena, 
 was carefully stationed in half-concealment be- 
 hind some 'woods and low hills in the neigh- 
 borhood. The cavalrymen had been ordered 
 to cover their arms with their garments or to 
 keep them behind the horses, so that the 
 blaze of weaponry might not flash upon the 
 Romans in its appalling splendor until the 
 moment of battle. 
 
 Crassus came on from the west. His army 
 of about forty thousand men was composed 
 mostly of Roman legions or heavy infantry. 
 To this was attached a body of cavalry which 
 the Proconsul had brought with him out of 
 Gaul, where it had been organized by Julius 
 Ccesar. All of a sudden the Parthian drums 
 sounded the battle-note. Then the cavalry 
 flashed into line, and the charge began. The 
 Parthian lines came on at full gallop, but 
 stopped short of the legions by the space of a 
 bow-shot. Then began such a tempest of ar- 
 rows as the invincible legionaries had never 
 before been obliged to face. No armor could 
 resist the stroke of these fiery missiles. The 
 air was darkened by the discharge. The Ro- 
 mans could not come at their enemy. When 
 they advanced the Parthians receded to a dis- 
 tance, firing backwards with the same facility 
 as when they halted and faced the enemy. 
 
 Such battle had never before been known 
 in the Mesopotamian plains. The Romans
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AXD MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 426 
 
 strove with all their might to close with their 
 elusive foe, but the latter pursued the estab- 
 lished tactics, and could uot be reached. At 
 length the son of Crassus, bearing his father's 
 name aud commanding the Roman cavalry, 
 put himself at the head of a squadron of six 
 thousand men, and charged furiously upon the 
 Parthians. The latter fell back from the 
 onset as if in panic. The young Crassus 
 pressed on after the enemy further and further, 
 until be was out of sight, when all of a sudden 
 the Parthian cavalry recovered itself, threw 
 forward the wings, and completely surrounded 
 the Romans. The latter fought with despera- 
 tion. The Gallic horsemen dismounted, rushed 
 among the enemy's horses, seized the spears, 
 and stabbed the steeds to death. But no 
 valor could avail. The Roman advance under 
 
 were incompetent as besiegers. Nevertheless, 
 they hovered around Carrhse, and cut off the 
 city from supplies. 
 
 It appears, however, that the Parthian com- 
 mander preferred to take no risks as to the 
 future. Nothing short of the complete dis- 
 comfiture of Crassus and his remaining forces 
 would satisfy. To this end the Surena now 
 stooped to treachery. He plotted to inveigle 
 the Proconsul into his power. It may not be 
 certainly known whether he contemplated the 
 destruction of his enemy's life by perfidy, but 
 it is in the nature of bad faith to bring a more 
 criminal catastrophe than was imagined at the 
 outset. The Surena, whatever may have been 
 his intentions, opened negotiations with the 
 pent-up Romans. He rode with unstrung bow 
 aud outstretched hand into the open space b©« 
 
 ROMAN SOLDIERS GOING INTO B.\TTLE. 
 
 the young Crassus was beaten down almost to 
 a man. The commander himself was slain, 
 and his head stuck on a pike. 
 
 Again the drums sounded, and the charge 
 on the main body under the Proconsul was 
 renewed. The head of Crassus' son was borne 
 aloft in full view of the Romans, who now, 
 shattered by the battle, began to recede from 
 the field. The wounded were abandoned, and 
 on the following morning were slain by the 
 Parthians. Crassus the elder, with the rem- 
 nant, succeeded in making liis way to Carrhse, 
 where he stationed himself behind the ram- 
 parts and found a momentary .security. It 
 was hoped that he could hold his position 
 until what time his ally Artavasdes, king of 
 Armenia, could come to his relief. Perhaps 
 this might have been done, as the Parthians 
 
 fore the city, and called out for Crassus t» 
 come forth and confer with him on the condi- 
 tions of peace. The wily Parthian had pre- 
 pared for the occasion by letting slip certain 
 of the Roman prisoners, into whose ears false 
 information had first been dropped to the effect 
 tiiat the Parthians were anxious for peace and 
 friendship with the Romans, and that Crassus 
 might easily come to an agreement with the 
 Parthian king. These insinuations had been 
 carried by the returning prisoners into Carrhse, 
 and the Roman mind was abused to the ex- 
 tent of accepting them as true. 
 
 Crassus, however, already beyond his six- 
 tieth year, and well informed as to the dis- 
 position and character of the Asiatics, was 
 slow to take the bait. But the legionaries 
 were now thoroughly demoralized, aud the
 
 426 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 General was urged to avail himself of the op- 
 portunity. He accordiugly went forth into the 
 plain, where a conference was held between 
 hira and the Surena. Terras of peace were 
 discussed and agreed upon ; but the Parthian 
 insisted that the stipulations should be reduced 
 to writing, and to this end the Romans present 
 were induced to mount Parthian horses and to 
 ride off towards the Surena's tent. Scarcely, 
 however, had they started, when Crassus and 
 his friends, .suspecting treachery, reined up 
 the horses, and refused to proceed. The diffi- 
 culty grew hot, and one of the Parthians was 
 cut down with the sword. Weapons were 
 drawn, and all of the Romans, including 
 Crassus, were slain on the spot. Thus, far off 
 on the Mesopotamian plain, was the rich Tri- 
 umvir, who, with Pompe}' the Great and Julius 
 Csesar, had recently divided the world as a fam- 
 ily inheritance, done to death on the treach- 
 erous sword of a Parthian warrior. 
 
 When the Roman soldiers in Carrhse learned 
 the fate of their General, they were in despair. 
 Most of them surrendered to the Parthians. 
 Some escaped. Altogether ten thousand were 
 taken prisoners. These were transferred into 
 the heart of the Parthian Empire, colonized 
 and absorbed by intermarriage. Of the whole 
 Roman army, numbering forty thou.sand, only 
 about one-fourth succeeded in reaching places 
 of safety. The disaster was overwhelming — 
 wanting nothing to complete its magnitude or 
 horror. 
 
 The immediate result of this, the first war 
 of the Romans with the Asiatic Empire, was 
 to restore to the latter all the provinces which 
 she had possessed on the side of Mesopotamia. 
 The Euphrates again became the western 
 boundary. As for Armenia, that State also 
 passed to the Parthian dominion. It will be 
 remembered that Crassus, to the hour of his 
 death, expected the Armenian king, Arta- 
 vasdes, to come to his assistance ; but that 
 monarch had decided to accept a posirion 
 subordinate to the King of Kings. At the 
 very time that the Surena was bringing down 
 the Roman eagles on the Upper Euphrates, 
 Orodes himself was making an expedition into 
 Armenia. This it was that determined the 
 friendship of the king of that country. It 
 
 was expedient for him to become friendly. In 
 order to cement the ties thus formed, the Par- 
 thian king took for his son Pacorus the 
 daughter of the Armenian monarch in marriage. 
 Nor may we pass from the event without noting 
 the manners of the age. Wliile the festival 
 was on at the Armenian capital — while Orodes 
 and Artavasdes were witnessing the perform- 
 ance of one of the tragedies of Euripides — 
 the news came of the overthrow and death of 
 Crassus and the destruction of his array. As 
 usual, in such cases, the head of the Roman 
 Proconsul was brought along to confirm the 
 intelligence. It happened that in the play 
 the Greek actor had to reisresent a similar 
 slaughter by the display of a mock-head on 
 his thyrsus. By one of the happy inspirations 
 of barbarism, he substituted the real head of 
 Crassus ! Doubtless the sensation in the royal 
 boxes was sufficient. 
 
 In another direction, the drama was con- 
 tinued in the desert. The Surena, at enmity 
 with Seleucia for lier half-treachery to the 
 Parthian cause, marched thither, to bring the 
 citizens to a renewal of loyalty. He chose to 
 spread the report in this directinn that Crassus 
 was not killed, but was a prisoner in the hands 
 of the conqueror. To give verisimilitude to 
 his fiction, he selected a Roman, like Crassus 
 in personal appearance, clad him in the pro- 
 consular insignia, mounted him on a horse, 
 compelled hira to play his part, and .sent after 
 him into Seleucia a troop of mockers and 
 abandoned women. Going into Seleucia him- 
 self, the Surena divulged to the Senate the 
 horrid immoralities which he had discovered in 
 the literature of the Roman camp — a revelation 
 sufficiently disgusting to the people who were 
 unable to recognize in themselves a society 
 fully as abominable and more perfidious in its 
 manners than that of the Romans. 
 
 By this time, however, the Surena had 
 reached the limit of his career. His success 
 in the field had been so great as to make him, 
 according to the judgment of Orodes, a person 
 dangerous to the Empire. The great captain 
 was accordingly seized and put to death. The ' 
 command of the army was transferred to 
 Osaces, who was presently sent to the Syrian 
 frontier, to assist the prince Pacorus in a
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 42'; 
 
 desultory campaign, upon which he had en- 
 tered iu that quarter. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Syria and Asia Minor 
 were at this time in a condition to invite con- 
 quest ; not indeed that the Romans were un- 
 able to defend their possessions iu the East, 
 but the political distractions of Italy were such 
 as to prevent unity of action. The destruc- 
 tion of the tripartite agreement — known as the 
 Triumvirate — by the death of Crassus, had 
 left the world to two masters, Caesar and Pom- 
 pey, the one a representative of the new de- 
 mocracy of Rome, and the other the repre- 
 Bentative of that ancient aristocratic order by 
 which the Republic had been dominated for 
 many centuries. At this time the orator 
 Cicero was Proconsul of Cilicia, and knowing 
 full well the condition of affairs in Asia, he 
 hardly overstated the fact to the Senate when 
 he declared that Rome had not a friend on 
 that continent. The expedition of Pacorus 
 made its waj' in the direction of Antioch, and 
 gained possession of several important places. 
 But after this the Parthians divided, in dif- 
 ferent directions, one division being carried 
 against Palestine, and the other led among the 
 kingdoms of Asia Minor. If the invaders had 
 had the skill to take cities as well as to win 
 battles in the field, it would appear that they 
 might have destroyed the Roman dominion in 
 all the countries east of the Jl)gean. 
 
 But the Parthians did not avail themselves 
 of the situation. At length, in B. C. 49, 
 Pompey, being then hard pressed by Csesar, 
 made overtures to Orodes, with a view to se- 
 curing his aid against his rival. The Parthian 
 king offered to go to the rescue on condition 
 that Pompey would deliver what remained of 
 the kingdom of Syria to him. But the pro- 
 posal was rejected. Soon afterwards came the 
 battle of Pharsalia, in which the fortunes of 
 Pompey and the aristocratic party were utterly 
 swept away. At one time he seriously con- 
 templated putting himself under the powerful 
 protection of Orodes. But he was induced 
 to change his mind, and presently took flight 
 for Egypt. 
 
 Cresar, now completely victorious, was fully 
 informed of the condition of affairs in the 
 East. He had known the disposition of Oro- 
 
 des to give aid to Pompey. In his own mind 
 the vision of a Parthian conquest had for some 
 years been settling into a purpose. But he 
 was not yet ready to undertake so vast an en- 
 terprise. After Pharsalia, he returned to 
 Rome, and took up the tremendous work of 
 reorganizing society on a new Imperial plan, 
 with himself at the head. It was not until 
 B. C. 44 that he found himself sufficiently free 
 from the tremendous complications of the West 
 to turn his attention to the conquest of Parthia. 
 Like the other designs of that greatest man 
 of antiquity, the Parthian war took shape, 
 and the first cohorts of the Roman army 
 were thrown into Greece, preparatory to 
 the great Asiatic campaign. Nor may we 
 well pass over this historical hypothesis 
 without conjec- 
 turing the result 
 had Csesar been 
 permitted to pur- 
 sue his purpose. 
 Certain it is that 
 the Pfarthians 
 would have felt 
 the stroke of the 
 strongest hand 
 which was ever 
 laid upon the 
 Empire. Cras- 
 sus and Pompey 
 and Trajan and 
 Severus c o m - 
 bined could hardly have represented the skill, 
 the energy, the persistency, the adroitness 
 in diplomacy and war of that matchless Ju- 
 lius, whose end was now at hand. His des- 
 tiny had at last overtaken him. The Opti- 
 mate Conspirators gathered around him in 
 the Senate House, and stabbed him to death, 
 on the Ides of March, in the very spring 
 when the Parthian expedition was to be 
 undertaken. 
 
 Thus had Orodes the good fortune to wit- 
 ness the destruction of all three of the pre- 
 eminent Romans who had constituted the first 
 Triumvirate. The Surena had chopped ofT 
 the head of Crassus in the desert. A bloody 
 assassin had cut down Pompey on the shore of 
 Egypt. The daggers of Brutus and Cassius 
 
 JCLIUS CESAR.
 
 428 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 had dispatched Caesar in the Senate House. 
 Parthia for tine time was freed from all appre- 
 hension on the side of Rome. 
 
 The reader of history will readily recall 
 the dreadful civil war which followed the 
 murder of Julius. He will remember the 
 struggle of the conspirators to undo the great 
 historical movement of the age. He will 
 once more follow the complication which was 
 presently cut with the sword of the victor at 
 Philippi. In this civil war the Parthians 
 bore a minor part. Bodies of Parthian horse- 
 men were on several occasions found in the 
 army of Brutus and Cassius. Marcus An- 
 tonius, who had received the East for his 
 portion of the world, entered into relations 
 with Orodes, and sought to join the king with 
 himself in his war with Brutus and Cassius. 
 
 A CHARGE OF PARTHIAN CAVALRY. 
 
 But the Parthian preferred the other course. 
 At length the battle of Philippi was fought, 
 and the ancient aristocracy of Rome was 
 hacked to pieces under the bloody swords of 
 the avengers of Csesar. Now it was that the 
 three masters of the world were able to divide 
 their inheritance. The Second Triumvirate 
 was formed. Octavianus established himself 
 in Italy. Lepidus became the cipher which 
 made the other two figures significant. An- 
 tonius found food for his passions in Egypt. 
 
 It appears that Parthia postponed her 
 struggle with Rome to an inauspicious occa- 
 sion. Pacorus now availed himself of the 
 help of the treacherous Labienus, recently 
 envoy of Brutus and Cassius at the Parthian 
 court, and organized an army for the conquest 
 of the country as far as Antioch. They 
 
 rushed to the field, and Saxa, the Roman 
 governor of Syria, was defeated in battle. 
 Labienus and Pacorus, having taken Antioch, 
 led their forces, the one in the direction of 
 Palestine, and the other into Asia Minor. 
 Both were for awhile successfuL Hyrcauus, 
 the king of Jerusalem, was expelled, and his 
 rival Antigonus set in his place under the 
 authority of the Parthian Prince. Lab.enus 
 carried his victorious arms through Pamphylia, 
 Lycia, and Caria. Thus, by the close of the 
 year 40 B. C, nearly the whole of Asia Minor 
 was overrun. 
 
 It was in the nature of Antonius to make 
 love and war by turns. H^ was equally fierce 
 in the chamber and the field. Learning of the 
 condition of aflTairs in the East, he was roused 
 to wrath, and resolved to teach the Asiatics a 
 lesson not to be forgotten. 
 In 39 B. C. he sent for- 
 ward his lieutenant Ven* 
 tidius with orders to crush 
 Labienus and the Parthi- 
 ans. On his arrival in 
 Asia, Labienus was taken 
 by surprise, and was 
 obliged to recede before 
 his enemy. Pacorus was 
 called to the rescue, but 
 both together failed to 
 stay the progress of th? 
 Romans. Labienus was 
 defeated, pursued, taken, and put to death. 
 The Parthians receded into Northern Syria, 
 and attempted to hold the pass of Mount 
 Araanus, but Ventidius succeeded in securing 
 the place, and in driving the Parthiaus into 
 Mesopotamia. 
 
 Pacorus, however, was not willing to relin- 
 quish the countries which he had so easily 
 conquered. In the following year he renewed 
 the war by crossing the Euphrates, and en- 
 gaging in battle with the Romans. It was in 
 the nature of that soldiery to learn from the 
 enemy. The method of Parthian warfare had 
 now become well understood. Ventidius had 
 prepared for the emergency. It was no longer 
 the story of Crassus on the Belik. When the 
 Parthians came on to battle, they found the 
 Romans well posted to receive them. On
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 429 
 
 rushing to the charge, and before reaching 
 their favorite distance of a bow-shot, they were 
 assailed by the sliugers of Labieuus, and a 
 shower of singing stones rained upon them, 
 knocking them dead from their horses. The 
 battle raged furiously, but at lengtli the Par- 
 thians gave way. Pacorus himself was slain. 
 The Romans succeeded in securing the bridge 
 across the Euphrates, and the retreat was cut 
 off. The Parthian army was scattered in all 
 directions. The authority of Orodes in the 
 iV^est and South-west was completely and finally 
 obliterated. All the Western provinces were 
 recovered by the Romans. The Euphrates 
 once again became the boundary between the 
 two Empires; but from either side the hostile 
 powers glared at each other, neither satisfied 
 ■with the issue. 
 
 We may now turn for 
 a moment to note the con- 
 dition of aflJairs at the cap- 
 ital of the Empire. Orodes 
 had grown old. His rec- 
 onciliation with Pacorus, 
 who at one time had been 
 in rebellion against him, 
 was complete. Perhaps the 
 aged monarch felt a Par- 
 thian pride in the military 
 successes of his son in the 
 West. The death of the 
 latter, therefore, fell heavily 
 upon the king. He became 
 half-insane on account of the loss of his son. 
 True, he had thirty other sons, children of 
 various wives and concubines, but none of 
 them might well take the place of the warrior 
 prince who had perished in battle. The 
 king, however, felt it expedient to determine 
 the succession before his death. He accord- 
 ingly designated Phraates as bis successor, 
 and the choice was ratified by the Megis- 
 tanes. Orodes then abdicated the throne 
 in favor of his son. Tlie latter, jealous for 
 good reason of some of his half brothers who 
 were born of a princess, conspired with his 
 mother, who was a common concubine, and 
 had the princes whom he feared put to death. 
 The aged father hereupon rebuked his son, 
 and was himself murdered for his interference. 
 
 Thus, in B. C. 37, came Phraates IV. to 
 the throne of Parthia. Like other royal 
 murderers, he was obliged to go forward in 
 the bloody path which he had chosen. One 
 after another, his half brothers and other rela- 
 tives were assassinated. In the next place his 
 jealousy fell upon the nobles, of whom many 
 were slain, and others fled. A body of them, 
 headed by a certain Monteses, made their way 
 to Antonius, and represented to him the con- 
 dition of affairs in Parthia. JNIonseses besought 
 the Roman to enter the country and support a 
 counter-revolution in his favor, promising to 
 accept the crown at the hands of Antonius, 
 and to hold it as a subject of the Roman Re- 
 public. 
 
 The bait was tempting. Antonius had 
 
 KOMAN ARMY CROSSING THE TIGRIS. 
 
 sufficient cause for making war on the Par- 
 thians. Time and again they had entered and 
 ravaged the Roman provinces in Syria and 
 Asia ]\Iin()r. Ambition also led him on. He 
 accordingly gathered his forces on the Euphra- 
 tine frontier, and made pre])arations for an 
 invasion. Phraates, informed of these move- 
 ments, took the alarm, and sent for Monseses 
 to be restored to honor. Antonius permitted 
 him to depart, but sent with him an embassy, 
 demanding of the Parthian king the restora- 
 tion of the Roman standards taken from 
 Crassus. and the liberation of all prisoners 
 who still survived. These demands were not 
 complied with, and Antonius continued his 
 preparations for war. His aggregate forcej 
 amounted to a hundred and thirteen thousand
 
 430 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 men. The army was made up of the legions, 
 sixty thousand strong, of thirty thousand 
 Asiatics who had joined his standard, of ten 
 thousand Gallic horsemen, and a considerable 
 force out of Armenia. Artavasdes, king of 
 the latter country, long balancing his interests 
 between Parthia and Rome, had at last as- 
 sented to a league with Antonius. and prom- 
 ised his support in the ensuing war. 
 
 This alliance enabled the Roman to enter 
 the Parthian Empire by way of Armenia, and 
 in that direction the expedition was under- 
 taken. Antonius, after traversing the friendly 
 districts, entered the hostile territory in Media 
 Atropatene; and here the war began. The 
 Romans advanced to the capital and besieged 
 the city. Several unsuccessful assaults were 
 made; but the place could not be taken. 
 Winter came on, with the siege undetermined. 
 Meanwhile the Parthian army got upon the 
 flank and rear, and captured or destroyed the 
 sieee-train of the Romans. The soldiers be- 
 came discouraged, and winter bellowed around 
 with hurricanes of sleet and snow. Antonius 
 was obliged to fall back. He made an effort 
 to nesrotiate, but the enemy laughed at his 
 calamity. Nevertheless, Antonius was not 
 Crassus. The Proconsul had no notion of 
 losincf his arniv or his life. Instead of re- 
 treating by the expected route, he sought a 
 directer course through a mountain pass back 
 to the River Araxes, and by this way he 
 managed to reach a place of safety. His 
 losses, however, had been very great. About 
 forty thousand of his men had perished by 
 battle or the severity of the season. Parthia 
 mififht well concfratulate herself that the re- 
 treat of the Roman army through the winter 
 snows, for a distance of three hundred miles, 
 was the betrinninfr of the end. Such, indeed, 
 it might have been but for the treacherous 
 condition of all political dependence in the 
 countries concerned. 
 
 For no sooner was Antony repelled than 
 the Median governor of Atropatene quarreled 
 with the king about the division of the Roman 
 spoils. Suspicion followed suspicion, and the 
 Mede concluded that for him the way of safety 
 was in an appeal to Antonius. He accord- 
 ingly sent an embassy to Alexandria, whither 
 
 the Roman had retired to spend the winter 
 with Cleopatra, and tendered to him an alli- 
 ance offensive and defensive asfainst Parthia. 
 Antonius readily accepted the overture. He 
 had become angered at his ally, the king of 
 Armenia, who had abandoned him in the day 
 of his peril, and was anxious to find a new 
 confederate on the border of the Parthian 
 Empire. 
 
 Early in B. C. 34 the Roman general re- 
 turned to the army in Armenia, and presently 
 succeeded in gaining possession of Artavasdes 
 the king. His son and successor was defeated 
 in battle and obliged to fly to the Parthians. 
 As for the king of the Medes, Antony ce- 
 mented the union between that personage and 
 himself by marrying the daughter of the 
 prince to his son Alexander, offspring of his 
 amours with Cleopatra of Egypt. 
 
 During this year nothing was done in the 
 field. The attention of Antony had been 
 drawn to Europe by the threatening attitude 
 of Octavianus. The long accumulating diffi- 
 culties between the two Roman leaders was 
 rapidly coming to the arbitrament of the 
 sword. Antonius was obliged to return from 
 Armenia into Asia Minor to counteract the 
 movements of his rival. Hereupon Phraates, 
 in B. C. 33, renewed the war, and succeeded 
 in making the king of Media his prisoner. 
 The Armenian monarch Artaxias, recovered 
 his throne. The Roman garrisons were ex- 
 pelled from the countries" which they had oc- 
 cupied within the limits of the Empire. 
 
 By this time, however, the civil dissensions 
 in Parthia were renewed, and an insurrection 
 against the king. headed by a certain Tiridates, 
 was for the moment successful. Phraate.' 
 fled to the Scythians, solicited their aid, re- 
 turned with an army, and quickly restored 
 himself to power. The usurper escaped to Oc- 
 tavianus, who was at that time in the East, and 
 took with him to that distinguished Roman 
 the son of the Parthian king. When Phraates 
 demanded the restoration of his son and the 
 giving up of the rebel Tiridates who had con- 
 spired againrt him,Octa vianus refused the latter 
 request, but agreed to the former on condition 
 that the Parthian would surrender the stand- 
 ards taken from Crassus and liberate the sur-
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 4S1 
 
 viving Roman prisoners. This demand had 
 DOW become habitual with the Romans in all 
 their dealings with Parthia. In the present 
 case Phraates received his son with gladness, 
 but refused to give up the standards or to set 
 the Roman prisoners at liberty. 
 
 The reader of history knows full well the 
 story of the final coiiflict between Octavianus 
 and Antonius. Hereafter, in the history of 
 Rome, we .«hall record at length the vicissi- 
 tudes of the long struggle which culminated 
 at Actium. Hereby the peaceable accession 
 of Octavianus to the Imperial throne was made 
 easy and inevitable. Antouius, following the 
 seductions of Cleopatra, fled once more to 
 Egypt, and there, after additional defeat and 
 humiliation, stabbed himself and died in the 
 presence of the woman for whom he had lost 
 the world. 
 
 By these events Parthia was again liber- 
 ated for a season from the fear of Roman in- 
 vasion. But Augustus — for by this title Oc- 
 tavianus is henceforth known — was little 
 disposed, peaceable as were his general inten- 
 tions, to permit the affairs of the East to re- 
 main in their present indeterminate state. 
 After spending the first ten years of his reign 
 in regulating and establishing the Imperial 
 Government, after the pattern given by Julius, 
 the Emperor found himself ready to settle 
 finally the issue between himself and the Par- 
 thian king. Accordingly, in B. C. 20, he went 
 In person into Asia, and, partly by menace and 
 partly l)y dijilomacy, induced Phraates to sur- 
 render the Crassian standards. However hu- 
 miliating the act may have been to the King 
 of Kings, he nevertheless yielded to the inev- 
 itable and gave up the trophies which signified 
 80 much to the half-barbaric pride of himself 
 and his subjects. The Roman prisoners who 
 etill survived were permitted to return to 
 Europe, and an amicable relation was estab- 
 lished between the emperors of the Esist and 
 the West. 
 
 It can not be doubted that at this time it 
 was definitely agreed that henceforth the River 
 Euphrates should be obiJerved by both Powers 
 as the true inter-imperial boundary. Such 
 agreement was in harmony with the well- 
 known theory of Augustus that the Roman 
 N. — Vol. I — 27 
 
 Empire had now expanded to its natural limit, 
 beyond which neither sound policy nor mili- 
 tary ambition could safely carry it. To this 
 the Parthian king, troubled with dissensions in 
 his own dominion, was glad to assent, and 
 thus a condition of stability and peace was 
 reached in the closing years of the Aucient Era. 
 Henceforth for a long time amity existed 
 between Ctesiphon and Rome. Phraates se- 
 lected the City of the Tiber as a place for the 
 residence and education of his four sons. 
 These were Vonones, Seraspadanes, Rhodaspes, 
 and Phraates. 
 
 Once and again, however — and that with 
 respect to the troublesome kingdom of Ar- 
 menia — did hostilities break out between the 
 two Empires. The question at issue was the 
 old one as to the relative and preponderating 
 influence of Rome or Parthia with the Arme- 
 nian king. Augustus found it necessary to 
 send his son Cains Csesar to the East with an 
 army. The Roman prince came to the Eu- 
 phrates and was about to begin an invasion, 
 when the Parthian monarch, taking counsel of 
 his fears, yielded to the inevitable, and a new 
 treaty was made by himself and the young 
 Caesar on an island in the Euphrates. The 
 settlement was definitive. The supremacy of 
 Rome in Armenian affairs was acknowledged, 
 and henceforth Parthia abstained from aggres- 
 sion in this direction. Soon after the treaty 
 was concluded, Caius Csesar, going into Ar- 
 menia, and being obliged to besiege a town, 
 was slain by a missile from the walls. But 
 events went forward to their logical conclu- 
 sion. Armenia passed under the protectorate 
 of Rome, and all beyond was left to the undis- 
 puted sway of the Parthian kings. 
 
 Meanwhile the reign of Phraates IV., fif- 
 teenth of the Arsacid;ie, had ended with his 
 life, in the year B. C. 2. The crown de- 
 SQended to his son Phr.\ataces, offspring of an 
 Italian slave-girl, whom Augustus had sent as 
 a pre.sent to his friend, the late king of Parthia. 
 To him, rather than to any of the elder sons long 
 resident in Rome, the throne passed without 
 dispute. But it was not long until the Par- 
 thian nobles, hating the mother of their new 
 sovereign and despising the race to which she 
 belonged, rose against Phraataces, drove him
 
 432 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 from power, and took his life. Having suc- 
 ceeded thus by insurrection ia undoing the 
 existing order, the Megistaues proceeded to 
 elect to the throne a certain Orodes, of whom 
 little is known except that he was one of the 
 Arsacidse. We may conjecture that he was a 
 descendant of Orodes, fourteenth monarch of 
 the line. 
 
 At any rate, a])out the year A. D. 12, he 
 was called home from exile, and given the 
 crown. Almost immediately, however, he dis- 
 played such qualities of cruelty and vice as 
 sickened the nobles with their own work. A 
 company of them accordingly inveigled the 
 king into a hunting excursion, and availed 
 themselves of the opportunity to put i;im to 
 death. An embassy was at once despatched 
 to Kome, to call home Vonones, eldest son of 
 Phraates IV. The prince complied with the 
 requisition, returned from his long absence, 
 and accepted the crown. But it was soon 
 found that his residence in Eome had unfitted 
 him for the Parthian throne. He came back 
 essentially a Roman, and in a short time the 
 alienation between him and his makers was 
 complete. Vonones was permitted to reign 
 for about three years ; but in A. D. 16, or 
 possibly the following year, the nobles again 
 went into insurrection, deposed Vonones, and 
 elected a certain Aktabanus, who at this time 
 was viceroy of Media Atropatfine, to the 
 throne of the Empire. By a strange vicissi- 
 tude, Vonones escaped into Armenia, and was 
 made king of tluit country. 
 
 The action of the Armenians, in accepting 
 the refugee Arsacid for their king, could but 
 arouse the animosity of Artabauus, and he at 
 once undertook to prevent the recognition of 
 Vonones by Rome. In this he was successful 
 to the extent of obliging Vonones to fly to the 
 Roman governor of Syria for protection. 
 It became necessary for Tiberius, who had now 
 succeeded Augustus in the Imperial rank at 
 Rome, to send the brave and talented Ger- 
 manicus to the East, to regulate the Armenian 
 succession. The latter, on arriving at Ar- 
 taxata, the capital of Armenia, cut the com- 
 plication by raising a European nobleman, 
 named Zeno, to the throne, with the title of 
 Artaxias, On the whole, this action was 
 
 pleasing to the Parthian king, who in the next 
 place requested Germanicus to banish Vonones 
 into foreign parts. This request was complied 
 with ; but Vonones, attemjiting to defeat the 
 arrangement by flight, was pursued, overtaken, 
 and slaiu. 
 
 In A. D. 19 Germanicus died, and Lucius 
 Vitellius was appointed to succeed him in the 
 government of Western Asia. It was believed 
 by Artabanus that Tiberius was in his dotage, 
 and that Vitellius was not the equal of his 
 predecessor. The Parthian, therefore, imagined 
 that he might once more with safety attempt 
 the restoration of his influence and authority 
 in Armenia. Tiberius, when informed of the 
 purposes of the king, sought by an intrigue 
 to stir up a rebellion among the Partliiaa 
 nobles, and in order to encourage such a 
 movement, sent the young Phraates, a brother 
 of Vonones, to the Mesopotamian border 
 The prince reached Asia, but the change ia 
 his manner of life brought on a disease of 
 which he presently died. 
 
 Meanwhile, Artabanus had destroyed one 
 or two of the leading conspirators against him- 
 self Being relieved of present apprehension 
 by the death of Phraates, he sent the Roman 
 Emperor an audacious letter, in which that 
 personage was openly charged with all the 
 crimes, vices, and corruptions in the catalogue 
 of human sin. In retaliation for this insult 
 Tiberius ordered Vitellius to interfere again in 
 the aflairs of Parthia, and in particular to 
 maintain his ascendency in Armenia. In that 
 country a desultory war occurred in the years 
 A. D. 35 and 36. At one time it api>eared 
 that the armies of Parthia and Rome would 
 be brought to decisive battle, but Vitellius 
 succeeded in inciting an insurrection before 
 which Artabanus fled into Hyrcania. 
 
 In the meantime, Prince Tiridates, son per- 
 haps of Rhodaspes, at Rome, was sent into 
 Asia as the candidate of Tiberius fn- the vacant 
 throne. The prince entered Mesopotamia, and 
 was well received by the Greek cities. He 
 was even crowned in Seleucia, and entered 
 upon his duties as King of Kings. But the 
 movement was delusive and farcical. The 
 nobles, native and to the manner born, could 
 have no sympathy with a sovereign who had
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 43S 
 
 been reared in Rome. They accordingly went 
 into Hyrcania, fouud old Artabanus with his 
 bow and hunting shirt, and induced him to 
 head the counter-revolution against Tiridates. 
 The latter was obliged to fly. His following 
 melted away, and he was glad to find himself 
 once more in safety beyond the Euphrates 
 among the Romans. 
 
 In the fourth decade of the first century 
 the condition of affairs above described con- 
 tinued to prevail. Petty hostilities on the 
 Aide of Armenia recurred constantly, but no 
 general war. The empire became involved in 
 hostilities with the Jews of Babylon — one of 
 the many complications in which that people, 
 now dragging on to the close of their national 
 existence, were nivolved. But the details, 
 though sufficiently bloody and disgraceful, are 
 of little interest to the reader of general hi.s- 
 tory. Events passed in the usual order until 
 the year A. D. 40, when Artabanus was a 
 second time expelled from the throne, and 
 died after a two years' banishment and a reign 
 of twenty-six years' duration. 
 
 The reader will have noted the utter absence 
 among the Parthians of royal rank of those 
 family ties and affections whereby in modern 
 times the kindred of one blood are held in 
 unity and trust. On the contrary, the court 
 of this ancient people was constantly stained 
 with blood poured forth by parricidal or frat- 
 ricidal violence. On the death of Artabanus 
 III. his sons contended for the throne. At 
 first the eldest, Gotarzes, was given the crown. 
 But it would seem that his hereditary right 
 was soon forgotten on account of his atrocious 
 conduct. Scarcely had he risen to power until 
 he seized and put to death his brother, Arta- 
 banus, together with his wife and son. It was 
 evident that, after the Oriental maimer, he 
 purposed, according to his passion and jealousy, 
 to destroy all his kindred. It can not have 
 pa.^sfd attention that for the last half century 
 the Megistanes had increased their power and 
 exercised their rights more freely than at a 
 remoter age. In the present instance they 
 accepted the challenge and drove the king 
 from the throne. His brother Vardanes was 
 calhil hnino from a distant province and given 
 the diadem. Gotarzes was abandoned, and 
 
 obliged to fly to the country of the Dahae, 
 where, according to the precedent in such 
 cases, he put himself under the protection of 
 the Scyths. 
 
 Vardanes came to power without battle so 
 far as his brother was concerned, but was 
 obliged to take arms against the city of Seleu- 
 cia. That important metropolis had never 
 lost its Grecian character — had never been in 
 political or social sympathy with the Parthian 
 nation. We have heretofore remarked upon 
 the quasi independence of the city and its 
 government by a local Senate of three hun- 
 dred. Just about the time of the accession 
 of Vardanes there was a municipal revolt, and 
 the authority of the king was wholly dis- 
 carded. In the year A. D. 42 he brought an 
 army against Seleucia and laid siege to the 
 place, but it was nearly seven years after the 
 revolt before he succeeded iu its suppression. 
 
 In the meantime Go- 
 tarzes, fretting iu banish- 
 ment, induced the Scyths 
 to support him iu making 
 war on the king. He 
 accordingly organized an 
 army, advanced into 
 Hyrcania, and was 
 joined by malcontents 
 until the movement became formidable. The 
 two brothers approached each other for battle ; 
 but Gotarzes, learning that the National 
 Council was about to depose both of them, 
 sent word to Vardanes, and the two were 
 reconciled. The king remained iu authority, 
 and Gotarzes was made governor of Hyr* 
 cania. 
 
 It appears that the Parthians were for- 
 getful of the danger with which they were 
 ever menaced from the side of Rome. Not- 
 withstanding his treaty stipulation, the king 
 now attempted to reassert his power in Ar- 
 menia. That country had accepted its place 
 as a vassal of the Roman Empire. Vardanes, 
 believing himself able to revolutionize the 
 Armenian Government, sought the alliance of 
 the governor of Adiabene, but that personage 
 opposed his projects, and remained loyal to 
 Rome. Hereupon the Parthian monarch went 
 to war with him, but before a result wa» 
 
 COIN OP VARDANES I.
 
 434 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 reached, Gotarzes arose agfv'n in rebellion, 
 and with a Hyrcanian army, attempted to 
 gain the throne. The king marched against 
 him and defeated him in several liattles. 
 But the nobles presently afterwards enticed 
 Vardanes into the chase, and put him to 
 death. 
 
 This murder opened the way for Gotarzes, 
 who, ill A. D. 46, was recognized as king. 
 The character of that prince, however, soon 
 revealed itself, and the nobles sent an embassy 
 to Rome, requesting that the prince Meher- 
 dates, son of Vonones, be sent to them for 
 the royal honor. The Emperor Claudius, who 
 now occupied the throne, yielded to the re- 
 quest, and Meherdates was sent to Mesopota- 
 mia. He soon found himself at the head of 
 a rebellious army, and advanced as far as 
 Media Adiabene. At this point, however, his 
 forces began to desert him, and he was 
 obliged to recede before the king. Before es- 
 caping from the complication into which he 
 had rushed, he was betrayed into the hands 
 of Gotarzes, who treated him with contempt 
 rather than cruelty. 
 
 The king, however, did not long survive 
 his triumph. In A. D. 51 he died. The 
 crown was transferred to an Arsacid prince 
 named Vonones, who is believed to have 
 been a half brother of Artabanus III. No 
 events of any importance occurred duriug his 
 reign, or at least the record of none such has 
 reached posterity. It is believed that his oc- 
 cupancy of the throne did not exceed a year 
 in duration. Nor is the manner of his death 
 referred to by the ancient historians. All that 
 is known is that about A. D. 51 or 52 the 
 crown was transferred to the king's son Vola- 
 GASES I. In entering on his reign, the latter 
 appointed his brother Pacorus to a provincial 
 governorship, and then undertook the conquest 
 of Armenia, in order to procure a province 
 for his other brother named Tiridates. 
 
 It appears that at this juncture the Romans 
 were less jealous than usual concerning Par- 
 thian intervention in Armenian affairs. At 
 any rate, Volagases was permitted to organize 
 an expedition, and to advance into the coveted 
 territory. He gained therein a footing, and 
 raised Tiridates to the governorship. Having 
 
 done so much, the king sent an embassy to 
 Nero to acquaint him with his motives and 
 purposes. The Roman Emperor was angered 
 at the thing done, and Corbulo, a noted 
 general, and Umraidius, at that time Pro- 
 consul of Syria, were directed to recover the 
 lost possessions of the Empire. The com- 
 manders gathered an army on the Armenian 
 frontier, but presently opened negotiation? 
 with Volagases, and the difficulty was adjusted 
 without battle. Strangely enough, the Romans 
 conceded the Armenian kingdom to Tiridates; 
 and the Parthian monarch was permitted to 
 retire from the country without punishment. 
 
 These events occurred in the year A. D. 
 55. It was fortunate for Volagases that he 
 was able so easily to extricate himself from 
 the difficulty on his western border. All of 
 his energies and resources were now demanded 
 in an efl'ort to suppress a rebellion which in 
 his absence had been fomented by his son 
 Vardanes. Civil war now ensued for the 
 space of three years, and the insurrection was 
 suppressed. Finding himself no longer op- 
 posed, the king turned again to Armenia, and 
 demanded that the Romans should make still 
 further concessions in regard to the govern- 
 ment of that country. But the latter seized 
 the opportunity to recover the ground already 
 lost. Corbulo occupied the years A. D. 58-60 
 with a war against the Armenians, or rather 
 against the Parthian party, headed by Tiri- 
 dates, and expelled that prince finally from 
 the country. The Roman rule was restored 
 in full, and Volagases was obliged to content 
 himself with an Armenian administration es- 
 tablished by his rival. 
 
 By this time the Parthian nobles had come 
 to doubt the infallibility of their monarch. 
 They charged him with inefficiency in permit- 
 ting Armenia to slip from his grasp. The 
 king, resolving to regain public confidence, 
 sought to do so by organizing a third expedi- 
 tion for the purpose of restoring Tiridates to 
 the Armenian throne. But the expedition was 
 unsuccessful, and an armistice was declared 
 until what time the Parthian embassy des- 
 patched to Rome might return with the de- 
 cision of Nero. The latter sent out as his 
 representative and general in the East Lucius
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 496 
 
 COIN OF VARDANES 11. 
 
 was now intrusted. 
 
 Psetus. The latter came into S)'ria,* and joined 
 nis forces with those of Corbuh). 
 
 Both generals soon entered the Parthian 
 country, Pretus making the inva-sion of Ai'- 
 menia. Winter came on, and the lioii/an 
 commander established himself in a poorly 
 fortified camp. Volagases hurried forward 
 with a large army, and the position of Pictus 
 became perilous. He wa.s surrounded by the 
 Parthians, and obliged 
 to capitulate on condi- 
 tion 'jf retiring from the 
 co'intry. The wrecks of 
 his forces were joined 
 with those of the prudent 
 Corbulo, to whom the 
 maintenance of Roman 
 interests in the country 
 It was in vain that the 
 Parthian king sought to induce Corbulo to 
 come to an accommodation. The Roman, 
 with the opening of spring, advanced into 
 Armenia, and reoccupicd the territory held in 
 the previous year by Ptetus. 
 
 Volagases was now thoroughly alarmed, 
 and reopened negotiations. Tiridates was 
 obliged, on the site of the old camp of Partus, to 
 pull off his royal garments and lay them down 
 before a statue of Nero. It was agreed, how- 
 ever, that the deposed prince should go to 
 Rome and receive again his crown at the 
 hands of tlie Roman Emperor. This was ac- 
 cordingly done. While Tiridates was permitted 
 to reign in Armenia, it was with the consent 
 and virtually under the authority of Rome. 
 
 The reign of Volagases was now long and 
 peaceful. It is believed that he held the throne 
 from A. D. 51 to about A. D. 78, a period 
 of twenty-seven years. He reached a good 
 old age, and died, bequeathing the crown to 
 his son Pacorus. 
 
 . During the remainder of the first century 
 of our era, but few important events occurred 
 in the history of the Partliian Empire. After 
 the troubles of Volagases wilii the Romans, 
 no further complications with that people arose 
 for a considerable length of time. It seems, 
 however, that the Parthians, like other bar- 
 barian nations, were not more prosperous in 
 peace than in war. It may be conceded that 
 
 war is the natural condition of a nomadic 
 State, just as peace is the normal condition of 
 an industrial State. So long as the soil is not 
 extensively cultivated, so long as commerce 
 does not spring and flourish, so long as manu- 
 facturing industries are not created, a people 
 must procure for themselves the objects of 
 desire by the spoliation of their neighbors. 
 
 Of all the ancient peoples none fulfilled this 
 condition more perfectly than did the Par- 
 thians. As a result, the coming of peace was 
 the coming of inaction, sluggishness, and de- 
 cay. There were, moreover, during the reign 
 of Pacorus, which extended to about A. D. 
 108, many internal disturbances which tended 
 to the disintegration of the Empire. It ap- 
 pears that the old feudal principle not only 
 held its own against the consolidating forces, 
 but gradually prevailed over them. In times 
 of peace feudalism, as illustrated in the local 
 governments of the provinces, was rampant to 
 the extent of making the feudatories virtually 
 independent. Rawlinson has pointed out the 
 fact that the history of this period is confused 
 by the presence of coins bearing the images 
 and superscriptions of sovereigns unknown to 
 the Grecian and Roman authors. Thus we 
 find a Vardrnes II., and afterwards, between 
 the years 62 and 78 A. D. , an Artabauus IV. 
 and a Volagases II., as though such sover- 
 eigns had reigned between Volagases I. and 
 his son Pacorus. Further on there is a coin 
 of Mithridates IV., for 
 whom there is no place 
 in the line of the Arsa- 
 cidte. Doubtless the ex- 
 planation is to be found 
 in the <*ct that many of 
 the local governors car- 
 ried their independence 
 to the pitch of coining 
 money and putting their own effigies and in- 
 scriptions on the coins. It might thus happen 
 that three or four provincial mints were at 
 work in different parts of the Empire at the 
 same time. 
 
 On the death of Pacorus, which is assigned 
 to the year 108 A. D., the Megistancs again 
 asserted their authority by putting aside the 
 two sons of the late king and choosing lii.« 
 
 COIN OF MITHRIDATES IV.
 
 436 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 brother Chosroes instead. A reason for this 
 action may be found in the youth of the 
 princes and in the military experience of the 
 king-elect. It might be supposed that by 
 this time the Parthians had learned by ex- 
 perience the unwisdom of intermeddling with 
 the affairs of Armenia. It may be confessed, 
 however, that the last compact with the Ro-^ 
 mans was of a kind to encourage the belief 
 that Arsacid princes should henceforth wear 
 the Armenian crown. Tiridates had been ac- 
 cepted in that relation, and reigned to the 
 end of his life, at the close of the first cen- 
 tury. Pacorus, at that time king of Parthia, 
 had raised his son Exedares to the vacancy, 
 assuming either that Rome would offer no 
 objection, or else that he should be able by 
 arms to enforce his will and authority. 
 
 For the time it appeared that the former 
 supposition was realized, and that Exedares 
 would be permitted to reigu in peace. The 
 Roman Emperor Trajan was at this time hotly 
 engaged in his war with the Dacians on the 
 Danube. This work occupied his attention 
 until the year 114 A. D., when Dacia was 
 subdued. Trajan now found time to turn his 
 attention to the affairs of the East. A great 
 expedition was accordingly organized and sent 
 into Asia, to impress upon the Parthians the 
 truth of their forgotten lesson. As the army 
 advanced, Chosroes sought to stay the coming 
 storm by sending out an embassy, which met 
 the Romans at Athens. The Parthian pro- 
 posed that Exedares should abdicate the Ar- 
 menian throne, and that his brother, Partha- 
 masiris, should be chosen for the place under 
 the auspices and with the consent of Rome. 
 The proposition might well have satisfied the 
 Roman Emperor, but the latter had determined 
 to reestablish his authority in the East on a 
 new basis, disregarding all antecedents, and 
 aiming only at a permanent and undisturbed 
 supremacy. The Parthian ambassadors were 
 accordingly sent back to their master, and 
 the expedition was carried into Asia." 
 
 Nevertheless Parthamasiris weut to the Ro- 
 man camp, presented himself to the Emperor, 
 and laid down his crown before him. Trajan, 
 however, instead of replacing it on his head, 
 retained the prince, and presently informed 
 
 him that Armenia was destined henceforth to 
 be a Roman province. As for Parthamasiris, 
 he was permitted to leave the camp, but was 
 pursued by a baud of Roman horsemen, who, 
 doubtless with the privity and instigation of 
 the Emperor himself, recaptured him and put 
 him to death. Chosroes was either unable 
 or unwilling to hazard interference with the 
 purposes of the murderer of his nephew. Ar- 
 menia was yielded up, and a Roman governor 
 was appointed to exercise authority over the 
 country in place of the Arsacid prince. 
 
 AVith a high hand and outstretched arm 
 Trajan proceeded to overawe all the neigh- 
 boring nations and to instill the fear of his 
 name. At least two of the Western provinces 
 of Parthia were torn away and added to the 
 Roman dominion. Everything was settled ac- 
 cording to the Emperor's will, and he then re- 
 jiaired to Autioch, where he established his 
 head-quarters for the winter. Scarcely, how- 
 ever, had he planted himself in the city when 
 it was shaken into ruins by one of the most 
 disastrous earthquakes recorded in Ancient 
 History. The Emperor himself barely escaped 
 from the falling building in which he had 
 taken his residence. All the Syrian cities 
 suffered injury, greater or less, from the dis- 
 turbance. The Eastern Mediterranean and 
 the ^gean sea were tossed and heaved hy the 
 shock, and some of the Greek towns »v'ere 
 thrown down. 
 
 It aj)pears that Trajan, while in the Kast, 
 in the preceding year, namely, in A. D. 115, 
 had made up his mind to attack Parthia i.self. 
 His plaus in this particular were matur«»^ in 
 the following spring. A Roman fleet was sent 
 OH wagom across the desert to the Tigris, 
 where the vessels were reconstructed and 
 launched. It was determined to make Media 
 Adiabene the point of attack. Against this 
 country the expedition was now dire«;ted, 
 and Chosroes found himself unable to dc fend 
 his province. He was obliged, by the internal 
 condition of the Empire, to hold aloof from 
 the contest and see one of the most important 
 countries under his authority overrun by the 
 Romans. 
 
 The passion of Trajan was now thoroughly 
 aroused. From his conquest of Adiabine he
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 4S7 
 
 inarched against Ctesipliou, and took the city. 
 He traversed Mesopotamia, aud captured Bab- 
 ylon without iiglitiug a battle. Seleucia re- 
 volted, and, following her immemorial prefer- 
 ence, fell willingly into the hands of the 
 conqueror. The Parthian king retired from 
 his capital cities, and went far into the inte- 
 rior, drawing after him the Roman army- It 
 appears that not even the discerning mind of 
 Trajan was able to apprehend the danger to 
 which he exposed himself in his lengthening 
 march to the East. When he had advanced 
 to a great distance in that direction without 
 being able to bring the enemy to battle, he 
 was suddenly startled with t'^e intelligence 
 that the provinces and cities behind him were 
 rising against the Romans. City gates were 
 ehut on every hand. The soldiers began to 
 suffer. The Parthians rallied and returned in 
 the wake of the retreat. Not without serious 
 losses, vexatious, and humiliations did the 
 Roman army finally succeed in reaching a 
 place of safety. The Parthians recovered 
 everything e.xcept Adiabene, Upper Mesopo- 
 tamia, and Armenia. Trajan himself scarcely 
 survived his repulse. He died in 117 A. D., 
 and was succeeded in the Imperial authority 
 bj' Hailriau. 
 
 Each party in the conflict, thus ever re- 
 newed on the eastern frontier of the Roman 
 Empire, had now learned a lesson from the 
 other. Hadrian was not slow to perceive that 
 the vaulting ambition of Trajan had over- 
 reached itself and fallen on the other side. 
 He immediately changed the policy of the 
 Empire with respect to Parthia, choosing the 
 method of conciliation aud concession. Upper 
 Mesopotamia aud AdiabSne were restored to 
 Chosroiis. The daughter of that monarch, 
 whom Trajan had captured and sent to Rome, 
 was returned in honor to her father. In the 
 year A. D. 122 the two emperors met on the 
 ■disputed border and personally adjusted the 
 affairs between them. The Parthian king 
 lived to about 130 A. D., when the throne 
 passed toVoLAGASES 11. Bui therelationsof the 
 latter to the Arsacid line are uncert^iin. Most 
 authors have made the descent regular from 
 father to son, but in this instance the testi- 
 mony of the coins and the accepted narratives 
 
 of the Greek and Roman historians are in 
 conflict ; for which reason the place by de- 
 scent of the second Volagases in the diagram 
 of the ArsacidsB has been indicated by the line 
 of doubt. 
 
 The- new reign was one of peace. The 
 agreement between Hadrian and Chosroes was 
 on the whole well kept. It seems, moreover, 
 that at this time the feudatories were less 
 troublesome — less disposed to advance their 
 own claims to independence — than they had 
 been during the preceding half century. In 
 only one instance was the peace of the Empire 
 under Volagases II. seriously broken. At this 
 time a certain Pharasmanes, king of the Ibe- 
 rians, had become in his own esteem an im- 
 portant personage in Western Asia. Himself 
 a feudatory of Rome, he dared to treat Ha- 
 drian and his authority with contempt. To- 
 wards Volagases he held a similar insolent 
 attitude. At length he instigated the bar^ 
 barous nation of the Alaui to pass the Cauca- 
 sus and plunder Cappadocia and Atropatend. 
 The first of these States belonged to Rome; 
 the other, to Parthia. Volagases found cause 
 to complain to Hadrian of the conduct of hb 
 vassal. The Roman governor Arrian soon 
 drove the Alani out of Cappadocia, but 
 neglected to expel them from Atropatene. The 
 Parthian king for his part — being no warrior- 
 was constrained at length to purchase the re- 
 tirement of the barbarians with much gold. 
 
 Volagases reigned until A. D. 149. Ha- 
 drian had died eleven years previously. The 
 latter was succeeded in the Imperial dignity by 
 Titus Aurelius, first of the Antonines. Soon 
 after his accession , a passing gust of ill feeling 
 was created between the two Empires by the 
 attempt of the Parthian king to recover the 
 golden throne of his ancestors which Trajan 
 had captured in Ctesiphon and scut home to 
 Rome. It was claimed by the Parthians that 
 the amicable relations now existing between 
 the East and the West warranted and de- 
 manded the surreuiier of the trophy. But 
 neither Hadrian nor his successor was willing 
 to give it up. 
 
 As for the Parthian succession, that fell to 
 Volagases HI., son of the late king. He was 
 destined to the longest reign which had evec
 
 438 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 yet occurred in the annals of the Arsacid 
 kings. At the beginning of his reign his am- 
 bitions incited him to hostility with Rome. 
 He made preparation for a war, but a remon- 
 strance and rebuke from Antoninus Pius pre- 
 vented the outbreak. Nevertheless the Par- 
 thian cherished his purpose, and in A. D. 161 
 he began a war by invading Armenia. The 
 Parthians had never been satisiied with the 
 protectorate of Rome over that country. 
 They had always sought, when the opportunity 
 was present, to restore their influence by es- 
 tablishing on the Armenian throne a prince of 
 the Arsacidse, to the end that the two countries 
 should be and remain in political and military 
 sympathy. 
 
 An opportunity to reassert the ancient 
 claim was afforded by the death of the first 
 Antoninus and the accession of his son, the 
 justly celebrated Marcus Aurelius. The Par- 
 thian king was successful in his Armenian 
 campaigns, and a certain Tigranes,'his kins- 
 man, was made king. Hereupon Severianus, 
 prefect of Cappadocia, accepted the challenge, 
 and marched against the Parthians. Crossing 
 the Euphrates, he was met, near Elegeia, by 
 the army of the king, was driven into the 
 city, besieged, and in a short time destroyed 
 with all his forces. The Parthians now as- 
 sumed the offensive, anl made a great cam- 
 paign into Syria and Palestine. Such high- 
 handed proceedi"gs roused great animosity at 
 Rome, and an army under command of Lucius 
 Verus, brother of the Emperor, was sent at 
 once to the East. On his arrival in Asia, 
 terms of accommodation were offered to the 
 Parthians, but were rejected with scorn. The 
 lieutenants of Verus then threw forward the 
 army from Antioch, and in A. D. 163 Vola- 
 gases was routed in the battle of Europus. 
 
 Meanwhile, a revulsion took place in Ar- 
 menia. Statins Prisons and other generals of 
 the Roman army marched into that country, 
 and Tigranes was driven from the throne. It 
 could not be expected that after thus hurling 
 back the Parthians into their own country the 
 Romans would forbear to follow up their suc- 
 cesses with invasion. Cassius received from 
 the Emperor the appointment of Captain- 
 general, with instructions, or at least permis- 
 
 sion, to carry the war into Parthia. The 
 advance was begun under favorable auspices, 
 and a battle was fought at Sura, in Mesopo- 
 tamia, in which the Romans were victorious. 
 Cassius then advanced on the great city of 
 Seleucia, which he besieged, took, and de- 
 stroyed. Ctesiphon met the same fate. The 
 king, his government and his army were 
 obliged to fall back into the interior. Media 
 was overrun by the conquerors, and for the 
 time it seemed that a greater than Antonius 
 or Trajan had come. 
 
 At the crisis of the war, however, when it 
 seemed that the Parthian Empire was about 
 to be overthrown, a strange and terrible pesti- 
 lence broke out in the Roman army, and the 
 soldiers began to die by hundreds and thou- 
 sands. Superstition contrived for the malady 
 a supernatural origin. It was said that a cell 
 in one of the temples at Seleucia had been 
 broken open by the soldiers, and that a spirit 
 of death had issued forth to punish the sacri- 
 lege. Terror and disease combined to ruin 
 the expedition. The array receded from Asia 
 into Europe, spreading the pestilence in its 
 wake. Only a few of the soldiers survived, 
 and Italy was so greatly infected as to lose a 
 large percentage of her population. 
 
 Thus in disaster ended the most successful 
 campaign — so far as its military progress was 
 concerned — which the Romans had ever made 
 iuto Parthia. It would appear that the Par- 
 thians were not foolish enough to underrate 
 the injury which they had suffered. They 
 were intelligent enough to perceive that the 
 pestilence rather than their own valor had 
 saved the Empire from conquest and per- 
 haps disruption. Volagases, therefore, was 
 satisfied to have peace by the cession to Rome 
 of the province of Osrhoene, which remained 
 henceforth a part of the Roman dominion. 
 Parthia was obliged to accept the humiliation. 
 Her two great cities had been leveled to the 
 ground. Her army was no longer able to 
 contend with the legions of Rome, even when 
 the latter were commanded by lieutenants. 
 Civil contention had tended powerfully to 
 weaken the monarchy. The method of mutual 
 assassination among the Arsacid princes had 
 prevailed so long as to become a precedent of
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 439 
 
 political action. More than all, the vice of 
 race had prevented the emergence of the people 
 into the higher forms of civilization. Neither 
 literature nor art had appeared with its regen- 
 erating influence to renew, vivify, and en- 
 lighten the nation. It would seem that the 
 spirit of Volagases himself 
 was humbled or broken. 
 After the destruction of 
 his capital, he reigned for 
 fully a quarter of a century, 
 but gave little sign of 
 those ambitions which had 
 fired the energies of his 
 youth. Only in a single 
 instance did there appear 
 a likelihood of the renewal 
 of war with the Roman Em- 
 pire. Cassius, great in the 
 recollection of his Asiatic 
 campaign, became an in- 
 surgent in Syria, where he 
 was in command, and in the 
 year A. D. 174 proclaimed 
 himself Emperor in that 
 country. Between him and 
 Volagases hostilities were 
 imminent, when the Roman 
 army out of Europe ar- 
 rived in Syria, and the re- 
 volt of Cassius was put 
 down with a strong hand. 
 The Roman Emperor, al- 
 ways inclined to peace, 
 readily accepted the over- 
 tures which were now made 
 by the Parthian king, and 
 the long e.\isting amicable 
 relations between the two 
 Powers were fully restored. 
 
 With the death of Mar- 
 cus Aurelius, in the year 
 A. D. 180, the Roman 
 throne went to his son Commodus, infamous 
 in the annals of the Empire. Volagases sur- 
 vived his coutetnporary for eleven years, dying 
 in the year 191, and bequeathing his crown 
 to his son Voi^iOASES IV. 
 
 The reader of history will readily recall the 
 course of events at this epoch in the West. 
 
 Commodus was murdered, and the Imperial 
 throne was presently claimed by several com- 
 petitors. In the East, Pcscennius Niger set 
 up his banner and claimed the diadem. In 
 the West, Severus was acknowledged at Rome. 
 Other claimants arose in the persons of Albi- 
 
 rARTHIAX CAPTIVES BEFORE MAUcrs ACKELIUS. 
 
 nus and Julianus. When Niger perceived 
 that he must take by the sword the crown to 
 which he aspired, he sought the aid of the 
 Parthian king. The latter was wary of the 
 proposed alliance. One of his dependents, 
 however, the satrap of Hatra, joined his for- 
 tunes with the Roman pretender, and sent to
 
 440 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 him a body of troops. On the whole, how- 
 ever, the Parthian nations were disposed to 
 take advantage of the civil war in the West, 
 and to expel the Romans from Mesopotamia. 
 They seized the places which had been occu- 
 pied for generations by Romau garrisons, and 
 demanded that all Europeans should retire 
 from the country. 
 
 Meanwhile, Severus triumphed over his 
 «nemies, and at once undertook to restore the 
 Imperial authority beyond the Euphrates. 
 This work was accomplished with comparative 
 «ase. Not ouly was Mesopotamia overrun, 
 but AdiabSne was entered and occupied. By 
 the time this work was accomplished, however, 
 namely, in the summer of A. D. 195, a new 
 complication had arisen in Italy, and Severus 
 was obliged to hurry to the West. 
 
 It was hoped by Volagases IV. and his 
 eubjects that the retirement was final, and 
 hostilities were immediately renewed. Not 
 only in Adiabene, but in Mesopotamia also, 
 the Roman garrisons were attacked and either 
 destroyed or expelled from the country. 
 Syria was entered and terrorized ; but Sev- 
 erus had by this time restored order in the 
 West, and hastily returned to prosecute the 
 Eastern war. The Parthians were hurled 
 from Syria. In A. D. 197 a Roman army 
 was sent into Armenia, and the protectorate 
 of the Empire over that province was rees- 
 tablished. The Parthian king had a personal 
 conference with Severus, and gave his sons 
 into the hands of the Emperor as hostages. 
 
 It seems, however, that the Parthian king 
 was no longer able to control the destinies 
 of his Empire. The Mesopotamian provinces 
 and cities were hostile to the Romans, and 
 fieverus had to send detachments of his army 
 to bring them into subjection. One after an- 
 other the hostile parts were invaded and sub- 
 <iued. Ctesiphon, which had in the mean time 
 been rebuilt and reestablished as the capital, 
 was the next object of attack. The Romans 
 -carried the city by assault, and Volagases 
 saved himself from capture by fleeing into the 
 interior. The city was plundered by the in- 
 vaders, and a great part of the inhabitants 
 put to the sword. Again it appeared that the 
 Parthian Empire was at the verge of extinc- 
 
 tion ; but the supplies of the Roman army 
 failed, and it became necessary for the Emperor 
 to retire. In doing so he sought to take, en 
 route, the city of Hatra. But in this project 
 he was unsuccessful. The Parthians rallied, 
 and Severus found it expedient to retire into 
 Syria. In this case, however, the Parthians 
 did not pursue. The damage done to Vola- 
 gases and his Empire had been so great that 
 he did not dare to follow his retiring antago- 
 nist. Severus remained in the East until the 
 year A. D. 201, having in the interval re- 
 stored order in all the countries to the limits 
 of the Roman Empire. 
 
 As for Volagases IV., his reign extended to 
 the year 209, while that of Severus continued 
 for two years longer. It was the misfortune 
 of the Parthian sovereign to leave a disputed 
 succession. His sons Artabanus and Vola- 
 gases contended for the crown. It is believed 
 that both of these princes reigned as contem- 
 poraries in different parts of the Empire. But 
 Volagases V. was displaced about 216 A. D., 
 and the sole dominion remained to Artabanus 
 IV. The latter was recognized as king by the 
 Romans. 
 
 In the West, Caracalla succeeded his father 
 Severus in the year 211. At that time civil 
 war existed in Parthia between the two brothers 
 who were contending for the crown. The new 
 Roman Emperor was ambitious, from the day 
 of his accession, of winniug fame by war, and 
 since the opportunity did not offer in the 
 West, he turned his attention to Asia. Not 
 satisfied with having Osrhoene reduced to a 
 Roman province, he sought to bring the an- 
 cient and oft-disputed kingdom of Armenia 
 into like relation with the Empire. He man- 
 aged by treachery to seize the Armenian king 
 and his family, whereupon the subjects of the 
 captive monarch took up arms. Fighting 
 with desperation, they succeeded in winning a 
 victory over the Roman lieutenant who was 
 sent to subdue them. 
 
 Nevertheless, Caracalla continued his ex- 
 actions and oppressions, and sought a quarrel 
 with the Parthian king. He himself went to 
 Autioch, and established there his capital. 
 Soon afterwards he opened with the Parthian 
 monarch negotiations of an extraordinary kind.
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 441 
 
 The student of Roman history is well aware 
 of the desperate character of Caracalla, and is 
 prepared to expect all raauuer of treachery at 
 his hands. In nothing, however, was the 
 deep-seated perfidy of his nature more fully 
 revealed than iu the transaction in which he 
 now engaged with Artabauus IV. lie sent 
 an embassy to that sovereign bearing a letter 
 in which the Roman traversed at length the 
 relations existing between the two Empires, 
 and ended by asking the Parthian to give him 
 his daughter iu marriage. By this meaus the 
 two great Powers of Europe and Asia would 
 be united in a common destiny. The sur- 
 rounding barbarian nations could be easily 
 reduced by war, and thus the two great Pow- 
 ers of Europe and Asia be brought under a 
 single scepter. 
 
 The Parthian king was 
 staggered by this astounding 
 proposal, but seeing that war 
 was intended iu case of a 
 refusal, he first temporized 
 and then yielded to the de- 
 mand. The Roman Em- 
 peror hereupon set out in 
 great state, with a strong 
 military force, to visit the 
 Parthian capital and re- 
 ceive his bride. On arriv- 
 ing at Ctesiphon he was 
 received with corresponding 
 pomp in the plain before the 
 city. But while the ceremonies were pre- 
 paring, and the conference of the sovereigns 
 no more than begun, a signal was given, and 
 the Roman, soldiers rose with drawn swords 
 upon the Parthians. The latter were butch- 
 ered by thousands. The king himself barely 
 escaped the common fate. Ctesiphon was 
 taken and plundered, and the Romans, laden 
 with spoils, set out on the return through 
 Babylonia. On the way Caracalla directed 
 his march through the ancient necropolis of 
 the Parthian nobility at Arbela. Here the 
 Romans paused and tore open and ravaged 
 the tombs. Thence they continued the march 
 to Edessa, where the Emperor established 
 himself for the winter of 216-17. In the fol- 
 lowing spring he made preparations to renew 
 
 his barbarous and wanton war, but in April 
 of this year he was assassinated in the temple 
 of the Moon-god, at Carrhfe. 
 
 So far as Caracalla possessed the right to 
 the Imperial diadem of Rome, the same was 
 now transferred to Macriuus, who to the vices 
 of his predecessor added a cowardice of his 
 own. He would fain have come to an accom- 
 modation with the Parthians, but the latter 
 were now angered to desperation. In the 
 negotiations that followed Artabanus made 
 such demands as could not be accepted even 
 by a poltroon. Macrinus was accordingly 
 obliged to put forth his army and take the 
 hazard of battle. The hostile forces came 
 together near the city of Nisibis, at this time 
 the metropolis of Mesopotamia. Here the 
 
 SACK OF CTESIPHON BY THE ROMANS. 
 
 question was finally decided whether the power 
 of Rome should be extended over the Great 
 Plateau of Iran, or whether the line of de- 
 markation which Augustus had pointed out 
 should remain as the thus-far of Roman domi- 
 nation in the East. 
 
 Both armies as they came together were at 
 their best; but the Parthians were the more 
 ably commanded. The battle began with a 
 local struggle between divisions of the two 
 forces for the possession of a stream which 
 was to furnish water. A hard-fought engage- 
 ment terminated indecisively, and the armies 
 rested for the night. On the following morn- 
 ing the conflict was renewed, and all day long 
 the battle raged with fury. One division of 
 the Parthian army was composed of a body
 
 '442 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 of soldiers mounted on camels, and armed 
 with long spears against which it was difficult 
 for the Romans to stand. In falling back, 
 however, they sowed the ground with tribuli, 
 which, piercing the camels' feet, ended the 
 charge. Again night came on with the battle 
 undecided. 
 
 On the third day, however, the Parthians 
 began to gain. Their cavaliy wings were ex- 
 tended right and left, and seemed to envelop 
 the legions. These were obliged to thin ranks 
 in order to confront the enemy. Hereupon, 
 by rapid evolution, the Parthians concentrated 
 their forces, charged after their furious manner, 
 and drove the Romans from the field. The 
 latter sought safety in their camp, and were 
 in peril of destruction. But the Parthians, as 
 well as their foe, had suffered enormous losses, 
 and when Macrinus opened negotiations, Arta- 
 banus was willing to grant more liberal terms 
 than might have been expected from such a 
 victor on such a field. He, however, de- 
 manded and received a sum equal to about 
 seven and a-half million dollars as an indem- 
 nity for the injuries inflicted on his people and 
 provinces. 
 
 Such was the end of a conflict which had 
 extended through nearly three centuries of 
 time. The Romans and the Parthians fought 
 no more battles. Of all the outlying countries 
 of Europe or Asia, only the Parthian Em- 
 pire had been able to interpose an immovable 
 bulwark against the aggressive ambitions of the 
 race of Romulus. It might well appear that 
 now, when the conflict had been finally decided 
 against the Romans by the sword — when the 
 Emperor Macrinus himself had been obliged 
 to fly from the field of Nisibis in order to save 
 his life — the Parthians would revive from their 
 depression and enter upon a new career of de- 
 velopment. Destiny, however, had written it 
 otherwise. That which a foreign enemy had 
 been unable to accomplish was now to be 
 brought about by internal violence. Through 
 the whole history of the Empire, the disrupt- 
 ive forces had been at work. The provinces 
 had been held together with the greatest diffi- 
 culty. Time and again we have referred to 
 the fact that no stronger political tie than the 
 Feudal principle had been discovered where- 
 
 with to bind the nations and peoples, brought 
 under a single dominion by Mithridates, into 
 one great community, having common interests 
 and common conditions of life. This circum- 
 stance was the element of weakness which had 
 ever menaced the stability of the Empire, and 
 out of this was now to spring the great catas- 
 trophe by which the Parthian dominion waa 
 to be subverted. 
 
 It remained fur Persia — that is Persia 
 Proper — to become the agent of disruption. 
 The reader will remember that it was under 
 the auspices of Persia that the former great 
 Empire had been created on the Iranian 
 Plateau. With the conquest of Alexander, 
 the ancient Power was destroyed, and Persia 
 became a tributary kingdom in the new do- 
 minion established by the Arsacidse. It ap- 
 pears that the Persian kings had had, during 
 the Parthian ascendency, a show of respect, a 
 degree of importance, which might not be 
 paralleled among the other feudatories of. the 
 Empire. 
 
 There were, however, serious causes of dis- 
 content among the Persians. The tradition 
 of their old-time glory, the memory of the 
 deeds of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis still lin- 
 gered among the people. Outside of the 
 Greek cities no other province of the Empire 
 was comparable with Persia in culture and re- 
 finement. The ancient religious faith tended 
 to pride of race and contempt for the Pagan 
 States. The Imperial Government had for 
 several centuries pursued a tolerant policy in 
 matters of religion, granting no exclusive favors 
 to any particular faith. This policy was a 
 matter of great grief to the Persian Magi, who 
 had all the haughtiness and bigotry of Asiatic 
 Pharisees. To be placed on a level with the 
 servants of the other gods of the Parthian 
 Empire was a thing intolerable to the Persians 
 of the ancient sacerdotal order. The secular 
 offices within the limits of Persia were gener- 
 ally filled by Parthians as against the claims 
 of native warriors and statesmen. Notwith- 
 standing their great lineage and glorious his- 
 tory, the Persians were unable to see that they 
 enjoyed any advantages — civil, religious, or 
 social — over the rude and half-civilized nations 
 of the Northern provinces. The reasons for
 
 PARTHIA.— CIVIL AND MILITARY ANNALS. 
 
 443 
 
 rebellion were thus deep-seated in the constitu- 
 tion and history of the State, and nothing 
 hut opportunity was wanting for a great in- 
 surrection. 
 
 At the time of the battle of Nisibis the 
 under-king of Persia bore the famous name 
 of Artaxerxes. He appears to have been a 
 man of extraordinary ambitions and great 
 force of character. It is believed that he was 
 himself a Magus, profoundly instructed in the 
 mysteries of the ancient faith, and deeply de- 
 voted to the religion of his countrymen. It 
 were impossible to tell, in the absence of con- 
 temporary evidences, the precise motives by 
 which the Persian king was influenced in rais- 
 ing the standard of revolution. Certain it is 
 that one of the leading impulses of the re- 
 bellion was the hoped-for restoration of the 
 ancient Zoroastrian faith, which had for so 
 long a period been reduced to the level of a 
 pagan cult. But we may well believe that 
 the Persian under-king was influenced iu haz- 
 arding his fortunes on the issue of civil war 
 by political and warlike ambitions, as well as 
 bv his religious zeal. He perceived in the 
 Parthian situation a great opportunity. A 
 pretender to the Imperial crown, named Vola- 
 gases v., had appeared in the field. He 
 claimed to be a representative of the Arsacid 
 dynasty, and was not without a considerable 
 support in difl^erent provinces. It is believed, 
 moreover, that Hyrcania had already follen 
 away from its allegiance to the Empire. Many 
 other circumstances, the nature of which it is 
 difficult, after so great a lapse of time, to ap- 
 prehend, were doubtless potential in exciting 
 and directing the revolutionary movement 
 which now broke out in Persia, under the 
 leadership of Artaxerxes. To him it now re- 
 mained, in the same year of the final repulse 
 of the Romans, to raise the standard of suc- 
 cessful revolt against Artabanus. 
 
 It would seem that Artabanus had sufl^ered 
 80 greatly from bis recent Roman wars with 
 Commodus, Caracalla, and Macrinus, as to 
 be unable to bring into the field against the 
 revolted country an army of sufiicient strength 
 and resources for the work. At any rate, 
 when the two forces — the insurrectionary on 
 the one side, and the Imperial on the other — 
 
 came together on the plain of Hormuz, the 
 king's army was beaten in battle, routed, and 
 driven to the four winds. Artabanus himself 
 was slain, and the victory of the Persians was 
 so complete that there was little hope of re- 
 viving the national cause. Some of the Ar- 
 sacid princes sought to restore the fortunes 
 of their House, and desultory fighting con- 
 tinued through another year; but the army of 
 Artaxerxes triumphed more and more, and he 
 was soon enabled to compel the last represent- 
 ative of the ancient dynasty to submit to his 
 will. Thus by conquest and a complete re- 
 version of political relations was the Em- 
 pire founded by Arsaces, and developed and 
 defended by the great kings of the second 
 century B. C, crowded to the precipice, and 
 hurled down into darkness and oblivion. 
 
 The causes of the subversion of the Par- 
 thian Power are easily discoverable, even from 
 the rapid survey here presented of the history 
 of the Empire. In the first place, the exist- 
 ence of feudalism in its Asiatic form had pre- 
 vented the complete union of the many prov- 
 inces and dependencies constituting the Imperial 
 dominions. Time and again we have pointed 
 out the disastrous results of the loose con- 
 federative system on which the Empire was 
 founded. The different peoples thus vaguely 
 combined under a single government retained 
 too great a measure of independence and sov- 
 ereignty for the welfare and stability of the 
 central administration. The feudatories never 
 coalesced to the extent of forming a consoli- 
 dated union. The Empire was merely a league 
 of States ranging in character from half-bar- 
 baric to civilized and refined. Over these dif- 
 ficulties of government a common language, 
 common institutions, and a common spirit 
 could not well prevail. 
 
 In the next place, the family of the Arsacidse 
 branched out into subordinate sovereign ties, any 
 one of which might aspire to the hegemony 
 of the Empire. The Arsacid princes, in the 
 second century B. C, felt no longer the strong 
 tie of kindred. They were not sufficiently 
 advanced in statesmanship to understand that 
 the interests of each were subordinate to the 
 interests of tlie dynasty as a whole. The di- 
 verse motherhood of the princes often aggra-
 
 444 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 vated the existing condition; for when have 
 the two mothers of the sons of a common 
 father forborne to quarrel and hate and mur- 
 der in the supposed interest of their own 
 ofispring? 
 
 Doubtless, moreover, there was, to a certain 
 extent, a dynastic decay in the Arsacid family ; 
 but this was little noticeable in the general 
 condition at the beginning of the third cen- 
 tury. Artabanus fought valiantly, and was 
 victorious over the Romans. Even after him 
 Prince Artavasdes, who sought to shore up the 
 falling monarchy, struggled hard to sustain the 
 fortunes of his House. But the effort was in 
 vain, and the Empire went down headlong to 
 ruin, under the impact of the Persian Rebellion. 
 
 In the course of the present Book the 
 reader's attention has been carried forward from 
 the time of the destruction of the Persian 
 
 Empire by Alexander the Great to the over- 
 throw of the last of the Arsacid kings, and 
 the revival of the Persian Power under Ar- 
 taxerxes Ardishir, founder of the Sassanian 
 Dynasty. He is now asked to retrace his 
 course to the point of view which he occupied 
 at the beginning; to stand again on the field 
 of Arbela ; to note from that point of obser- 
 vation the conquerors rather than the con- 
 quered ; to cast his eye to the far West in the 
 direction from which those conquerors came — 
 to Macedonia, to the jEgeau archipelago, to 
 the main-land of ancient Hellas— and to take 
 up, as his next great lesson in the progress of 
 human history, the story of those Hellenic 
 peoples, to whom, without reserve, the heroic 
 praise may be accorded of the most intellectual, 
 the most witty, the most fascinating, the most 
 artistic, and the most poetic race of men. 
 
 
 rRIEZE OVER DOOEWAT OF TEMPLE, HATRA. (After RoSS.)
 
 SPORTS OF GREEK GIRLS
 
 aMMMM^MMJdiMMMMMMMMMM^Ml 
 
 MlllMM^l^i^lM^M^^^MMMM 
 
 Jack M\\. 
 
 GRBECK. 
 
 Chapter XXXVI.— the country. 
 
 REECE, the eastermost 
 of the three peninsulas 
 which from the south of 
 Europe droji into the 
 Mediterranean, was in 
 her palmy days the scene 
 of the most extraordinary 
 activities ever displayed by the human race. 
 The name Greece was not given to the country 
 by the Greeks themselves, by whom the land 
 was immemorially called Hellas, and them- 
 selves Hellenes. The words Greece and 
 Greeks were brought into use by the writers 
 of Rome, who for some reason adopted the 
 name of the petty tribe called the Graci as 
 an aj)[)ellative of the whole race. 
 
 A sketch of a land so noted as Hellas can 
 hardly fail of interest. The country lies be- 
 tween parallels thirty-six and forty of north 
 latitude, and the meridians twenty-one and 
 twenty-six of longitude east from Greenwich. 
 The length of the peninsula from Jlount 
 Olympus to the southernmost cape is two hun- 
 dred and fifty miles, and the breadth from 
 Attica to Acarnania one hundred and eighty 
 miles. The area — though difftcult of exact 
 determination — -may be fairly estimated at 
 
 thirty-four thousand square miles — a district 
 but little larger than the State of Indiana; 
 but this estimate does not include the many 
 Greek islands, proximate or more remote from 
 the main-land, which, inhabited by the same 
 race and running the same course in history, 
 might well be included in the aggregate 
 measurement. 
 
 The peninsula is sharply defined on the 
 north by the Olympian and Cajibunian moun- 
 tains. These have a general course from east 
 to west, and extend from the Therraaic gulf 
 to the promontory of Acrocerauuia, on the 
 Adriatic. But the country lying south of 
 this range includes not only Greece Proper 
 but also Epirus on the west. The transverse 
 range, which constitutes the fundamental fact 
 in the geological structure of the peninsula, 
 is called the PiXDUS, which, starting from the 
 southern slope of Olympus, stretches south- 
 ward, and dividing and branching and sink- 
 ing in elevation, straggles through the 
 Isthmus and finally terminates in the cape or 
 headland of Trenarus. Epirus and Thessaly 
 in tiie north are thus divided by a lofty chain. 
 
 On the east side of Pindus, below Thessaly, 
 the spur-range of Otiirvs strikes off to the 
 
 (447)
 
 448 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 coast, thus inclosing between itself and Olym- 
 pus the Thessaliau Plain. Further to the 
 soutli the range called Q3ta departs to the 
 east and reaches the sea at the Euboean strait. 
 At the eastern extreme of this elevation is 
 the pass of Thermop3'l£e. From the branch- 
 ing off of CEta the Pindus chain begins to 
 divide. One range stretches to the south-west 
 across ^tolia, and descends to the level at 
 the Gulf of Corinth. The other branch ruus 
 to the south-east, and numbers among its 
 heights the famous peaks of Paruassus, Heli- 
 con, Cith.-eron, ^galeus, and Hymettus. In 
 Peloponnesus the descending heads of Pindus 
 are known by the names of Oleuus, Pana- 
 chaicus, Pholoe, Erj'mauthus, Lycteus, Par- 
 rhasius, and Taygetus. It only remains to 
 note that the eastern prolongation of Olympus 
 is known as Ossa and Pelion. The range 
 here drops away to the south-east of Thessaly, 
 and after disappearing under the sea rises in 
 the ridge of Eubcea, and then breaks into the 
 Cyclades, of which Andros, Tenos, Mycouos, 
 Naxos, and many others are but the uj)lifted 
 heads of submerged mountains. Taken all in 
 all, Greece is, in respect of geological forma- 
 tion, one of the most mountainous countries 
 in the world. The so-called "chains" which 
 traverse the region south of Olympus are 
 scarcely chains at all, but rather a mass of 
 elevations branching off laterally and turning 
 from their course until the whole laud seems 
 but a multitude of heights, promiscuously ar- 
 ranged, not very aspiring, sinking in green 
 slopes to the level of the surrounding seas. 
 
 In such a country lakes and small rivers 
 are likely to abound. Of the latter the 
 Grecian streams most noted are, first, the 
 Peneitjs, which drains the plain of Thessaly, 
 and, carrying a considerable volume of water, 
 makes its ivay between Ossa and Olympus 
 into the J2gean sea. Next may be mentioned 
 the ACHELOOS, which, taking its rise on the 
 slopes of Pindus, divides ^tolia from Acar- 
 nania and falls into the sea of Ionia. The 
 third is the Euenuus, also a stream from the 
 side of Pindus, making its way into the same 
 sea at a more easterly point of the coast. In 
 Boeotia the two rivers are the Cephisus and 
 the Asopus, neither of much importance, 
 
 scarcely maintaining a flow of water durhig 
 the summer. Through the state of Elis flows 
 the Alphetos, which also drains Arcadia, being 
 of a more respectable volume. In Messenia 
 the jirincipal stream is the Pamisus, which, 
 though small, is perennial. Near Argos flows 
 the Inachus, and Attica is watered by the 
 Cephisus and the Ilissus, both scant in waters 
 and by no means justifying the descriptions 
 and poetical enthusiasm of the ancients. 
 
 Of these rivers the only one that carries 
 down to its mouth a noticeable quantity of fer- 
 tilizing material is the Acheloiis, which in high 
 water lays a fair deposit on the valley-lands 
 near the Ionian sea. A great majority of the 
 streams which the Attic patriots honored with 
 the name of "rivers" are little more than 
 brooks, dry to the bottom during the hot 
 months of summer. 
 
 Lakes, also, are a necessity of the con- 
 formation of the country. In many localities 
 are natural basins compassed with hills, and 
 in such situations, unless nature has provided 
 a subterranean outlet, the waters gather, 
 forming a marsh or lake. Of these there are 
 two in Thessaly, the Nessonis and the Boebei's, 
 both of considerable size. In the region 
 between the rivers Acheloiis and Euenus 
 lies Lake Trichonis, which appears to have 
 been a more extensive body of water in an- 
 cient than in modern times. In Boeotia the 
 river Cephiisus forms, in one part of its course', 
 an extensive marsh called Copais, and lakes 
 Hylike and Harma are also found in the 
 same state. The Copais is drained by a 
 famous natural subterraneous channel known 
 as the Katabothra, through which the over- 
 plus of waters found a way to the other side 
 of the hills. Many other examples are found 
 in difl^erent parts of Greece, especially in Pel- 
 oponnesus, of a like contrivance of nature 
 for the escape of confined bodies of water. 
 The calcareous limestone of which the hills 
 are mostly composed was specially favorable 
 to the formation of such passages. 
 
 For the coast-line of Greece the geography 
 of the world can scarcely present a parallel. 
 Around the whole extent of the peninsula 
 there seems to have been a war between sea 
 and land as to which should more impenetrate
 
 GREECE.— THE COUNTRY. 
 
 451 
 
 the other. All the way around, from the 
 Thermaic Gulf to the borders of Epirus, is 
 an almost continued succession of peninsulas 
 and bays. Sometimes, as in the case of the 
 great island Euboea, the sea is completely vic- 
 torious, and a portion of the shore is cut off 
 by straits and channels. Again, as on the 
 west of Peloponnesus, the land for a distance 
 presents a tolerably regular outline of coa-st. 
 Notably, however, near the middle — in the 
 waist, as it were, of her body — is Greece 
 almost divided. Here, on the east the Sa- 
 ronic Gulf running up under Attica, and on 
 the west the Gulf of Corinth, press inland to- 
 wards each other until only a narrow barrier 
 of rocky isthmus remains between. So nearly 
 does Peloponnesus come to being an island. 
 Thus by a long and infinitely varied coast- 
 line was laid in nature the antecedent of the 
 maritime supremacy of the Greeks. 
 
 The general division into a Northern, a 
 Central, and a Southern Greece is most 
 obviously marked in the geographical features 
 of the peninsula. The part of the country 
 which lies between the Corinthian Gulf and 
 the Olympian mountains is subdivided into 
 two parts by the approximation of the Am- 
 bracian and Maliac gulfs. A line drawn 
 from the one to the other constitutes the 
 lower, as the fortieth parallel constitutes the 
 upper, boundary of Northern Greece. From 
 the line of the two gulfs to the Isthmus of 
 Corinth is Central Greece; while Southern 
 Greece is obviously conterminous with the 
 Peloponnesus. 
 
 It will be seen at a glance that the north- 
 ern division of the country, as here defined, 
 includes Thessaly and Epirus, but excludes 
 Macedonia. The latter is a country of high- 
 lands, entirely different in characteristics from 
 the regions lying to the south. It consists in 
 large part of circular valleys hemmed in by 
 ranges of hills, with few slopes towards the 
 sea; while, on the other hand, Greece Proper, 
 though mountainous to the extent of secluding 
 'n a great measure the district.s from each 
 other, tends in nearly all parts to the shore. 
 
 It will readily be inferred, from the geo- 
 graphical conditions here presented, that the 
 
 climate of Greece is exceedingly varied. 
 N.— Vol. 1—28 
 
 Such is true to an astonishing degree. Be- 
 ginning at the north, next the range of 
 Olympus, and proceeding to the south, first 
 into the valleys of Central Greece and thence 
 into Peloponnesus, there is presented to the 
 traveler almost every variety of atmospherio 
 condition. The general aspect of nature 
 changes like the scenes of a panorama, until 
 almost every disposition and hue of her 
 wealth, and even of her caprice, has been 
 displayed. 
 
 Passing from Northern to Central Greece, 
 a new order of structure is observed. The 
 landscape becomes more complex. The moun- 
 tains in many parts fall into hilly ranges. 
 The country is described by Curtius as "so 
 manifoldly broken up that it becomes a suc- 
 cession of peninsulas connected with one an- 
 other by isthmuses." In the western part, 
 Mount Tyraphrestus rises to a height of more 
 than seven thousand feet, and the range of 
 Parnassus reaches a still greater elevation in 
 the eastern portion of the peninsula. 
 
 In Peloponnesus still greater changes are 
 observed. Here, around a kind of center in 
 the state of Arcadia, arise high bulwarks with 
 spurs projecting from every slope into the 
 surrounding districts — Messenia, Laconia, Ar- 
 golis. Some of the scenery is Alpipe in its 
 wUdness. The eye is surprised in every part 
 by striking landscapes, secluded spots of 
 beauty, marvelous contrasts of hill and wood 
 and valley. It is, however, in considering 
 the political divisions of Greece, that the 
 marked local peculiarities of the land may be 
 best presented. 
 
 Ancient Greece was divided into a multi- 
 tude of states, the foundations of which were 
 laid in nature. In other countries Ifnes have 
 been drawn, for mere convenience of govern- 
 ment, between province and province. In 
 Greece the lines were laid when the pe- 
 ninsula was thrown inter form. Beginning 
 next the Olympian range we have in North- 
 ern Greece the two extensive states of Thes- 
 saly and Epiki'S. They are, as already said, 
 divided from each other by the range of Pin- 
 dus. The former is the largest political divi- 
 sion of all Greece. It lies from north to 
 south between the Cambunian mountains and
 
 462 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Thermopylae, and strotches east and west from 
 the Pindus slope to the ^gean. The greater 
 part of the country is a plain, which, at its 
 north-easternmost extremity, is broken by the 
 Vale of Tempe, celebrated from remote an- 
 tiquity as one of the most lovely spots of 
 earth, a sylvan solitude, a chosen hauut of 
 Apollo. The Thessalian plain was the largest 
 productive district in Greece, and was greatly 
 prized for its agricultural resources. It was 
 thought by the inhabitants to have been in 
 former times the bed of a lake, having its 
 outflow through the Peneus, whose sinking 
 channel gradually drained it into the sea. 
 Thessaly was subdivided into four provinces, 
 known by the names of Thessalaotis, H^stise- 
 otis, Pelasgiotis, and Phthiotis — a division 
 retained until a late date in Grecian history. 
 
 Epirus was in geographical position most 
 remote, in extent second, and in character 
 most barbarous of all the states of Greece. 
 It was bounded on the east by Pindus, on the 
 north by Illyria, on the west by the Ionian 
 sea, and on the south by ^tolia, Arcarnania, 
 and the Ambracian Gulf. Its two rivers were 
 the Acheron and the Cocytus. The country 
 was rugged and less attractive than most of 
 the other states, and was by the Greeks them- 
 selves regarded as a kind of foreign region 
 inhabited by people of another race. The 
 things for which Epirus was most noted was 
 Dodona with her oaks and the ancient oracle 
 of Jupiter; Canope and Buthrotum, with 
 their harbors ; Ambracia, the capital of King 
 Pyrrhus ; and Nicopolis, built by Augustus 
 Caesar, in commemoration of his victory at 
 Actium. The Epirotes had some share in the 
 stirring history of Greece, but are generally 
 disparaged by the Greek historians. 
 
 Passing into Central Greece, we find in 
 the eastern half the states of Doris, Phocis, 
 Locris, Malis, Boeotia, Attica, and Megaris; 
 and in the western half Acarnania, ^tolia, 
 and Ozolian Locris. Doris was in the heart 
 of the country, and was the smallest state of 
 all Greece. It was bounded on the east by 
 Phocis, on the south by Ozolian Locris, on 
 the west by ^tolia, and on the north by Ma- 
 lis. To the westward rose IMount (Eta. The 
 whole district was mountainous, and it was 
 
 not in nature that it should contain a great 
 civilization. Nevertheless, the part which the 
 Dorians played in Grecian history was suffi- 
 ciently conspicuous to make their country an 
 object of interest. 
 
 The state of Phocis was bounded on the 
 north by Locris, on the east by Boeotia, on 
 the south by the Corinthian Gulf, and on the 
 west by Ozolian Locris. At one point it 
 reached the brine, in the channel of Euboea, 
 and possessed the harbor of Daphnus. The 
 surface of the country is exceedingly mount- 
 ainous, being traversed by the range of Par- 
 nassus. South of this chain are several fertile 
 districts, the most extensive being the plain 
 of CrissEea. The principal river is the Ce- 
 phissus, which in a considerable part of its 
 course forms an exuberant valley. The most 
 striking of the local interests which, during 
 the Grecian ascendency, and indeed ever since, 
 have attracted the attention of mankind, were 
 the city and oracle of Delphi, the latter being 
 the most famous seat of alleged inspiration in 
 the world. 
 
 Locris, in the most ancient times, extended 
 across the entire peninsula from the Corin- 
 thian gulf to the strait of Euboea. By the en- 
 croachments of the Phocians and the Dorians, 
 however, the state was cut in two, the central 
 part being appropriated by the conquerors. 
 The Locriaus were thus confined to two nar- 
 row districts, both maritime ; the eastern or 
 Locris Proper, lying upon the strait, and the 
 western or Ozolian Locris, being on the gulf 
 of Corinth. The former extended along the 
 coast from the Pass of Thermopylae to the 
 mouth of the Cephissus, and had the same gen* 
 eral character as Phocis, which bounded it on 
 the south. The Ozolian Locris, bordering the 
 gulf, was a rugged and somewhat barren coun- 
 try, one of the poorest in Central Greece. 
 The name Ozolse, or Stinhards, was given to 
 the people from the fetid odors of the sul- 
 phur springs which abounded in several parts. 
 The principal towns were Naupactus and 
 Eupalium. 
 
 The small state of JIalis is sometimei 
 omitted from the political geography of 
 Greece, but should be included. It lay im- 
 mediately north of Doris, and at the western
 
 GREECE.— THE COUNTRY. 
 
 463 
 
 extreme of the Malian gulf. The little dis- 
 trict so named produced no important effect 
 upon the course of Grecian history, nor were 
 there either Malian cities or citizens of such 
 note as to attract the applause of their bois- 
 terous countrymou. 
 
 Not so, however, of the state of Bceotia. 
 Bounded on one side by the channel of Eu- 
 bcea and on the other by the Corinthian gulf, 
 Ijring between Attica at the extreme of the 
 peninsula and Phocis on the north-west, this 
 country held a position in every way favor- 
 able for a large influence in the affairs of 
 Greece. Geographically, Boeotia is a sort of 
 basin, surrounded by the ranges of Cithaeron 
 and Parnes on the south, Helicon on the 
 west, Parnassus on the north-west, and the 
 Opuutian chain on the east. Witiun this 
 basin lies Lake Copais, forty-seven miles in 
 circumference, formed, as hitherto said, by 
 the overflowing of the river Cephissus ; also 
 the plain of Thebes, and the valley of Asopus. 
 
 Of all the Grecian commonwealths the 
 most important was Attica. The name means 
 the Shore or Coast. The land so called was 
 the extremity or foot of the long peninsula 
 which constitutes the eastern part of Central 
 Greece. In shape it is a triangle, bounded 
 on the north-west by Boeotia, on the east by 
 the Jilgean, on the south-west by the Sarouic 
 gulf and Megaris. The area of the country 
 ia eigiit hundred and forty square miles, and 
 yet in this small district were exhibited the 
 most marvelous energies ever displayed by the 
 human mind. In Attica several mountain 
 ranges sink down to the coast. Several 
 plains, as the Eleusinian, the Athenian, the 
 Mesogsean, and the Paraliau, intervene be- 
 tween the hill-ranges or along the shore. The 
 first named contained the sacred city of 
 Eleusis. The second was watered by the two 
 principal rivers of Attica, the Cephissus and 
 the Ilissus, both insignificant streams, sinking 
 into dry beds in summer. Attica was the 
 native seat of the Ionic race, and at a very 
 early date attained a precedence among the 
 Hellenic commonwealths, which she held alike 
 by prowess in battle and the acuteness of her 
 people. 
 
 From the instep of the Attican peninsula 
 
 and extending across through a narrowing 
 isthmus into Peloponnesus, was the little state 
 of Megaris. The boundaries on the north 
 were Attica and Boeotia ; on the south, the 
 sea ; on the west, the Corinthian gulf. The 
 whole area is but one hundred and forty-three 
 square miles. The surface is rugged and 
 hilly. The principal mountain is Cithseron, 
 which rises on the border of Boeotia. Across 
 the southern part of Megaris from sea to sea 
 extends the Geranean chain, through which 
 three passes aflbrd land routes from Central 
 Greece into Peloponnesus. The first is the 
 Scironian pass close to the Saronic gulf, which 
 is the direct road from Corinth to Athens. 
 The second is near the Corinthian gulf, and 
 leads from Peloponnesus into Boeotia. The 
 third was about the center of the range, and 
 as a thoroughfare had a less importance than 
 the other two, which at their northern ter- 
 mini reached into the open country. Megaris 
 contained but one small plain, and in that 
 was situated the metropolis of the state. In 
 the earliest times this district was considered 
 a part of Attica, being then inhabited by, 
 ^olians and lonians. 
 
 Passing into the western half of Central 
 Greece, we come to JEtolia, situated on the 
 north shore of the gulf of Corinth. It was 
 bounded on the east by Doris and Locris, and 
 on the west by Acarnania. At its southern 
 extremity it is divided by a narrow strait 
 from Peloponnesus. On the north lay the 
 district inhabited by the Dolopes. The prin- 
 cipal river was a small stream called the 
 Evenus, now the Fidhari. JEtolia was a 
 rough region, larger than most of the states 
 of Greece, but so little civilized as compared 
 with those on the eastern shore as to perform 
 but a minor part in Grecian history. Not 
 until the times of Alexander did the jEtolians 
 begin to di.splay the energy of character for 
 which their countrymen were so greatly dist 
 tinguished afterwards. 
 
 The remaining Greek state north of the 
 Corinthian gulf was Acarnania. On the east 
 lay jEtolia, on the north the Ambracian gulf, 
 on the west and south the Ionian sea. Like 
 most of the other districts, the surface is 
 mountainous, but presents considerable variety
 
 464 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 of lake and valley and pasture. In character 
 both the country and its inhabitants resem- 
 bled Epirus with her half-savage tribes of 
 semi-Grecians. The Acarnanians were for the 
 most part a race of shepherds, who at times 
 abandoned their pastures for the chase and 
 war. At no time in their history — their 
 peninsular position with the presence of good 
 harbors seemed to suggest maritime enter- 
 prise — did they engage to any considerable 
 extent in commercial pursuits. Like the 
 Epirotes, they were somewhat contemptuously 
 regarded by the more civilized states of the 
 eastern coast, and were not much consulted in 
 the great transactions of Grecian history. 
 
 Peloponnesus — meaning ' ' the Island of 
 King Pelops," by whom, according to tradi- 
 tion, the country was colonized — has an area 
 of a little mor<=! than eight thousand square 
 miles. It has the general shape of a maple 
 leaf, the stem resting at .3ilgium, on the Gulf 
 of Corinth. The country was divided politi- 
 cally into eleven states: Corinth, Sicyonia, 
 Achaia, Elis, Arcadia, Messenia, Laconia, 
 Argolis, Epidauria, Troezenia, and Hermionis. 
 
 The first two, Corinth and Sicyonia, were 
 small districts on the east and west sides of 
 the isthmus. They were so named from their 
 principal cities, and embraced merely the 
 surrounding plains and hills to the extent of 
 a few hundred square miles of territory. In 
 later times they were both regarded as in- 
 cluded in the large state of Argolis. Epi- 
 dauria, likewise, lying on the Saronic Gulf, 
 was but the small district surrounding the 
 city of Epidaurus, near the coast. This, too, 
 was embraced in the territory of the Argives. 
 The lower extreme of the same peninsula re- 
 ceived the local name of Hermionis from the 
 town of Hermione, which gave it its only im- 
 portance. 
 
 The state of Achaia extended along the 
 greater part of the northeri;^ coast of Pelo- 
 ponnesus, resting for sixty-five miles on the 
 Corinthian Gulf. It was that part of the 
 maple leaf which supported the stem. It had 
 ihe general character of the other districts 
 already described, being hilly and rugged, 
 with occasional pastures intervening. The 
 most important town was Patras, which, under 
 
 the name of Patras, is still known in Grecian 
 geography. The country was first settled by 
 the lonians, but these were dispossessed by 
 the Achseans, on the occasion of the Dorian 
 conquest of Peloponnesus. 
 
 Elis lay on the Ionian Sea, from the 
 promontory of Araxus to the river Neda. 
 Its greatest breadth was thirty-five miles, and 
 its area about one thousand square miles. 
 The mountains in this western part of South- 
 ern Greece fall away in slopes to the sea, and 
 Elis presents, for a country so limited in ex- 
 tent, a considerable amount of level land. 
 The city of Elis occujsied the largest plain, 
 between the Alpheus and the Peneus rivers. 
 The north-eastern portion, however, was aa 
 mountainous as any other district in the 
 country. 
 
 Arcadia was the only state of Southern 
 Greece which had no sea-coast. Next to 
 Laconia, it was the largest division of Pel- 
 oponnesus, having an area of one thousand 
 seven hundred square miles. Of all Greece 
 tills was the most picturesque region, nor 
 would it be easy to find its parallel ia the 
 world. It was a country of mountains and 
 forests and meadow-lands, fountains and 
 water-brooks, glens and grottoes. Here rise 
 Mounts Cyllene, Lycp"us, and Erymauthua 
 Here the river Alpheus gathers its waters, 
 and here Lake Stymphalis spreads its crystal 
 sheet. Everywhere the eye is delighted with 
 that endless vicissitude of beauty which never 
 tires and never cloys. Without seaports, the 
 country had no commercial enterprise. 
 
 The ancient inhabitants were Pelasgians, a 
 race of rough shepherds and hunters, who 
 were with difficulty transformed into more 
 civilized conditions. They were, nevertheless, 
 a peaceable, quiet tribe, given to music and 
 dancing. It thus happened that in all polite 
 languages of modern times the term "Ar- 
 cadian" has come to signify either beauty of 
 natural scenery or rusticity of manners. In 
 the epoch of Greek heroism the inhabitanta 
 of this state became a brave and martial 
 people, but none of their captains achieved in 
 the field a great military fame. The four 
 principal cities of Arcadia were Mantinea, 
 Tegea, Archomenus, and Megalopolis, the
 
 GREECE.— THE COUNTRY. 
 
 465 
 
 ktter being built as a defense against the 
 Spartans. The first three never rose to great 
 importance, cliicfly because of intestine dis- 
 putes and quarrels, which, frequently amount- 
 ing to violence, destroyed their prosperity. 
 
 To the south-west of Arcadia, washed on 
 two sides by the sea, lay Messenia. Here, 
 too, is a region of mountains. Only two 
 plains of any importance are embraced within 
 the territory. Of these the southern was 
 called Macaria, meaning the Blessed, so named 
 from its exuberance and beauty. Some of 
 the vallej's further inland are also exceed- 
 ingly fertile, and the climate, being one of the 
 wildest in the world, would have made life in 
 this region present a benign aspect, but for 
 the native boorishness of the original popula- 
 tion and the oppressions of the Spartans. 
 
 Among the Messcniau cities the principal 
 were the seaport town of Pylos, Cyparissia, 
 Corone, Methone, Abia, Derse, Stenyclarus, 
 and Jlessene, the capital. Besides these 
 towns there were two important mountain 
 fortresses, Ithome and Ira, the former being 
 regarded as the stronghold of the nation. In 
 the revolutions of the country the population 
 of Messenia was twice transformed, first from 
 Argives to uEolians, and then from iEolians 
 to Dorians, who came in with the ascendency 
 of their race in Peloponnesus. IVIessenia was 
 in the course of her history the scene of 
 some most heroic struggles, in which her own 
 people and the Spartans were the jirincipal 
 actors. 
 
 Laconia was the south-easternmost division 
 of the ancient Peloponnesus. It was the 
 largest state of Southern Greece, and, histor- 
 ically considered, by tar the most important. 
 It wa.s bounded on the nortii l)y Arcadia and 
 Argolis, on tiie oast and .south by the sea, on 
 the west by the gulf and state of Messenia. 
 At the lower extrcniity the country divides 
 into two branchini; peninsulas, including be- 
 tween tliiin liic <iull' cil' LacoTiia, and termi- 
 nating in the two capes of T;cnarum and 
 Malea, tiie most southern points of land in 
 Europe. Within the limits of Arcadia the 
 most important region is a long valley in- 
 closed on three sides by mountain ranges 
 And ooen on the south to tiie sea. There is 
 
 thus prepared and fortified by nature that 
 wonderful district in which Sparta had her 
 native lair. Across the north of this valley 
 stretch the Arcadian mountains, from which 
 two ranges branching southward defend the 
 two sides of the Spartan glen from almost 
 every possibility of assault. These two lateral 
 chains are known as Taygetus and Parnon, 
 the former rising to the height of seven thou* 
 sand nine hundred feet, and the latter to an 
 elevation of six thousand three hundred and 
 fifty feet. On the slopes of these mountains 
 arc forests of pine, evergreen, abounding in 
 game, haunts of the huntress Diana. The 
 valley is drained by the river Eurotas, famous 
 in song and story. Into thio sLream smaller 
 brooks, flowing down from the slopes of Tay- 
 getus and Parnon, pour their waters, forming 
 an ever-increasing volume to the sea. On the 
 banks of this river stood the invincible capi- 
 tal, known by its two names of Laced.emon 
 and Sparta — a town which has given to the 
 valor of the world an imperishable epithet. 
 A few others of smaller note were Amyclre in 
 the plain south of Sjiarta, the old residence 
 of the Achaean kings ; Helos, from which rose 
 the Helots, situated on the gulf of Laconia; 
 and Gythium, a naval station on the same 
 coast. In the valley of the Eurotas there were 
 considerable tracts of land susceptible of cul- 
 tivation, but the soil was not sufiiciently 
 fertile to encourage husbandry. 
 
 The remaining state of Southern Greece 
 was Argolis, lying between the Argolic and 
 Saronic gulfs. On the west it was bounded 
 by Achaia and Arcadia ; on the south the 
 land-limit was Laconia. Witii the exception 
 of the fertile plain of Argos the whole coun- 
 try is mountainous, some of the summits ris- 
 ing to the height of more than five thousand 
 feet. Two small rivers, the Plauitza and the 
 Erasinus, are the only perennial streams. 
 The coast is indented with many bays, ren- 
 dering Argolis especially favorable to naviga- 
 tion and commerce. The state is one of the 
 most ancient in the whole peninsula. In the 
 earliest epochs of history the term Argive 
 was often used synouymoiisly with Greek, such 
 usage extending even into the poems of Ver- 
 gil. Argolis was divided into six petty king-
 
 466 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 doms, Argos, Mycenje, Tiryus, Troezenia, Her- 
 miouis, and Epidaurus. By aud by Argos 
 became the leader, and absorbed all the rest. 
 The names of these petty principalities, or 
 rather of the cities which constituted their 
 nuclei, will readily be recognized as those of 
 the famous sites from which in our own day the 
 antiquarian Schliemaun has exhumed such 
 priceless treasures illustrative of the history 
 of the ancient Greeks. Argolis contains the 
 larger portion of those marvelous ruins to 
 which archaeologists have given the name Cy- 
 clopean — a mass of huge walls of unhewn 
 stone, laid without cement, said in legend to 
 have been the work of the gigantic Cyclops, 
 sons of Heaven and Earth. 
 
 Such, then, is a general sketch of the 
 geography, physical and political, of ancient 
 Greece. It will readily be seen that the 
 country was formed for a multitude of segre- 
 gated communities. In no other region of 
 the world are the natural indications so 
 deeply laid for petty states. The hills and 
 mountains are just of such height and charac- 
 ter as to break up all attempts at political 
 centralization. Such a thing as unity was 
 impossible in a race so situated. In many 
 parts the people on opposite sides of a range 
 were strangers for generations together. Lo- 
 cal patriotism kindled a torch in every valley, 
 and around its flame of light and heat were 
 gathered the affections of a clan. Beyond 
 the hill-tops there was nothing but distrust, 
 aversion, hatred. It thus came to pass that 
 the Greek communities were individualized 
 to an extent unknown, perhaps impossible, 
 among the great nations of the plain. In 
 such a situation faction would prevail, poli- 
 tics become a profession, freedom the rule. 
 The presence of a centralized despotism in 
 ancient Greece would have been as much of 
 
 an anomaly as a modern monarchy established 
 among the solitude and snow-capped summits 
 of the Swiss Alps. 
 
 It is not the place in this connection to do 
 more than merely note the fact that in the 
 broken and multiplex aspect and physical 
 conditions of Greece were also laid the foun- 
 dations of the wonderfully inflected mythology 
 and matchless art of the race. The human 
 mind here found itself under circumstances 
 of such infinite variety that the interpreta- 
 tion and representation of nature flashed into 
 forms as variable as the caprices of the kaleid- 
 oscope. Further on, considering the philos- 
 ophy, mythology, and art of the Greeks, 
 there will be necessarily a more amplified 
 statement of these views. For the present it 
 may suffice to add that in ancient Greece the 
 conditions of beauty, whether in sky, or earth, 
 or sea, were more abundant and intense than 
 in any other countrj'. The faculties and per- 
 ceptions of the people were thus stimulated 
 into a class of activities — the history, the 
 poem, the oration, the subtle analysis of 
 thought — in excess of what has been else- 
 where accomplished even to the present time. 
 
 The traveler, the poet of to-day catches at 
 once the indefinable charm which the bounty 
 of nature has never withdrawn from the re- 
 gion between Olympus and the sea. Even 
 the morose Childe Harold feels the warmth 
 of a new inspiration under the cloudless 
 heaven of Greece : 
 
 Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; 
 
 Sweet are thy groves and verdant are thy fields, 
 Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, 
 
 And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; 
 
 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, 
 The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air ; 
 
 Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, 
 Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare ; 
 Art, glory, freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
 
 GREECE. — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 40r 
 
 CHAI^XER XXXVII.— THE PEOPLE. 
 
 8 already said iu the pre- 
 ceding chapter, the peo- 
 ple kuowu as Greeks 
 were by themselves called 
 Hellenes — the descend- 
 ants of Hellen, their 
 ancestor. Though a prim- 
 ilivi' pii.pir, lilt y were by no means as remote 
 iu their origin and development as were many 
 nations of the East. Indeed, it is safe to say 
 that the Hellenes were among the younger 
 races who contributed to form the population 
 of Old Europe, and that, as compared iu age 
 with the peoples of the Nile and Euphrates 
 valleys, they were as of yesterday in their 
 origin and development. 
 
 When the Phreuicians, themselves of Se- 
 mitic descent, had peopled the eastern shore 
 of the Mediterranean and begun their mari- 
 time discoveries, they came first of all upon 
 Cyprus, and then by easy stages among the 
 Cyclades. From one of these islands to the 
 ne.xt was but a step until the south-eastern 
 promontories of the main-land of Hellas were 
 reached. In all the little isles anchored iu 
 these beautiful waters a people were found, 
 numerous, active, well-formed, light-complex- 
 ioned, quick to appreciate the advantages of 
 commerce. Thus was opened up an acquaint- 
 ance between the great maritime nation of 
 the eastern Mediterranean and the Greek 
 populations of the j^gean i.slands and the 
 main peninsula of Hellas. In the further ex- 
 tension of their commerce it was found by 
 the Phcbuicians that a people of the siime 
 race occupied the shores of Asia Minor. 
 These were the Iosian.s, who, like the Phoeni- 
 cians, were expert sailors, devoted to com- 
 merce and adventure. 
 
 These Ionian or Asiatic Hellenes were the 
 oldest of the Greek populations. By them it 
 was that bands of their countrymen, carried 
 to the west, came upon the islands of the Cy- 
 clades and finally into Hella.^, finding there 
 others of their race already established. Thus 
 
 it was that the lonians became competitors of 
 the Phoenicians iu a half-friendly contest for a 
 predominant influence iu the islands of the 
 -iEgean and even iu Greece Proper. 
 
 If we consult the Greeks themselves with 
 regard to their origin, we receive ambiguous 
 answers. In the first place they held stren- 
 uously to the tradition that they were au- 
 tochthones, that is, born of the earth. There 
 was no myth of a settlement by immigrant 
 tribes from abroad. Their ancestors had 
 always abode iu Hellas from the time when 
 Earth gave them birth. On the other hand, 
 there were traditions in almost every state of 
 Greece that the beginnings of arts and insti- 
 tutions had been brought in by illustrious 
 foreigners, whose supernatural wisdom fur- 
 nished a basis of social life. All of these wise 
 strangers came from over sea, bringing from 
 distant shores the dawn of civilization. Such 
 legends are substantiated, moreover, by the 
 Greek theology ; for all of the gods of Hellas 
 were the deities of foreign lands -disguised in 
 the fine drapery of Greek thought.' Nor is 
 it conceivable that a foreign pantheon should 
 thus have been established but by migrating 
 tribes who brought with them their gods from 
 distant homes. 
 
 The science of language has within the 
 present century clearly determined the race- 
 position of the Greeks. They belonged to the 
 Aryan or Indo-European family of men, being 
 thus allied with the Hindus, Medes, and Per- 
 sians of Asia, and the Latin, Celtic, and Teu- 
 tonic races in Europe. As alreaily said, the 
 tribal home of this wide-branching tree of 
 human life appears to have been in the coun- 
 try of Bactria ; but at what particular point 
 in the tribal migrations the Hellenic stock 
 
 ' The historian Curtius makes an exception of 
 Zeus, whom he regards as native to the Greek 
 imagination ; but recent invcstigatidns in philology 
 have established beyond doubt the identity of 
 Zens Pater with the Dyaus Pilar of the Vedie 
 pantheon.
 
 458 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 took its rise, it is perhaps impossible to deter- 
 mine. Be that as it may, the first formal de- 
 velopmeuts of the Greek race into organized 
 communities took place on the coasts of Asia 
 ^*inor, looking out towards the ^gean. The 
 people thus established flowed from the same 
 source as did others who occupied the Spo- 
 rades, and the Cyclades, and finally the whole 
 of peninsular Hellas. All that may be cer- 
 tainly affirmed is that, regarding as Greek the 
 whole community around the Jilgean Sea, the 
 eastern portions were settled first, the wave of 
 population swelling westward into Hellas 
 Proper and onward to the shores of the 
 Ionian Sea. 
 
 Leaving, then, the matter of the prehis- 
 toric migrations as undetermined, and taking 
 up the traditions of the Greeks regarding 
 their ancestry, we have the well-known legend 
 of their father Hellen. He was the reputed 
 son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. From him 
 came all the Hellenes. He had three sons, 
 DoRUS, XuTHUs, and iEoLus, of whom the 
 first and the last gave their names to their de- 
 scendants, the Dorians and iEulians. Xuthus, 
 like Joseph among the Israelites, founded no 
 tribe himself, but his two sons. Ion and 
 AcH.EUs, became the head of the lonians and 
 the Achseans. Thus by tradition we have an 
 account rendered of the four leading divisions 
 of the Greek race. Nor was there ever any 
 doubt among the Hellenes themselves of the 
 accuracy of this matter-of-fact genealogy, 
 which they received from their fathers. But 
 the device of primitive nations in coining 
 personal names as the explanation of the be- 
 girniugs of their nationality is now well un- 
 derstood, and the easy-going story of Hellen 
 and his sons signifies no more than that the 
 Hellenes first awoke to tribal consciousness at 
 the foot of Mount Othrys, where Hellen was 
 said to have had his home ; and the migration 
 of his sous from the borders of Thessaly sim- 
 ply implies an attempt of some vigorous 
 imagination to account for the presence in 
 different parts of Greece of the Dorians, 
 jEolians, lonians, and Achjeans. 
 
 The tradition goes on to elaborate, -ffiolus 
 succeeded his father in Thessaly. But his 
 multiplied descendants spread southward as 
 
 far as the Isthmus of Corinth. Afterwards 
 they peopled the islands of Lesbos and Tene- 
 dos, and founded on the coast of Asia Minor 
 a group of cities known as the ^olian Con- 
 federacy. Of their dialect Greek literature 
 has preserved but a few fragments, and these 
 indicate an affinity with Doric rather than 
 Attic Greek. 
 
 The race of Dorus appeared fii-st in 
 Macedonia, then made migrations, spread as 
 far as the island of Crete, where they founded 
 Tetrapolis, and then into Peloponnesus, where 
 they became predominant in the three states 
 of Argolis, Laconia, and Messenia. In man- 
 ners and life the Dorians were sedate, digni- 
 fied, and grave as compared with the other 
 peoples of Greece, often displaying both in 
 their deeds and institutions a severity in 
 marked contrast with the milder habits of the 
 lonians. They spoke a less refined dialect, 
 characterized by broad vowels and rough com- 
 binations of consonant .sounds, and were a 
 peojjle of rude address, little given to speech. 
 
 The lonians were the maritime branch of 
 the Hellenic race. They had their original 
 seats on the coast of Asia iSIinor, and from 
 thence spread into the western islands. They 
 were predominant throughout the .lEgean, 
 and were, as indicated alike by tradition and 
 language, the oldest of the Greek tribes. 
 The name of their reputed ancestor, Ion, 
 seems to be associated with the Hebrew Javan, 
 the Persian Yauna, the Egyptian Uinim, and 
 the Indian Yonas — all names of mythical an- 
 cestors. It was these Ionian Greeks who at 
 a very early date became first the rivals and 
 then the superiors of the Phreuiciaus in the 
 commerce of the iEgean and eastern ]Medi- 
 terranean. It was they who spread all around 
 the shores of those waters, establishing colo- 
 nies and trading posts at suitable stations, or 
 sometimes in the heart of great cities, as in 
 Alexandria and Memphis. It was they who 
 constituted the body of that Greek population 
 in the towns of Asia Minor, to whom refer- 
 ence has many times been made in the His- 
 tory of the Persian Empire. 
 
 The AcH^ANS had their native seat in 
 Thessaly. Of all the Greek stocks they were 
 the rudest. They were among the oldest of
 
 GREECE.— THE PEOPLE. 
 
 459 
 
 the tribes and took so prominent a part in the 
 Trojan war as to give their name, even in 
 Homer, to the whole body of the Hellenes. 
 It is evident that during the Heroic Period 
 they were the dominant race in Greece, and 
 contributed greatly to the warlike fame which 
 for hundreds of years made Greek and victor 
 synonymous. 
 
 Although the Greeks regarded themselves 
 as autochthones, or indigenous to Hellas, yet 
 they conceded to another people priority of 
 occupation, at least in certain parts of the 
 country. These were the Pelasgians, of 
 whv'se original seats history is still" in doubt. 
 It is certain, however, that in Attica, Argolis, 
 Arcadia, Epirus, and several other parts of 
 Greece, this people was established and civilized 
 before the Hellenes took possession. It is said 
 that the primitive name of the whole country 
 was Pelasgia, and it is known that this race were 
 distributed as far west as It^ly, forming, in a 
 sense, the bottom poi)ulation of that country 
 as well as of Greece. Nor do the Pelasgians 
 appear to have been a people very dissimilar 
 to the Greeks who displaced them. Their 
 religion was similar to that of the Hellenes. 
 Their chief god was Jove, to whom in Dodona 
 the famous shrine was erected, which retained 
 its reputation during the whole period of the 
 Grecian ascendency. To what extent this 
 people was driven out or extinguished, and to 
 what extent incorporated with the conquering 
 Hellenes, it is impossible to tell; but it is not 
 unlikely that a large per cent of the prinntive 
 inhai)itants were allowed to remain in a sub- 
 ject condition, and were gradually absorbed 
 by the dominant Greeks. 
 
 Much space might be devoted to the per- 
 sonal character of the Hellenes. Their quali- 
 ties of body and mind were such as to fix 
 upon them the attention of their own and 
 after times. In stature they were rather be- 
 low than above the average of ancient peoples. 
 They had not the height of the barbarians or 
 tl:e muscular (leveloi)ment of the Assyrians 
 auvl Romans. It was rather in symmetrical 
 activity than in massivencss or gigantic pro- 
 portions that they surpassed the other races 
 of their times. In beauty of body they were 
 peerless. In agility -ftud nervous vigor they 
 
 were the finest specimens of men that the 
 world has produced. Not that hardiness and 
 endurance were wanting. Not that the bodily 
 life of the Greek was tender and unable to 
 endure. Not that he was more susceptible 
 to hardships and exposure, less able to en- 
 dure fatigue and combat exhaustion : for his 
 body was capable of a discipline and conse- 
 quent endurance rarely equaled, never sur- 
 passed, in the ancient world. But he was 
 more alive in his physical being, more highly 
 developed, more complete in his nervous 
 structure, than any other man of antiquity. 
 
 It was, moreover, in this high-wrought, per- 
 fectly finished physical manhood of the Greek 
 that were laid the foundations of his wonderful 
 mind, of his energy of thought, his reason, 
 his imagination, his courage. Not only ia 
 the order of the world is the physical man 
 planted in nature, not only is he, so to speak, 
 an indigenous shoot of his native soil, draw- 
 ing his saps and juices from that fecundity 
 which is prepared by sun and air and rain, 
 but the roots of the mental man are in lik^ 
 manner planted in his physical nature, draw- 
 ing therefrom the sustenance of thought, the 
 elements of combination, the juices of reason 
 and imagination, the sap of hope or despair. 
 In his perfect body the Greek had the founda- 
 tion of his strength. Nature here, under the 
 free law of natural selection, wrought out a 
 finer organism than in other regions where 
 her resources were fewer, her energies tram- 
 meled with restrictions. In Greece she ac- 
 complished the finest Motherhood of Man ever 
 presented. In the Greek, with his fair com- 
 jjlexion, blue eyes, beautiful body, and radi- 
 ant face, she held aloft the best gift of her 
 abundant love. 
 
 No other people, indeed, were ever gifted 
 with so great personal beauty as the Hellenes, 
 and no others ever so much adored the gift. 
 At festivals and in public processions the 
 fairest was the first. Prizes were given to the 
 handsomest man, the most beautiful woman. 
 In the Greek town of Segesta, in Sicily, a 
 temple was built and sacrifices ofl^ered to her 
 who was adjudged most beautiful. The hom- 
 age thus paid to personal comeliness was 
 sincere and universal.
 
 460 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The climate of Greece, free from extremes 
 of heat and cold, cooperated with the habits 
 of the people to produce perfect symmetry of 
 form and feature. Solou, speaking with pride 
 of the youth of his country, says: "They 
 have a manly look, are fuU of spirit, fire, and 
 vigor; neither dry and withered, nor heavy 
 and unwieldy, but of a form at once graceful 
 and strong. They have worked and sweated 
 off all superfluous flesh, and only retained 
 what is pure, firm, and healthy. This perfec- 
 tion they could not attain without those 
 physical exercises and the regimen that ac- 
 companies them." 
 
 The men of Greece, though not above the 
 medium height, were graceful and vigorous. 
 Their chests were arched, their limbs straight, 
 their carriage erect and indicative of great 
 agility. The complexion was fair, but not 
 white ; for the Eastern origin of the race, com- 
 bining in influence with the constant outdoor 
 exercise and the free exposure of their bodies 
 to the air and suu gave a tinge of bronze to 
 the person which was admired rather than 
 avoided. The neck was round and beauti- 
 fully molded, and on this was set a head 
 which for symmetry and proportion has never 
 been equaled. The nose descended in a 
 straight line with the forehead, and the lips 
 were full of expression. The chin was strong 
 and round, but not unduly prominent. The 
 whole form and features glowed with an in- 
 tellectual and spiritual life — an ideal expres- 
 siveness which shone upon the beholder like 
 the sunlight. 
 
 The female face and figure were still more 
 elevated and refined. Here nature surpassed 
 all art and gave to the world an imperishable 
 ideal. The hands and feet of Greek women 
 were modeled to the finest proportions of 
 which conception or fancy are capable. The 
 . face was full of grace and modesty. The 
 original type was a dark-blonde, the hair 
 auburn, the eyes blue ; and this type was 
 maintained until intercourse with surrounding 
 nations and the intermixture of foreigners 
 from every city of the civilized world modi- 
 fied the features and complexion and brought 
 into favor other styles of beauty. It was the 
 Greek maiden and mother, with their native 
 
 charms and graces, that gave to the art of 
 ancient Europe those classic models which 
 have been, and are likely ever to remain, the 
 inspiration and the despair of the chisels and 
 brushes of the modern world. Not only the 
 men and women of Athens thus surpassed in 
 strength and loveliness of person, but the 
 people of the other Greek states as well en- 
 tered into the rivalry of beauty. The girls 
 of Boeotia were as much praised for their 
 comely grace -as were those of Attica ; and 
 for the women of Thebes artists and poets 
 alike were wont to claim a superiority of love- 
 liness over all the daughters of Hellen. Nor 
 should failure be made to mention the maidens 
 of Ionia, who, alike in the royal courts of the 
 East and in the free vales of the West, were 
 regarded as bearing from an easy contest the 
 palm of matchless beauty. 
 
 In mental qualities the Hellenes were still 
 more Strongly discriminated from the other 
 peoples of antiquity. They had courage of 
 the highest order. Nothing could daunt or 
 dispirit the Greek. When aroused he went 
 to war. Perhaps the cause was not worthy 
 of the combat, but being offended, he fought 
 Arming himself with the best implements of 
 war which an unscientific age could afford, he 
 sought his enemy to slay or be slain. When 
 a Greek fled the law of nature was suddenly 
 reversed, and the clouds smiled at a caprice 
 so exceptional as to be ridiculous ! As a gen- 
 eral rule his courage in battle was a thing so 
 business-like and matter-of-course as to appear 
 natural and inevitable. Before the career of 
 his race was half run the enemy who stood 
 before him in fight expected to be kUled out 
 of the nature of the thing. In the midst of 
 the struggle his valor was first sublime and then 
 savage ; rarely, cruel. To be brave was to be 
 Grecian, and not to fight when insulted or 
 wronged, even in trifles, was so little Greek as 
 to be regarded a stigma in any son of Hellen 
 who thus shamed his race. 
 
 In intellectual qualities, properly so-called, 
 the Greek had an easy precedence of any and 
 all competitors in the ancient world. If the 
 word man be really derived from the Sanskrit 
 root to think, then indeed was the Greek the 
 highest order of man. He could think, com-
 
 GREECE.— THE PEOPLE. 
 
 461 
 
 bine, reason. He could formulate and express 
 his thoughts with a clearness and cogency 
 never surpassed. He could excogitate, imag- 
 ine. In an age when the coarser senses and 
 more brutal instincts of human nature were 
 rampant and lay like an incubus on the spir- 
 itual faculties of man, the Greek mind rose 
 like a lily above the pond. It opened its 
 waxen cup. It gathered the dews. It drank 
 the sunlight by day and the starlight by night. 
 R gave its fragrance first to its own place and 
 then to all the world, and then bequeathed its 
 imperishable beauties and perfume to the im- 
 mortiility of art. 
 
 Out of the mind of the Greek were pro- 
 duced the loftiest concepts of philosophy. In 
 a time of universal darkness there was light 
 in Hellas. It is not intended in this connec- 
 tion to sketch an outline of the work done 
 by the great thinkers of Athens. That will 
 appear in another part. From the streets of 
 that city, from her walks, her groves, her 
 Academy, a luminous effulgence has been 
 shed into all the world. In the highest seats 
 of modern learning the reasoning of Plato and 
 the formuliB of Aristotle still in some measure 
 hold dominion over the acutest intellects of 
 the world. Nor is it likely that the truth 
 which they evolved from their capacious un- 
 derstanding will ever be restated in a form 
 more acceptable and attractive to the human 
 mind than that to which themselves gave 
 utterance. They are to-day in all the world, 
 
 " The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 Besides the general intellectual superiority 
 of the Greeks they possessed certain peculiar- 
 ities of mind for which they were .specially 
 noted. They were witty. However wit may 
 be defined, the Hellenes had it. They were 
 able to discover far-fetched analogies. They 
 could juxtaposit the heterogeneous and pro- 
 duce an electrical shock by the touch of con- 
 tradictories. They liked that flash of light 
 which scorches its victim. The ]iaradox was 
 always a generous nut to the Greek who found 
 it. To him the bitterly ridiculous was better 
 than a jewel of fine gold. An impos.sible ver- 
 ity was his delight. A pungent untruth made 
 true or a luminous and startling lie was to 
 
 him a joy forever. A joke, even at the ex- 
 pense of the gods, was better than the richest 
 banquet flowing with wine. 
 
 Then came subtlety, leading to craft in 
 action. All the fine lines of possibility in a 
 fact and its relations were discovered by the 
 Greek intellect as if by intuition. To per- 
 ceive with delicacy the exact conditions of 
 the thing considered — an impossible task to 
 the sluggish perceptions of most of the peoples 
 of antiquity — was to the Greek but a process 
 of healthful exercise. He knew more than 
 his 9nemy. He beat him and laughed at him. 
 He was the most capable animal of all an- 
 tiquity. He was Reynard in the ancient 
 Kingdom of the Beasts. He planned and 
 contrived while others slept. His were the 
 trick and the stratagem. He held up a false 
 appearance, and smiled at his foe for being 
 fool enough to believe it real. He found 
 more pleasure in setting a trap than in taking 
 a city. He set a snare and stuck a spear- 
 head through the loop. He made cunning a 
 virtue, and recounted a successful wile with 
 the same pride as if reciting the brave ex- 
 ploits of heroes. To succeed by craft was 
 nothing if it succeeded, and success without 
 superior skUl was more shameful than defeat. 
 The Greek met the enemy with ambiguous 
 speech. He attacked him with a riddle. He 
 swept the field with a device, and slew the 
 flying foe because he did not understand! 
 He entered the treaty-room with a dilemma, 
 arranged the terms with a subterfuge, and 
 went out with a mental reservation. 
 
 In the midst of his keen wit, his happy 
 perception of the ridiculous and his profound 
 subtlety, the Greek retained in the highest 
 degree a sense of the beautiful. He loved 
 and appreciated the delicate outlines of form 
 and color to the extent of adoration. In a 
 beautiful land he awoke to consciousness. He 
 saw around him a living landscape, and above 
 him a cerulean sky. He held communion 
 with all the nude simplicities of nature, and 
 under her delightful inspiration felt the flutter 
 of wings within him. He would imitate her 
 loveliness. He saw in his musings and even 
 in his slumbers the outlines of radiant forms. 
 He caught at the vision. His thought became
 
 162 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Apollo, and his dream was transformed into 
 Psyche. 
 
 From the concurrence of such faculties as 
 those possessed by the Greeks, certain kinds 
 of activity were inevitable. Native energy 
 would lead to vigorous achievement. From 
 the first the Hellenes were adventurous. They 
 tempted both land and sea. The voyage from 
 one Cyclade to another fed a hunger and nur- 
 tured an ambition. The ocean was something 
 to be overcome. Others, as well as they, de- 
 sired possession. Hence war, struggle, vic- 
 tory, peace, commerce, the city, the state. 
 Here the Greek found food. He planted 
 himself in his peninsula and islands. He made 
 enterprise. He took advantage of the adven- 
 ture of others. He made nature his confed- 
 erate. He filled his sails with her winds. He 
 went abroad and colonized. He sought the 
 world's extreme. He established his dominion 
 in another peninsula in the Western seas, and 
 called it Great Gi-eece, as distinguished from 
 his own. He undertook the carrying-trade 
 for the nations, and spoke his musical aeceuts 
 in the marts of Babylon and ]Memphis and 
 Carthage. He hired himself for gain to 
 oriental despots whom he despised, and tran.s- 
 ported their armies in his fleet. He became 
 a cosmopolite, and learned among the swarm- 
 ing millions of foreign lands the lesson of 
 fearlessness. He believed — and not without 
 good reason — that a Greek spear and a Greek 
 stratagem were more than Egyptian cohorts, 
 more than the hosts of Persia. He became 
 self-confident in his activities, arrogant in suc- 
 cess, reckless even when his capital was in 
 ashes and his femily in exile. He was daunt- 
 less, imperturbable, courageous even to the 
 doors of desperation and death. 
 
 As to moral qualities, the Greeks were not 
 80 greatly preeminent above the other peoples 
 of antiquit}'. Tliey had, like the Assyrians 
 and the Romans, many of the robust virtues, 
 but it can not be said that the moral percep- 
 tions of the race were, in delicacy of discern- 
 ment between right and wrong, equal to the 
 keenness of their intellectual faculties. The 
 morality of Greek social life was as high, per- 
 haps higher than the age. Woman was still a 
 slave, but her condition in Greece was srreatly 
 
 preferable to that exhibited in any Eastern 
 civilization. The conditions of her life were 
 much improved by the influence of Greek in- 
 stitutions, and Greek motherhood and sister- 
 hood were esteemed at something like their 
 true valuation. Nor was it possible in a 
 country where freedom was the rule that love 
 should be absent or its fruit despised. The 
 Hellenic family was maintained more by the 
 action of natural laws than by the influence 
 of the commonwealth, and the altar of domes- 
 tic afiectiou received its gifts from the hand 
 of preference rather than from the enforce- 
 ment of duty. Still, this natural freedom was 
 by no means destructive of sacred ties, and 
 although it was productive of much social im- 
 morality and abandonment, yet it gave birth 
 to such an array of genius within given limits 
 of popuhitiou as can not be paralleled else- 
 where in history. 
 
 Turniug to the domain of ethics proper, 
 and considering what mav in general terms 
 be called the fountain of right, namely, adhe- 
 rence to truth and principle, the Greeks were 
 by no means above reproach. They had in 
 this regard fewer of the heroic virtues than 
 did the Romans of the Republic. With the 
 average Greek the rule was that the end jus- 
 tified the means, and the majority adopted 
 this rule without compunction. The natural 
 disjjosition to adopt intrigue and deception 
 as legitimate instruments for the accomplish- 
 ment of certain results encroached in practice 
 upon the better principles of action, to the 
 extent of making treachery in private life and 
 perfidy in public affairs much too common for 
 the honor and reputation of the race. While, 
 however, such was in general the ethical code 
 of the Greeks there were among them not a 
 few philosophers and teachers who alike in 
 their instructions and examples were without 
 doubt the best exponents of morality and per- 
 sonal worth that the world has ever produced. 
 The greatness of Socrates stands unchallenged. 
 The beauty and sublimity of his teachings 
 have never been assailed except by bigots. 
 The luster of his life and the heroism of hia 
 death have cast a mellow light through the 
 centuries, and his steady belief in immortality 
 has remained as the greatest protest of tbo
 
 GREECE.— THE PEOPLE. 
 
 463 
 
 pagan world against the notion of the extinc- 
 tion of the human soul. While it is true 
 that the Athenians on an important state oc- 
 casion gave as a formal reason for the break- 
 ing of a treaty the statement that it was no 
 longer to their axlvantage to keep it, and while in 
 multiplied instances the pages of Grecian his- 
 tory are stained with the record of deeds per- 
 fidious, it is also true that the disks of Soc- 
 rates and Plato shine above the fogs of this 
 depravity with an immortal brightness. 
 
 Nor should there be failure to mention the 
 redemptive virtue of Greek patriotism. It 
 may be true, as has been urged by some phi- 
 lanthropists, that those local attachments of 
 man to his own hill, his own province, his 
 own country, which in the aggregate pass by 
 the name of patriotism, are in the nature of 
 a vice which will be extinguished in the higher 
 developments of civilization. But such a 
 proposition can not be established out of the 
 history of the past, nor is it likely to be es- 
 tablished in the immediate future. In gen- 
 eral, the progress of mankind, as well as the 
 average happiness of the world, has been 
 fostered and sustained by the devotion of 
 patriotism ; and even in tike present condition 
 of the world, patriotism remains a fact and 
 internatioiiality a dream. 
 
 The Greeks were patriotic. Their land 
 was of such a character as to nurture and 
 stimulate local attachment. There seems to 
 be more principle involved in fighting for a 
 hill than for a brickyard. The human race 
 fits to inequality of surface. It is difficult to 
 be moved from such a situation. Beauty, 
 sublimity, variety, every element which draws 
 forth from man an affectionate regard for 
 nature fired the Greek with enthusiasm for 
 hb country, his altars, his hearthstones, his 
 gods. The masterfid struggles at Marathon, 
 Plataja, and Salamis are but the attestation 
 of the vigor and invincible force of the pa- 
 triotism of the Greeks. 
 
 They loved liberty. Freedom had her 
 birth among the hills of Greece. Here it was 
 that political rights were first debated, and 
 the duties of government limited by statute. 
 There was something in the Greek mind 
 which could not tolerate the exactions of ar- 
 
 bitrary authority. What they could not con- 
 sent to they resisted. They quafled freedom 
 as from a cup. Their patriotic impulses led 
 to the acceptance of the doctrine that the man 
 existed for the state ; but the spirit of liberty 
 made it dangerous to be the state. Hellas 
 was an arena. Contention, party strife, the 
 conflict of ojjinion, the counter currents of 
 interest, the inebriety of the demagogue, the 
 factious outcry, the excited assembly, the up- 
 roar, the ostracism — all these were but the 
 concomitants of that wonderful agitation in 
 the painful throes of which were born the 
 liberties of the people. With the growth of 
 the Grecian commonwealths popular consent 
 became more and more the necessary ante- 
 cedent of action. The 
 voice of the new-born 
 fact called political 
 freedom cried in the 
 streets. There was a 
 clamor, not wise but 
 loud. It was as a 
 sound in the tree- 
 tops — the voice of 
 democracy — a voice 
 never to be stilled 
 unto the shores of 
 time and the ends of 
 the earth. 
 
 In thought and 
 action the Greeks 
 were the best in- 
 dividualized of all the peoples of antiq- 
 uity. The nations of the East were masses. 
 Egypt was a mass. Babylon was a mass. 
 Assyria, Media, Persia, Lydia — what were 
 they but vast aggregates of humanity undis- 
 tinguishable in member or part? But the 
 Greek was differentiated. He passed out of 
 the nebulous condition and became stellar. 
 He counted one. Every other Greek counted 
 one. The units stood apart. The nebula; of 
 antiquity broke into stars in the sky of Greece. 
 A new force was felt henceforth among the 
 nations of the earth. The lessons of individ- 
 uality and freedom reflected from almost every 
 page of Grecian literature were caught here 
 and there by the brighter intellects of antiq- 
 uity. The far-reaching gleam shot its arrow 
 
 SOCRATES, NAPLES.
 
 464 
 
 UNIVERSAL ETSTOBY.— THE ANCIENT WOULD. 
 
 of light even into the darkness of the Middle 
 Age, and the patriots of every civilized coun- 
 try of the world have found their precedents 
 among the liberties of the Greeks. — How 
 
 these qualities of body and mind and mora' 
 nature in the Hellenic race will work in the 
 elaboration of a national career will be exhil> 
 ited in the chapters to follow. 
 
 Chaptter XXXVIII.— lanquage, literature. 
 
 AND ART. 
 
 Y far the richest speech 
 of Ancient Europe was 
 the Greek; and among 
 the languages of Asia it 
 had no rival except the 
 Sanskrit. The genealogy 
 of this famous tongue has 
 already been referred to in the notice of the 
 origin of the Hellenic race. Indeed, the 
 tribe-origin of the Greeks could never have 
 been known but for the science of language, 
 which has become the torch-bearer of eth- 
 nology in every quarter of the earth. The 
 race-history of every people is recorded in its 
 language, and if only that language has 
 been crystallized into a national literature, 
 there is little trouble in tracing out the 
 prehistoric career of the people by whom it 
 is spoken. 
 
 Greek, then, is one of that great group of 
 languages known as Aryan or Indo-European. 
 It has for its cognate tongues, Sanskrit and 
 Persic in Asia, and Latin, Celtic, and Teu- 
 tonic in Europe. It is now understood by 
 scholars that in the migration of nations to 
 the West the Celts, the Germans, and the 
 Slaves preceded the other members of the 
 European group. In a later movement came 
 the two remaining branches of the family, the 
 Greeks and the Romans. These were closely 
 allied in ethnic and linguistic affinities. Any 
 one at all familiar with the Latin and Greek 
 tongues will recall their fundamental identity 
 in both vocabulary and grammatical struc- 
 ture. The two peoples by whom these lan- 
 guages were spoken held together for a long 
 time after their separation from a common 
 parent stock, and only at a comparatively late 
 period began to differentiate into peculiarities 
 of race and speech. The one people settled 
 
 around the shores of the .^gean, and the 
 other in the Italian peninsula. 
 
 In the former situation, Greek was a 
 spoken tongue as early as the fifteenth cen- 
 tury before our era. At a later date the lan- 
 guage spread with the adventures and colo- 
 nizations of the Hellenes, until their accents 
 were heard from the coasts of Asia Minor to 
 Sicily, and from Thrace to Cyrenaica. At a 
 still later time it became the prevailing 
 tongue in the Macedonian, Syrian, Egyptian, 
 and Byzantine empires. In modern times 
 fragments of the lamguage are spoken in 
 parts of Southern Italy, and even in one of 
 the cantons of Switzerland. In Greece, at 
 the present time, an abridged and simplified 
 form of Greek is the language of the people, 
 and this Romaic tongue differs less from the 
 language of Demosthenes than does the Eng- 
 lish of today from the tongue of Chaucer. 
 
 The history of the Greek language has 
 been divided by scholars into three periods, 
 the first of which embraces its literary devel- 
 opment from the time of the composition of 
 the Epic poems to the establishment of the 
 common speech by the historians and philoso- 
 phers of Athens. The second includes the 
 period of diffusion, during which, from its 
 inherent excellence as a medium of communi- 
 cation, Greek became first the language of 
 scholars in all civilized countries, and was 
 then contracted, by the gradual decline of 
 the Roman power, to its original seats. The 
 third division embraces the degeneration of 
 classical Greek, and the rise out of the same 
 of the vulgar or common tongue spoken by 
 the descendants of the Hellenes. 
 
 The tribal divisions of the Greek race on 
 its settlement in Hellas soon gave rise to 
 dialectical differences in speech. It was not
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 466 
 
 long before the Dorians employed one kind 
 of vocalization and accent and the lonians 
 another. Thus arose the three primitive forms 
 of Greek, the Doric, the Ionic, and the 
 iEolic. At first the Doric was most widely- 
 spoken, being the form of speech prevalent iu 
 Northern Greece, in Peloponnesus, in Crete, 
 and in the colonies of the Doruins in South- 
 ern Italy and Sicily. The chief authors who 
 have preserved this ancient dialect iu their 
 works are Pindar and Theocritus. 
 
 The Ionic variety of Greek prevailed on 
 the coast of Asia Minor, in most of the 
 jEgean islands, in the peninsula of Attica, 
 and in the foreign colonies established by the 
 lonians. It was developed at an early day as 
 the language of poetry, and in this tongue 
 were aciiieved the literary triumphs of the 
 race. Ionic had itself a threefold develop- 
 ment — the Old Ionic, the New Ionic, and the 
 Attic. The first is the language of the epic 
 poetry, and is rendered immortal in Homer 
 and Hesiod. The New Ionic is the speech of 
 Herodotus ; while the Attic, being the lan- 
 guage of Athens, contained the great body 
 of Greek classical literature. It was the 
 tongue of the scholars and j)hilosophers — the 
 chariot of fire in which the lightnings of 
 Demosthenes were driven through smoke and 
 tempest upon the enemies of his country. 
 
 Again the Attic dialect was itself divided, 
 according to its three eras of development — 
 the Old, the Middle, and the New. The Old 
 Attic differed but little from the Ionic. It 
 was the language of Thucydides. After his 
 time tiiere were large additions of Doric and 
 .(Eolic words to the vocabulary, and thus was 
 formed the Middle, and finally the New, 
 speech of Attica. In this spoke the great 
 orators and wrote the philosophers of Athens 
 in the epoch of her glorv. 
 
 The vEolic variety of Greek was scarcely 
 limited to any definite territory. It was inter- 
 fused with the other dialects, and was rather 
 a modifying element than a distinct tyj)e of 
 speech. It was the oldest form of Greek, 
 and was not much inflected from that primi- 
 tive tongue which was the mother, not only 
 of all the Hellenic dialects, but also of the 
 Italic languages. It thus happened that 
 
 ^olic, being in a measure a prehistoric type 
 of language, was not fully represented in 
 literary productions. Before the dawn of 
 Greek literature, the Doric and Ionic dialects 
 had become the prevalent forms of speech, 
 and the poets adopted these, instead of .iEolic, 
 as the vehicle of their expression, for the 
 same reason that Chaucer wrote English in 
 preference to Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 The Greek of Athens became, par excdr 
 knee, the language of the Hellenic civiliza- 
 tion. To speak it and write it became the 
 ambition of the educated iu every quarter of 
 the world. Its forms and structure became 
 fixed by law and usage. Perhaps no people 
 ever had so refined a language, or spoke it 
 with such purity and grace, as did the Athe- 
 nians. For several centuries it retained its- 
 structure unimpaired. Not until the age of 
 Alexander, when it had, by agency of hi* 
 conquests, become the spoken lauguage of 
 Macedonians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Syrians, 
 and of many other nations, did a difference 
 begin to appear between the classical Greek 
 and the vulgar tongue of the people. 
 
 It is of interest, iu this connection, to note- 
 the antecedents of that style of Greek which, 
 prevailing in Alexandria, became the vehicle 
 of interpretation between the Jewish oracles^ 
 and the western nations. It appears that 
 primitive Macedonian was a form of speech 
 difl^erent from Hellenic. The affinity seems' 
 to have been with Illyrian rather than with 
 Greek. The early Grecians and Macedonians' 
 could not understand each other without an 
 interpreter. Nevertheless, in the court of 
 Philip and Alexander, Greek was the medium 
 of communication. It seems, therefore, that 
 the vernacular Macedonian had beeu dis- 
 carded by the upper classes of the people, and 
 the language of Hellas adopted in its stead. 
 Albeit, Alexander and his court spoke Greek 
 like foreigners, and incorporated therewith 
 many Macedonian words and idioms. This, 
 then, was the speech which the Conqueror car- 
 ried with him into Egypt. The term "Hel- 
 lenistic," therefore, as applied to the type of 
 Greek employed by the Seventy in the trans- 
 lation of the Scriptures, is a misnomer, and 
 should be replaced by "Macedonian."
 
 466 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 In all tbe countries brought under the 
 8way of Alexander, the language of the 
 Greeks became the language of the governing 
 class and of the philosophers. In every such 
 country was a gradual and perhaps inevitable 
 corruption of the speech thus imposed upon 
 native tongues. From the third century of 
 our era, the departure from the old standard 
 of purity and elegance became so great that 
 the Greek authors were no longer understood 
 by many of the peoples pretending to speak 
 their language. Meanwhile, the transfer of 
 the capital of the Roman world to Con- 
 stantinople introduced a large element of 
 Latin into the heart of Hellenism, and then 
 the pilgrims and crusaders from the West 
 brought in their importation of Gallicisms, 
 until the degeneration of Greek was well-nigh 
 complete. Still, in the hands of purists and 
 scholars, it continued to be the vehicle of 
 literature until, surviving the barbarism of 
 the Middle Age, it became a potent factor in 
 the revival of learning. 
 
 Turning to the structural forms of the 
 language of the Hellenes, as distinguished 
 from its historical development, we find much 
 of interest. The original Greek alphabet 
 consisted of sixteen characters, which were 
 reputed to have been brought into Hellas by 
 the Phoenician Cadmus. He was a mythical 
 king of Thebes and brother of the monarch 
 of Phoenicia. The whole matter is legendary, 
 but perhaps contains some grains of truth. 
 It is probably true that the Greek letters had 
 a Phoenician origin, but it is more likely that 
 they came in a regular way from the contact 
 of the lonians with the scholars of Sidon than 
 that they were the beneficent contribution of 
 a traveling philosopher. A.s to the date of 
 the introduction, modern antiquarians are di- 
 vided in opinion, some holding it to have 
 been as early as the fourteenth, others as late 
 as the eighth, century before our era. The 
 addition of several letters to the sixteen given 
 by Cadmus is ascribed to Palamedes; but 
 others think that twenty-two of the characters 
 were derived directly from Phoenicia, and that 
 only the letter hypsilon was of a truly Hellenic 
 origin. At any rate, the number of char- 
 acters in the Greek alphabet proper is twenty- 
 
 four. It happened, however, in making up 
 the list, that two of the letters, the vav and 
 the koppa, were discarded, but their places 
 were filled with two others, the phi and the 
 dii. The other modifications were the addi- 
 tion of psi and omega by the loniaus, and 
 finally the introduction of the aspirated e, 
 called eta, to serve the purpose of e long. The 
 alphabet thus completed was oflicially adopted 
 in Athens, B. C. 403. 
 
 Of the seven vowels employed in Greek, 
 two (yj, w) were long, two (j, o) short, and 
 three (a, t, u) common. Every initial vowel 
 was written with a breathing (') (') above it 
 to indicate whether it was to be pronounced 
 with a smooth utterance, as in the case of an 
 initial vowel in English, or be given with an 
 aspiration, that is, with the sound of h pre- 
 ceding. Marks were also employed to show 
 the accentuation of words. The circumflex 
 accent (') might be placed on either of the 
 last two syllables of a word; the acute ('), 
 on either of the last three, without respect to 
 the length of the vowel in the syllable so ac- 
 cented ; the grave (^), on every syllable not 
 otherwise marked, but was not written except 
 on the last. 
 
 In the earlier ages of Greek literature the 
 characters employed in writing were what is 
 called uncial, that is, a kind of square, capital- 
 like letters, much larger than the body of 
 ordinary type. There was no cursive or 
 modified style of writing differing from the 
 established forms of the letters. Such a de- 
 vice as a running-hand of Greek was un- 
 known until the second century before out 
 era, when the scholars of Alexandria intro- 
 duced the cursive system. The ordinary small 
 letters, such as make up the body of a Greek 
 page, were not adopted until about the 
 middle of the eighth century, A. D.; at any 
 rate, no manuscripts or inscriptions containing 
 that style of letter are known to antedate the 
 year 750 of our era. 
 
 In its grammatical structure the Greek 
 language is one of the most complete, and, at 
 the same time, one of the most flexible in the 
 world. The noun preserves five cases out of 
 the original eight belonging to the primitive 
 Aryan. It also has three numbers ; singular.
 
 GREECE.-LASGUAGE, LITERATURE, ASD ART. 
 
 467 
 
 <lual, iiiid plural. B}- this means the discrim- 
 iiiatiou of objects as it respects unity, binity, 
 and multiplicity is easily carried out in s])eech. 
 The langnai^e i)reseuts three genders'; uuiscu- 
 line, feminine, and neuter. The article (ho, 
 he, t6) accompanies the noun and follows its 
 inflections. It also has an independent use, 
 being capable of representing the altsent noun 
 as by a delicate innuendo. In its power of 
 nominal combination no other language has 
 equaled the Greek. There was practically no 
 limit to the ability of a Greek author to form 
 Cfunpound nouns, expressing the most com- 
 plex ideas. The striking off of case-endings 
 and the juxtaposition of radicalswas a process 
 so easy and natural as to suggest itself in the 
 ordinary How of speech, and the laws of the 
 language were so tolerant of growth as to put 
 no restriction on either the poetic imagination 
 or the necessity of philosophy. A whole hex- 
 ameter might How in a word, if fancy sug- 
 gested the combination. 
 
 The adjective was specially full and rich in 
 its expressiveness. Each word of this class 
 was capable of one hundred and thirty-five 
 endings ! Of course, many of these were 
 duplicates of others, but the full scheme 
 showed the number here indicated.* In gen- 
 eral the adjective conformed to the mutations 
 of the noun.- There was thus established be- 
 tween fact and epithet the closest bonds of 
 sympathy. The adjective did obeisance in 
 its forms to the noun with which it was 
 joined. It swayed to and fro with its master, 
 followed his fortunes and vicissitudes, shared 
 his wealth and his poverty. 
 
 But it was the Greek verb which most of 
 all exhibited the fecundity of the language. 
 Here was revealed the great force and per- 
 spicuity of the speecK of the Hellenes. A 
 double series of attixes, added or pretixed to 
 the verb-roots,clearly distinguished the tenses 
 as to the time and completeness of the action 
 expressed by them. For past time the aug- 
 ment, and for completed action the reduplica- 
 tion, furnished delicate discriminations for 
 which we should look in vain in Latin or in 
 
 'That is, five cases multiplied by three numbers, by 
 three genders, by three degrees of comparison = 135 
 adjectival forms. 
 
 N.-Vol. 1— 29. 
 
 any other tongue ever spoken in Europe. 
 The root of a Greek verb was thus subject to 
 a kind of development by means of endings 
 and prefixes until the exact notion of the 
 time, its point and duration, and the com- 
 pleteness of the action, was expressed with a 
 specific delicacy of which no other language 
 has ever shown itself susceptible. 
 
 There was thus established among all the 
 parts of the formal structure of the Greek 
 tongue a kind of sympathetic union which 
 moved the whole as one. A Greek sentence 
 was agitated through all its length and depth 
 by the stress of expression. The paragraph 
 trembled from end to end when the thrill of 
 life awoke in any part. The language, with 
 its multitudinous endings, all in harmonious 
 accord, lay like a rich meadow of stately 
 timothy swaying and waving in the breezes 
 of thought. Each stalk nodded to his fellow. 
 The ripple of mirth danced over the surface 
 like a scarcely perceptible breath of air. The 
 shadow chased the sunshine, and the sunshine 
 the shadow. A sigh came out of the forest 
 and a deeper wave moved gently away to the 
 distance. The thrill of joy, the message of 
 defiance, the moan of the disconsolate spirit, 
 the pa»an of battle, the shout of victory, 
 every mood and every emotion which the 
 mind of man in his most vigorous estate is 
 capable of experiencing, swept in rolling 
 billows across the pulsating bosom of this 
 beautiful speech. 
 
 The tongue of the Greeks was, in its kind, 
 as preeminent as their literature. The one 
 was the counterpart of the other. So won- 
 derful in its completeness is the grammatical 
 structure of the language that it has been 
 made, not without good reason, the founda- 
 tion of linguistic study in nearly all the uni- 
 versities of the world. The historian. Cur- 
 tius, in summing up the structural elegance 
 of Greek, thus assigns to its true place the 
 s])eech of the Hellenic race: "If the grammar 
 of their language were the only thing remain- 
 ing to us of the Hellenes, it would serve as a 
 full and valid testimony to the extraordinary 
 natural gifts of this people, which, after with 
 creative power appropriating the material of 
 their language, penetrated every part of it
 
 ^W5 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 with the spirit, and nowhere left a dead, inert 
 mass behind it — of a people which, in spite 
 of its decisive abhorrence of every thing bom- 
 bastic, circumstantial, or obscure, understood 
 how to accomplish an infinity of results by 
 the simplest means. The whole language re- 
 sembles the body of an artistically trained 
 athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, 
 is developed into full play, where there is no 
 trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all 
 is power and life." 
 
 It is not possible within the contemplated 
 limits of the present work to discuss the liter- 
 ature of the Greeks under an exhaustive anal- 
 ysis. All that can be done is to note, with 
 
 some degree of 
 care, the leading 
 branches in the 
 literary art of the 
 Greeks — the poe- 
 try and history of 
 the Hellenic auth- 
 ors. On the very 
 confines of the 
 cloudy horizon of 
 Greek history 
 stands the sublime 
 figure of Homer. 
 Myth or man — 
 who knows? At 
 any rate, he was a 
 Being — one whose 
 radiance has fallen 
 on all the subse- 
 quent ages of man's endeavor. Even before 
 him we have reason to believe that there 
 were precursive bards of feebler wing who 
 put into the lips of the primitive Greeks 
 the chant, the psean, the choral song, the 
 merry roundelay of the singing girls and 
 vintagers. But it remained for the deeds of 
 the heroes of the nation to furnish the mate- 
 rial of a loftier strain, and Scio's rocky isle 
 to furnish the singer. 
 
 Here, then, was the beginning of Epic 
 Poetry — the song heroic which recounts the 
 warlike deeds of the vaUant and strong. The 
 Blind Being chose for one of his themes the 
 siege and sack of Troy — its causes, the out- 
 rage done to hospitality and trust, the coun- 
 
 n>EAL BUST OF HOMER, 
 
 Sans Souci, Potsdam. 
 
 sel of the belligerent gods, the array of na- 
 tions, the stratagem, the catastrophe; and for 
 the other the wanderings of the brave and sa- 
 gacious Ulysses, involving the social aspects 
 of his own and foreign lands. Thus were 
 wrought the Iliad and the Odyssey. 
 
 The work was greater than the theme. The 
 language was still plastic. Under the magical 
 touch of genius the two great epics rose lik« 
 exhalations from the new-made earth. They 
 were chanted in the ears of all Greece. It 
 was the beginning of the literary culture of 
 the Aryan race. The influence of Homer's 
 heroic songs was transfused, like a strong 
 current of ancestral blood, into the whole 
 body of Greek letters that rose out of this 
 radiant dawn. The Hiad and the Odyssey 
 have remained the best in their kind among 
 the works of the humau genius ; nor is it 
 likely that the deliberate judgment of three 
 thousand years will ever be reversed in the 
 tides of time. 
 
 The Homeric poems have not reached us 
 in their original form. At the time of their 
 production the Greeks already possessed the 
 art of writing, but that art was employed 
 rather for the brief and business affairs of 
 life than for literary composition. The ear of 
 the early Greek was attuned to harmony'. He 
 would hear the music of verse recited by a 
 living master. He would feel the thrill of 
 enthusiasm which could be kindled by no life- 
 less tablet. The swaying form of the rhap- 
 sodist, his rapt visage, his flashing eye, his 
 sonorous voice rising and falling like the sea — 
 these were the elements of inspiration, these 
 the coals that kindled emulation. Thus it 
 happened that memory became the repository 
 and the tongue the deliverer of the verse of 
 Hellas. 
 
 It is likely that for several centuries to- 
 gether the poems of Homer, vast in extent 
 as they are, were written only in the memo- 
 ries of men. Doubtless in this period many 
 changes were introduced by the caprices of 
 not too faithful rhapsodists — many transposi- 
 tions of parts, and perhaps some total loss of 
 sections or whole episodes of the epic. Fi- 
 nally, however, in a day of happy fortune 
 for. all the world, the poems were reduced to
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 4(19 
 
 writing. While Pisistratus was tyrant of 
 Athens the work was undertaken at his in- 
 stance and under his patronage. The Athe- 
 nian grammarian Onomacritus was appointed 
 to revise and arrange both of the poems, re- 
 jecting what appeared to him to be the inter- 
 polations of weaker bards and the manifest 
 corruptions of the ignorant. Thus were the 
 two greatest epics of the world, flung from 
 the vigorous imagination of the Blind Being 
 of Ionia, preserved and transmitted to after 
 ages in nearly the forms which now they bear. 
 Of the time at which Homer flourished only 
 so much is known as that he lived in the mys- 
 terious epoch where history and fable blended, 
 and when Greece was just beginning to awake 
 to a consciousness of her power. 
 
 Around Homer grew up a race of bards 
 called the "Cyclic poets" — like unto himself, 
 but of less repute. They were like the group 
 of English writers known as the Shakespearean 
 dramatists, clustering about a greater light, in 
 whose effulgence they were lost. Not only 
 have the works of the Cyclic bards perished, 
 but most of themselves have not even left 
 behind the legacy of a name. 
 
 After the old Ionian bard came Hesiod. 
 He was a Dorian, who flourished about a cen- 
 tury after Homer, and dwelt at the foot of 
 Mount Helicon, near Delphi. His fond coun- 
 trymen set up their poet in rivalry with his 
 great predecessor, and even invented a fiction 
 that the two had once contested for the palm 
 in song and that the award had been made to 
 Hesiod. But the story was an impossibility, 
 both in time and fact. The subjects selected 
 by the Dorian bard were the fables of the 
 gods. Instead of the stirring strifes of heroes 
 he recited the history of the national religion. 
 He also collected and reduced to verse the 
 practical and proverbial wisdom of the peo- 
 ple, in a rather tedious didactic poem called 
 Works and Days. Between these productions 
 and the living pictures of Homer there is, in 
 both subject and treatment, the greatest pos- 
 sible contrast. Neither in Hesiod, their mas- 
 ter bard, nor in his successors, did the Boeotian 
 school in Grecian literature ever approximate 
 the excellence and breadth of the Ionic and 
 Attic authors. 
 
 After the epic — which ceased to be culti- 
 vated from the epoch of Homer and Hesiod — 
 the next kind of Greek poetry which appeared 
 was the lyric. In the form of elegy it became 
 as the heroic songs of the masters. The elegy, 
 like the epic, took its rise among the Ionian 
 Greeks of Asia Minor. To them it seems to 
 have been suggested by the elegos of the 
 Phrygians. It was primarily a song of wail- 
 ing, to be chanted with the accompaniment 
 of a flute. Among the Greeks, however, the 
 elegy took a wider range, and included in its 
 subjects the stirring themes of patriotism and 
 war. Even love and conviviality were made 
 elegiac by the Hellenic bards, who, in alter- 
 nate hexameters and pentameters, chanted the 
 fiery charms of passion and the joys of the 
 festival. 
 
 It was in the seventh century B. C. that 
 the elegy of the Greeks achieved its greatest 
 triumphs. Not infrequently the gravest af- 
 fairs of state, the policy of cities, the conduct 
 of war, were determined by a song. Thus 
 the old decrepit Tyet^us, who was, in answer 
 to an oracular call, sent in derision by the 
 Athenians to be a leader of the Spartans, 
 fired them to a pitch of unprecedented en- 
 thusiasm by a battle-lyric composed for the 
 occasion. Callinus of Ephesus in like manner 
 inspired his countrymen in their war with the 
 Magnesians. Solon himself disdained not the 
 composition of a poem by which he induced 
 the men of Athens to reconquer Salamis. 
 The lyrics of Theognis of Megara were col- 
 lected and taught as a manual of wisdom and 
 virtue. The praises of those who fell at 
 Marathon were sung in immortal strains by 
 Sfmonides of Chios, while the poems of 
 MiMNERMOS exalt the fleeting joys of life 
 as the fairest and best to which mortality may 
 aspire. 
 
 The next development of Greek verse — 
 also lyric — was the iambic or personal poetry. 
 For the old Hellenic bard did not forbear to 
 assail his enemy with caustic words as well as 
 spears and javelins. This type of poetry 
 seems to have been invented by Archilocus, 
 who, taking advantage of the license conceded 
 to all at the festival of Demeter to indulge in 
 personal mockery and jests, introduced a new
 
 170 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 style of verse, composed in alternate iambi 
 and trocliees, dipped in the bitterest wit and 
 sarcasm, to the extent of driving to suicide 
 (such is the tradition) those against whom the 
 poisoned arrows were sent flying. Even 
 greater and fiercer in invective was the poet 
 HiPPONAX, who flourished about the middle 
 of the sixth century, and is said to have satir- 
 ized to death two sculptors who had carica- 
 tured his ugliness. 
 
 After the iambic came the urELOS, or song. 
 This style of poetry was mostly cultivated by 
 the ^oliau and Dorian bards, who were cele- 
 brated for the tenderness of their emotion and 
 feeling. In this species of verse the singer 
 expressed his own joys^ and sorrows, his long- 
 ing and hope. It was from Mitylene, the 
 capital of the island of Lesbos, that the song 
 proper took its rise. In Greece of the main- 
 land it was admired rather than imitated. 
 But there was a Lesbian school where this 
 style of composition was encouraged and 
 taught. Here flourished the aristocrat Al- 
 gous, who, in his songs of love and hate, 
 poured out the passion of his times. Here 
 the great Sappho, the angel of unrequited 
 love, achieved in her passionate and beautiful 
 hymns the highest place among all the poetesses 
 of Greece. The story of her suicide by leap- 
 ing from the Lucadian rock because of 
 Phaon's neglect seems to have no foundation 
 in fact. She was a mother who loved her 
 child and taught a school of maidens, in- 
 structing them in choral measures and the 
 beauty of the dance. Her poems flow with a 
 tender and glowing love, the truest and deep- 
 est passion, the most graceful and tuneful 
 sentiments. After her came Anacreon of 
 Teos, almost equally celebrated, but flourish- 
 ing in a different atmosphere. He was an 
 Ionian bard, and had the luxurious grace and 
 abandonment of his people. Living at the 
 courts of tyrants, and knowing little of the 
 deep, pure charms of nature, he gilded arti- 
 ficial life and celebrated artificial love. Even 
 in his old age, when the fires of youth were 
 extinguished, he continued to sing in words 
 the songs from which the spirit had long since 
 vanished. 
 
 But by far the greatest of the Greek lyric 
 
 poets was the Boeotian Pindak. He was born 
 in B. C. 522, and was thus a contemporary 
 of ^schylus. His education was Attic, but 
 the inspiration of his muse seems to have 
 been caught from a predecessor, the Sicilian 
 Stesichorus, of Himera, who flourished near 
 the close of the seventh century. Pindar's 
 harp had many tones. He sang in manly 
 cadences of public and private life ; the 
 struggles and vicissitudes of the one, the 
 hopes and fears of the other. In his odes he 
 rises to the highest flight. The victors in war 
 and in the great games enacted in the pres- 
 ence of the assembled nation are made famous 
 in his heroic song. The style is involved and 
 difficult, but the spirit is the spirit of fire. 
 He was the evening star of the lyric poetry 
 of Greece. A change was passing over the 
 national imagination, and the dawn of the 
 drama was in the eastern sky. 
 
 The Greeks now demanded the poetry of 
 action. The transformation from lyric to 
 dramatic was easy and natural — necessary. 
 From the ecstatic song representing the joys 
 and sufferings of others to impersonation was 
 but a step. The Greek chorus belonged alike 
 to lyric recitation and dramatic action. The 
 transformation was gradual. Thespis of Attica 
 was the first tragic poet. His claim to be 
 so regarded is based upon the introduction by 
 him of an actor who came upon the stage and 
 held discourse with the chorus and its leader. 
 Then came ^schylus, who added a second 
 actor to the dramatis persons ; and finally 
 Sophocles, who gave a third, thus making the 
 list of characters sufficiently extensive for 
 complete and complex actions. The chorus, 
 however, remained ; for it was deemed neces- 
 sary to fill the space between the acts of the 
 drama with something which should sustain 
 the interest of the spectators. But Dionysus 
 and his Bacchic crew of singers and satyrs 
 were banished from the stage. Instead of the 
 revel and the feast tlie grave events of the 
 national traditions and history were brought 
 forward as the subject of the play. 
 
 Then followed the improvement of the 
 theater. From the time of the Persian wars 
 regular structures of stone took the place of 
 the wooden buildings hitherto used for spec-
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 471 
 
 tacles. The form of the amphitheater was 
 adopted. The auditorium at Athens was cap- 
 able of seating twenty thousand people. The 
 estimate was maile for the whole male popu- 
 lation of the city. Here was the stage upon 
 which were presented the dramas of Jilschylus, 
 Sophocles, and Euripides. The building was 
 open to the sky. The semi-circular rows of 
 seats were divided transversely with gangways 
 afl'ording easy exit and entrance. On the 
 front row of benches sat the dignitaries of the 
 state. Judges were appointed to determine 
 the merits of the production. The orchestra 
 was set in front of the players. On the walls 
 surrounding the stage were painted scenes 
 
 and pathetic. He stoops not at all. With 
 him it is the work of the gods and of fate. 
 The dark destiny of men is the underplay. 
 Another drama is enacted on high, over which 
 is bent the eye of the awful Zeus, calm, 
 severe, omniscient. 
 
 Under the canon of criticism a tragedy in 
 the time of .^schylus must consist of three 
 pieces, based upon the same fundamental 
 theme. There was thus produced what was 
 called a "trilogy," the three parts being in 
 some sense independent, but in another sense 
 subordinate productions. Of these trilogies 
 .SIschylus produced two, the subject of the 
 first, called the Persw, being the great wars of 
 
 T I r \^i_\-^YK^^^- 
 
 THEATER OF SEGESTA, RESTORED. 
 
 represeniijg the country or place wherein the 
 play was supposed to have been real. Trian- 
 gular prisms were set up in the wings, by the 
 revolution of which on their axes an easy 
 change of scene could be effected. Neverthe- 
 less we should look in vain in the theaters of 
 ancient Greece for that elaborate realism 
 which is the boast of the modern stage. 
 
 Greek tragedy begins properly with the 
 great name of J-^schylus. He it was who by 
 the force of his genius gave form and life and 
 nationality to the new type of literature. He 
 wa.s horn in B. C 525. In his youth he 
 fought in the battle of Marathon. In his sen- 
 timents he sympathized with the old Athens 
 of the aristocracy — the ancient regime — rather 
 than with the growing democratic principles 
 of the commonwealth. His subjects are lofty 
 
 the Greeks and Persians, the struggle of 
 Europe and Asia. Out of this triad, the cen- 
 tral piece, representing the lamentations in 
 the palace of Xer.xes, at Susa, has been pre- 
 served. The subject of the other trilogy, 
 known as the Oresteia, was the murder of Aga- 
 memnon, with the fatal consequences which 
 followed hard after, until the Eumenides were 
 finally appeased. This work has been pre- 
 served entire, and furnishes the basis of the 
 high estimate which all subsequent ages have 
 put upon the tragic genius of the author. 
 
 The Greek drama was still further ampli- 
 fied by Sophocles. Born in B. C. 495, he 
 followed close to .^^schylus, of whom he is re- 
 garded as the successful rival. Now it was 
 that the chorus was abridged and a third actor 
 sent upon the stage. The dialogue became
 
 472 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 more varied and natural. Individuality of 
 character was achieved. The always lofty and 
 pathetic solemnity of the language of ^schy- 
 lus was in some measure substituted with the 
 language of common life. The men of Sophocles 
 
 axe more human thau those of his predecessor. 
 In his themes, however, the sorrowful myster- 
 ies of being are still preferred. The dark riddle 
 of fate, the unsolved enigma of life, the hard 
 destiny of struggling man, beaten by adverse 
 winds of duty and inclination, of necessity 
 and preference — such are the mournful topics 
 of his dramas. In the Antigone best of all 
 are these qualities of the genius of Sophocles 
 depicted. 
 
 The next evolution is presented in Eueip- 
 XDES. He is less ideal than his predecessor, 
 but truer to nature. His drama is more of 
 a reality. He takes his stand in the midst of 
 human life as it is. His language is the lan- 
 guage of the people. The heroes of his plays 
 are more possible than those of Sophocles. 
 Thev are redeemed with weaknesses, touched 
 with foUy, stained with tears. He has more 
 
 variety in his action, greater freedom, more 
 surprises and vicissitudes. Nor were the es- 
 sentially tragic qualities of his genius less 
 tragic for this descent towards the actual plane 
 of human life. As occasion required, all tht 
 sublime force of tragedy is revealed by hia 
 muse. In the Aledea the terrible passion of 
 Phredra in revenging her slighted love has a 
 terror hardly equaled in Sophocles and jEschy- 
 lus. But with those who succeeded Euripides 
 a decline in tragic qualities becomes immedi- 
 ately apparent. The Greek play is henceforth 
 rather the roar of the court-house than a sub- 
 lime conflict in the arena of gods and heroes. 
 Then came Greek comedy. Hellas laughed. 
 She amused herself. She took Bacchus into 
 goodfellowship. The wine-god was mirthfuL 
 In the autumn, when the lesser Dionysia were 
 celebrated, the season was made hilarious with 
 mummeries and jokes. Any one present 
 might be the victim. The choral song was 
 transferred into comic representation. Folly 
 mixed a cup and poured it on the heads of 
 revelers. For a great while the scene was 
 enacted in the village, where rustics gathered 
 for amusement. In the serious city, where 
 the weighty affairs of state engrossed the 
 attention of all, there was no time for reck- 
 less enjoyment. Not until the beginning of 
 the fifth century B. C. did comedy make a 
 public appearance in Athens, and not until 
 near the close of that century was the new 
 species of drama received with general favor. 
 
 Perhaps the 
 early structure 
 of Athenian so- 
 ciety did not 
 favor the devel- 
 opment of such 
 a literature. 
 Freedom — the 
 freedom of a de- 
 mocracy — was 
 necessary to in- 
 sure immunity, 
 without which 
 comedy can not 
 
 flourish. When it did come it came with license. 
 Nothing was too serious or sacred for the 
 shaft of the reckless satirist. Man, woman. 
 
 ECTBiPiDES. — Visconti.
 
 GHEECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 47S 
 
 all human affairs, the war, the state, the 
 heroes, the immortal gods themselves writhed 
 under the audacious irony and merciless sar- 
 casm of the Greek comedian. Mockery, ridi- 
 cule, derisive scorn, bitter invective, every 
 weapon which the forge of conscienceless in- 
 genuity could invent or imagine, was put into 
 the quiver and swung liehlnd the swaggering 
 actor's shoulder. He shot riglit and left. He 
 shouted when his victim fell. He made grim- 
 aces at the corpse. With him Olympus was 
 no better tban a stable for goats. 
 
 It may be observed, however, that notwith- 
 standing this extremity of license the Greek 
 comedy has always at bottom a foundation of 
 morality. It is the cant of human nature, 
 its sham pretense and folly, which received no 
 mercy at the bauds of the executioner. 
 
 Of all the Greek comedians of the old 
 school only one was so fortunate as to have 
 his works preserved to posterity — Aristoph- 
 anes, greatest of his kind. He was born in 
 Athens, B. C. 452, and produced his comedies 
 between the years 427 and 388. In richness 
 of humor and quaintness of invention he 
 stands without a peer. His imagination is as 
 vivid as his wit is keen. His language is as 
 free as his thought is audacious. He attacks 
 the abuses of his times with a wild delight, 
 and his personal satire is fierce in its vehe- 
 mence. As the champion of the old regime 
 he attacks the demagogues and sophists with 
 an excessive bitterness, 
 ill his literary sympathies 
 lie is with yEschylus. He 
 dc'sjjises Euripides and 
 his following. The dema- 
 gogue Cleon, his'contem- 
 ])orary, he brings upon 
 tiie stage and covers him 
 witii opprobrium. In his 
 Clouds he attacks the 
 sophists with unparalleled 
 severity. He pours upon 
 them all the bottles of 
 his scorn, and spares not 
 Socrates. The folly of the Sicilian expedition is 
 made immortal in the Birch, in wiiich tlie war 
 policy of the Athenians is mercilessly scourged. 
 The lawyers of the city felt the castigation of 
 
 AEISTOPIIASES. 
 
 <MoDumenli dcU' Insti 
 tuto.) 
 
 ME.NANIJEK. — ViSconti. 
 
 his rod in the play of the ira,s^.s; and in the 
 Frofjs Euripides is held up to public c(jutempt. 
 
 After Aristophanes Greek comedy was 
 modified to a great extent in the hands of 
 the two principal authors of the Later 
 School — Menander and Possidippus. The 
 license which the 
 old comedians had 
 used and abused 
 was somewhat 
 abridged, and the 
 subjects of Inlays 
 became less per- 
 sonal and parti- 
 san than hitherto. 
 The scenes and 
 incidents of pri- 
 vate life — its fol- 
 lies, its misdi- 
 rected loves, its grotesque adventures — are sub- 
 stituted for the weightier vices of society. Social 
 intrigue, plot and counterplot, the knave, the 
 fool, the coxcomb — such are the materials and 
 characters of that New Comedy, which, pre- 
 vailing to the times of Alexander, was trans- 
 ferred to Rome and became the model of in- 
 vention in the works of Plautus and Terence. 
 
 After the age of Homer and Hcsiod, cen- 
 turies elapsed before even the beginnings of a 
 prose literature appeared in Hellas. The ear 
 of generation after generation was filled with 
 the rhythmic cadences of the bards ere the 
 project of giving a literary dress to the com- 
 mon language of life was conceived or imag- 
 ined. Perhaps, when at last the suggestion 
 of doing so was entertained, it was with a 
 certain dread lest the sacred mystery of letters 
 should be profaned by the unhallow-ed iougue 
 of prose. To the courageous and versatile 
 lonians must be awarded the palm for break- 
 ing the poetic spell and daring to couiniit to 
 record their traditions and reflections in the 
 natural language of history and philosophy. ' 
 
 Perhaps tlie first prose work produced by a 
 member of the Hellenic race was a history of 
 the founding of Miletus, written by the Ionian 
 Cadmus, a native of that city. After him, a 
 school of legendary chroniclers grew up iu the 
 Greek cities of Asia Minor. Some of them 
 were travelers. They put down in prose
 
 474 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 -Vixuiiti. 
 
 ■what things soever they saw and heard abroad. 
 Others rewrote the rhapsodies and legends of 
 the bards, hut their work was childish and 
 unworthy to survive. , 
 
 Then came the great Herodotus, justly 
 styled the Father of History. He was born 
 in Halicarnassus, in the year B. C. 484. He 
 was a Dorian by descent and an Ionian by 
 education. His merit con- 
 sists in this, that he, first 
 of the great minds of the 
 Aryan race, perceived that 
 history should be strijjped 
 of poetic disguises, and yet 
 given an artistic and phil- 
 osophic form in the lan- 
 guage of common life. He- 
 rodotus had the genius of 
 the traveler, the curiosity 
 of an antiquarian, the in- 
 dustry of an artisan. He 
 sought companionship with 
 the literati of foreigr\ cities. 
 He stored his mind with records of the East. 
 He reflected not a little upon the nature and 
 causes of events, and thus fitted himself for 
 historical authorship to a degree not to be ex- 
 pected of his age. He selected for a theme 
 the great struggle between his country and 
 Persia. As his narrative proceeds and he 
 finds himself in contact with other nations, he 
 pauses with a natural grace to recount their 
 annals, their customs, their traditions, their 
 laws. Garrulous ? Granted ; but such gar- 
 rulity! Would that the primitive world had 
 produced more such charming gossips! To 
 spare the one were to lose the quaintest monu- 
 ment of ancient literature. 
 
 After him came the philosophic Thucydides. 
 He selected for his theme the then recent 
 Peloponnesian war. He thus secured a unity 
 of subject for which we should look in vain 
 in the work of the Father of History. Edu- 
 cated in the political school of Pericles, under 
 the full influence of the sophists and rhetori- 
 cians of Athens, by nature of a calm tempera- 
 ment, in which reason predominated over 
 imagination, Thucydides came to his task 
 fully equipped, both in himself and his dis- 
 cipline. True, his language is sometimes heavy 
 
 and not always perspicuous. True, that 
 many of his periods are inartistic and un- 
 musical; but his is the history of reason and 
 truth, ihe story is told without passion and 
 with but few touches of prejudice. It is a 
 story as if told by an impartial statesman who 
 reviews with great breadth of vision and im- 
 partial judgment one of the most momentous 
 epochs in the history of his people. The Pel- 
 oponnesian war thus found an expositor equal 
 in greatness to itself. 
 
 Then came Xenophon — charming story- 
 teller of the Athenians. In qualities of mind 
 he was inferior to Thucydides. He had 
 neither the elevated views nor the unbiased 
 judgment of his predecessor. He was withal 
 something of an adventurer. Out of sym- 
 pathy with his own city and state, he drifted 
 to the Spartans. As one of the leaders of a 
 band of mercenary soldiers, he accepts pay 
 from Cyrus the Younger and goes with that 
 ambitious prince against Darius. He writes 
 the Retreat of ihe Ten Thousand, and after- 
 wards the Memorabilia of Socrates. His style 
 is above reproach, and displays the capabilities 
 of the Attic tongue at its best estate. The 
 purity of his diction gave him a reputation 
 with his countrymen above the intrinsic 
 merits- of his works. As a model of Attic 
 Greek, the Anahash of Xenophon will ever 
 hold a leading place; as a history it takes 
 rank with the military records of Caesar's 
 GalUc War. 
 
 Then came Oratory — a necessary concom- 
 itant of the political freedom 
 of the Greeks. The progress 
 of Athens from an aristocracy 
 to a democracy made public 
 speech a prerequisite of leader- 
 ship. The greatest debaters 
 of the world were Athenian 
 citizens, interested in the af- 
 fairs of the commonwealth; 
 advocates, partisans ; men who 
 espoused one side of a ques- 
 tion with a passionate zeal that 
 displaced all other considera- 
 tions and made life a burden until the passion 
 was liberated in utterance. From this it should 
 not be inferred that all the Greek orators were 
 
 THTCYDroES.— Vi» 
 
 conti.
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 476 
 
 men of vehement manner in public address. 
 In this respect there were two classes of speakers; 
 the one represented hy Pi ricles, who in deliv- 
 
 ery was calm and deliberate, using no gestures- 
 and exhibiting few marked changes of coun- 
 tenance; and the other by Demosthenes^ 
 
 UJiKODOTUo RKADING Ills lllsmilY To TlIE ASSEMBLKD GKEKKS. 
 Drawn by U. Leutcmaiiii.
 
 171 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 •whose fiery impetuositj' and rapidity of utter- 
 ance were the marvel of his age. 
 
 It has been disputed whether oratory is 
 properly a division of literature. Be that as 
 •it may, certain it is that the orator, being by 
 profession a man of affairs, is more intimately 
 involved with the current of public life, and 
 is therefore more properly a part of the secu- 
 lar history of his country than is the man of 
 letters. It thus becomes proper to consider 
 the orator and his work in connection with 
 the civil and military affau'S of the state 
 rather than in a sketch of the national litera- 
 ture. This method wUl here be followed, and 
 the account of Pericles, jEschines, Demosthe- 
 nes, and the other great exemplars of Greek 
 oratory, will be reserved for a future chapter 
 where their relations to the state will sug- 
 gest approisriate notices of their lives and 
 influence. 
 
 Passing, then, to the consideration of the 
 Art of the Hellenes we find materials of the 
 profoundest interest. Long before the strug- 
 gles of the Heroic Age awaked the conscious 
 powers of the Greeks there had been in 
 Hellas an epoch of art. A people had lived 
 there who built structures as imperishable as 
 those of Nineveh and Jlemphis. Of this sort 
 may be mentioned the ancient reservoirs at 
 Orchomenus in Boeotia, the so-called Cyclo- 
 pean walls of Tiryns, and the massive ruins 
 which have recently been uncovered by 
 ■Schliemaon at Mycense. All of these are 
 prehistoric and all exhibit unmistakable proof 
 •of the architectural skill of some primitive 
 people who dwelt in Hellas before the age of 
 the Hellenes. The citadel of Agamemnon 
 and the Gate of Lions at Mycense seem to 
 •establish the fact of an organized community, 
 swayed by arbitrary authority, primitive but 
 ekillful, at a period long anterior to that in 
 whicli the Greeks began the record of their 
 own career as a people. There is thus in 
 •Greek art a mythical period corresponding to 
 the age of fable and tradition. WTiile thf. 
 Hellenes were stiU in the shadows of legcj.d 
 and myih, nconumeuts were reared in Argo- 
 lis and Boeotia, whose presence was an enigma 
 to the Greeks themselves, and the interpretation 
 ■of which has been the puzzle of antiquarians. 
 
 The ruins of Mycente are primitive in 
 structure. They are massive and peculiar. 
 In the building of what is thought to have 
 been the treasure-house of the king of the 
 people, much artistic skill is displayed. In 
 the center of solid masonry of hewn stone is 
 a conical vault, the arch being produced by 
 the narrowing of successive layers. The 
 stones were formerly lined with plates of 
 bronze, as were also the ornaments on the 
 outside of the vault. The plates were ham- 
 mered, aud were held to their place on the 
 face of the stone with rivets. Within this 
 treasure-house Schliemann discovered vessels 
 and utensils of gold, evidently belonging 
 to a royal period in the history of some prim- 
 itive race. 
 
 After this epoch most ancient in the art 
 of Hellas several centuries passed with no 
 development. It was an age of shadows, 
 perhaps of decline. Not untU the times just 
 preceding the Persian wars was there the 
 dawn of the true day of the art of the Greeks. 
 Of the sixth century B. C. only a single tem- 
 ple has been preserved ; but of the following 
 hundred years the great columnar edifices of 
 Selinus, Agrigentum, and Prestum remain as 
 immortal monuments of the age. 
 
 The nucleus of the Greek temple was the 
 cella, where stood the statue of the deity. In 
 the earliest times the statue was set in a grove ; 
 the thought of protection from the elements 
 suggested the erection of a covering. The 
 temple may thus be regarded as the house of 
 the statue rather than the house of the god. 
 At first the structure was no more than four 
 walls inclosing a cell, with a roof to shelter 
 the image. Then came elaboration. Columns 
 were erected, first in front, and then on all 
 four sides, and on the tops of these were 
 placed the entablature. With the growth of 
 artistic design the original idea of the temple 
 was in a measure obscured. In the great 
 structures of the classic age only faint reminis- 
 cences of the primeval edifice were pre^°.rved. 
 
 The origin of columns can never peia.ips 
 be ascertained. Long before Greece was 
 Greece, tha columnar structure had been em- 
 ployed in Egypt and in parts of the East. 
 In the migration of the Hellenes from the'»
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 477 
 
 Asiatic home they hrouglit with them a 
 knowledge of i)illared structure. It was uot 
 so much, therefore, as inventors ■ that the 
 Ionian and Dorian Greeks produced their 
 respective styles of column, but rather as 
 improvers and beautifiers of what already 
 existed in a ruder and less perfect form. Side 
 by .side the two columnar styles appeared in 
 the Hellenic architecture — the Doric and the 
 Ionic — each perfect in its kind— each capa- 
 ble of the grandest effects known to the 
 builder's art. 
 
 In their general structure the two orders of 
 temple dittered but little. The grounil-plau 
 and design in both were the same. AValled 
 terraces -were first constructed lifting the edi- 
 fice above the profane level of its surround- 
 ings. Upon the platform thus produced the 
 temple proper was reared. Around the cella 
 were the four walls, and around these those 
 sublime colonnades of fluted j)illars which 
 have remained the admiration of all after 
 ages. The covered space of the Greek temple 
 was thus greatly extended beyond the rectan- 
 gle of the walls. On the capitals rested a 
 decorated impost. This consisted of three 
 parts: the architrave, the frieze, and the cor- 
 nice. The roof rose over all in a gentle slope, 
 presenting at each end a triangular space, 
 called the tympanum. Upon this were set 
 those immortal sculptures the parallel of 
 which has never been seen in the world. 
 
 The interior space of the classic temple 
 was lighted from above by an opening in 
 the roof, called the hijpalthnm. In the back- 
 ground of this single hall stood the statue of 
 the god to whom the edifice was dedicated. 
 In some instances, when the temjile was of 
 great si/.e, the inner space was divided by 
 transverse rows of columns, and thesfe stood 
 sometimes one row above the other, forming 
 a gallery around the hall. Such was the ar- 
 rangement in the great temple of Neptune at 
 Pjestum. 
 
 Not every thing in temple decoration 
 was left to the artist's chisel, but much to 
 the |>airitcr's brush. C'ohiiun, impost, gable, 
 and iciliug were all artistically colored. In 
 strength and brilliancy of hue the pigments 
 employed by the Greek painters of this age 
 
 surpassed all rivalry. Whatever the brightest 
 and richest tints of blue and gold and crim- 
 son could do to set the temple in a blaze of 
 glory, radiant as the sunshine of the Grecian 
 sky, that was added by the decorative skill of 
 the artist to the already sublime work of the 
 builder and the sculptor. Both the Doric and 
 Ionic temples were thus improved with the 
 beautiful effects of color deftly laid on under 
 the guidance of the keenest artistic per- 
 ception. 
 
 In Asia Minor and the -lEgean islands the 
 Ionic style of structure prevailed over the 
 Doric, but in Athens and throughout Hellas 
 Proper both styles flourished together. As 
 already said, the two differed in the column — ■ 
 not in the general character of the edifice. 
 The Doric pillar was imposing, massive. It 
 gave a solemn grandeur to the building of 
 which it was the principal feature. It added 
 an air of seriousness and solidity. It was 
 plain to une last degree of severity. It was 
 baseless and virtually without a capital, hav- 
 ing only a massive, circular disk upon the 
 top to support the architrave. The diameter 
 of the pillar was so great as to shorten its ap- 
 parent height ; the shaft tapered but little ; 
 it stood calmly in the repose of infinite 
 strength. The Ionic column, on the other 
 hand, was the pillar of beauty. Its height 
 was augmented by the slender and tapering 
 shaft. Elegance and grace and delicacy added 
 each her charm to this fluted dream of Greek 
 architecture. The Ionic pillar rose on a beau- 
 tiful pedestal and was crowned with a capital 
 ornate and airy. It was the poetry, as the 
 Doric was the prose, of the magnificent tem- 
 ples of Greece. 
 
 Of such grand structures almost every 
 Greek city could make its boast. These were 
 the splendid edifices which were laid in ruins 
 by the Persians. These were the grand struc- 
 tures which rose again with added beauty in 
 the age of Pericles, when Grecian civilization 
 shone with its richest luster. Then it waa 
 that the Acropolis became the seat of the 
 guardian gods of the land, and was adorned 
 as no other hill of the world. Tcmjiles and 
 statues, the work of the best artists over pro- 
 duced by the race of man, shone att. over
 
 478 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 land and sea from the classical and splendid 
 brow of Athens. 
 
 Now was finished the Erechtheum, the 
 great Ionic shrine of the gods of the people. 
 On the site of the ancient temple of Athene 
 the architect Ictinus erected the magical 
 Parthenox, the ideal of Doric grandeur, 
 which the genius of Phidias adorned with a 
 wealth of art never equaled before or after- 
 wards. The Propyl.ea were built by Mue- 
 sicles— beautiful colonnades surmounting 
 broad flights of marble steps by which the 
 Acropo2is was ascended. 
 
 should be honored with the name oi. preser- 
 vation. The masterpieces of Plynotus, of 
 Zeuxis, of Apelles have sunk into oljlivion ; 
 only their imperishable fame, transmitted by 
 the foreign robbers who despoiled Greece of 
 her treasures, has remained of what were 
 doubtless the greatest achievements of the 
 human genius displaying its powers on can- 
 vas. All that we can ever hope for is to see 
 faintly reflected in the painting of Hercula- 
 na;um and Pompeii the borrowed glories of 
 the pencils of the Greeks. 
 
 We are not, however, left wholly in the 
 
 Thotis. Achilles. Eos. 31 
 
 GREEK AFT.— FIGHT OF ACHILLES AND MEMNON. 
 From an Archaio Vnse. Berlin. 
 
 The Age of Pericles was the climax of 
 Grecian architecture. The Peloponnesiau 
 war and the wild career of the democracy in 
 Athens were unfavorable to further develop- 
 ■■nent, even if further development had been 
 ^ ossible. The same great age witm^ssed also 
 the highest achievements of the chisel and 
 the brush. The art of the painter followed 
 that of the buijder. Unfortunately for the 
 world the work of the former was less sub- 
 stantial than that of the latter. Not a single 
 piece cf Greek painting belonging to the 
 periodof developmentandgreatestexcellence 
 has been preserved, unless indeed the tradi- 
 tions and reproductions of the Roman artists 
 
 dark as to the actual power of the Grecian 
 paintersinthe adaptation of color and design. 
 Though every canvas of the great masters has 
 perished, there yet remain the decorated vases 
 of Athens and Corinth. From these we are 
 able to determine with some degree of satis- 
 faction and within the narrow limits of dei- 
 orative art the skill in color and design dis- 
 played by the artists, or more properly the 
 handicraftsmen, of Greece. In these works 
 we see, as in other branches of the industry 
 of genius, a gradual development from the 
 mere linear decoration of the primitive pot- 
 tery to the highly artistic designs of the class- 
 ical period, when the figures of men and l)irds
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 and beasts are given with the best effects of 
 ceramic art. 
 
 Of the great painters of Greece more is 
 known than of their works. Pi.ygnotus, who 
 flourished from B. C. 475 to 455, is regarded 
 as the first of the ma.stcrs. By him many of 
 the public buildings of Athens were adorned 
 with elaborate frescoes and splendid panels. 
 He it was who is said to have jjainted Polyx- 
 ena with such expressiveness of countenance 
 that the whole Trojan ivar Jiaslied from her eyes! 
 
 Then came Zeuxis and ParrhjVSIus. The 
 first painteii grapes which deceived the birds, 
 
 But the greatest painter of the Greeks waa 
 Apelles, the court artist of Alexander the 
 Great. He was an Ionian by birth, who fol- 
 lowed the traditions of the Sicyoniau School. 
 He began his career in portraiture, and so 
 great was his fame that Alexander would per- 
 mit no other to paint him. The generals of 
 the Conqueror and the beloved Campaspe 
 were also the subjects of his art. From por- 
 traiture he proceeded to mythological themes, 
 and in these achieved the highest honors. 
 His masterpiece was a picture of Venm Rising 
 from the Sea, executed with such wonderful 
 
 n-'i'-ii. Menelaos. 
 
 GREEK ART.— CAPTURE OF HELEN OF TROY. 
 From an Archaic Vase, Berlin. 
 
 and the other a curtain which deceived Zeuxis! 
 Athens applauded the achievements of her 
 favorite arti.sty, and wealth ])()ur('(l her treasure 
 into their laps. TiriiMANUs also shared their 
 fame. He it wa.s wlm in his Sacrifice of Iph- 
 igeiiia, unable to depict as he would t-bf* irrief 
 of the fatlier, ilrnr ,i r,-il oiw hi.tftic>\ and left 
 the rest to tliought. This great artist belonged 
 to what is known as the Sieyonian Seliool, 
 and to a time subseijuent to the age of Pericles. 
 Fausias, also, was a member of this group. 
 He liad the reputation of possessing great 
 realistic jxiwers and extraordinary genius iu 
 the art of foreshortening. 
 
 sweetness and delicacy as to surpass all com- 
 petition. 
 
 From the age of Apelles painting declined 
 until its glory was extinguished with the glory 
 of Hellas by the conquest of the country by 
 the Romans. Nevertheless, in the period b.e- 
 tween the time of Alexander and the final 
 destruction of Greek nationality, many artists 
 flourished who under more favorable circum- 
 stances would have done honor to their coun- 
 try. Such was Protogenes of Rhodes and 
 the realistic Theon, whose picture of the 
 Swordiman gave him merited fame. 
 
 But the chisel of Hellas surpassed her
 
 480 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 pencil. The plastic art of the Greek rose to 
 a pitch of excellence which pictorial repre- 
 sentation never could attain. Whatever com- 
 petition the painters of modern times — notably 
 those of the fifteenth and the sixteenth cen- 
 tury — may claim with the painters of Greece, 
 competition with the Greek sculptors there is 
 and can be none. It is safe to set the names 
 of Phidias and Praxiteles in a category by 
 themselves ; for none others have to an equal 
 degree won the admiration of mankind. Like 
 the painting of the Greeks, sculpture followed 
 in the wake of the useful arts. Literary 
 culture preceded it. Only when refinement 
 and leisure had been attained by the indus- 
 trial pursuits, only when war had aroused and 
 poetry had soothed the spirit of Hellas, did she 
 begin to give form to fancv and make her 
 thought imperishable in marble. 
 
 FIFTY OAREI' i;KKKK BOAT. 
 
 From a vase. 
 
 Sculpture had its rude beginnings. The 
 early Greek exercised his skill in carving 
 wood and hammering metal. The art of cast- 
 ing in bronze, said to have been first practiced 
 by two Samians, Rhoicus and Theodoeus, 
 also preceded the carving of stone. At the first 
 sculpture was employed almost exclusively for 
 temple decoration, but it was not long in 
 being freed from such thraldom. The human 
 form became the model. The gymnasia had 
 taught the lesson of natural modesty, and im- 
 parted to the naked body all the exquisite 
 grace and beauty of which it is susceptible. 
 To reach out after this ideal of loveliness was 
 the passion which seized the sculptors of 
 Greece and gave them inspiration. So, be- 
 ginning in ^gina, a class of artists arose who 
 with consummate skill began to chisel in 
 stone the beautiful lineaments of the human 
 form. 
 
 At the first there was much that was 
 rude and conventional, but the artist more 
 
 and more threw ofi" his fetters, untU, by the 
 middle of the fifth century, perfect freedom 
 had been achieved. Then Myron and Poly- 
 CLETtrs arose, the one with his great works in 
 bronze, and the other with his beautiful mar- 
 bles. Myron it was who produced the Ladas, 
 a victor in a foot race who died at the goal. 
 The last gasp is on his lips. He pants. He 
 is dead. The masterpieces of Polycletes were 
 the Donjphor-us, a young and beautiful spear- 
 man ; the Diadmnemm, a boyish figure, bound 
 as to his brows with a wreath of flowers ; and 
 the Canephoroe, or maidens with their baskets. 
 Phidias was the chief glory of the admin- 
 istration of Pericles. To him was committed 
 the work of making the Parthenon sublime. 
 From his studio went forth trophy after trophy 
 to adorn the crowning glory of the Acropolis. 
 Indeed, it is not conceivable that one mind 
 
 should have de- 
 signed, much less 
 one hand executed, 
 the multitude of 
 works which are 
 ascribed to Phidias. 
 It is more likely 
 that a group of 
 great artists, work- 
 ing under his direction and inspiration, con- 
 tributed in keenest rivalry the wonderful dec- 
 orations of the Parthenon. A description of 
 the separate pieces would occupy a chapter. 
 Around the cella was a frieze four huudred 
 feet in length covered with bas-reliefs. The 
 metopes were occupied with ninety-two sculp- 
 tures representing the Combats of the Centaurs. 
 The work on the frieze presents the great 
 procession of the Panathemea—a. living pano- 
 rama of the scenes which appealed most 
 strongly to the imagination of the Greeks. 
 
 In statuary proper Phidias, if possible, sur- 
 passed the sublimity of his reliefs. His statues 
 of Athene and the Olympian Zens were re- 
 garded as the master works of antiquity— the 
 latter being classified as one of the Seven 
 Wonders of the world. Both this and the 
 Athene were done in that magnificent style 
 of art called chryselephantine, that is, wrought in 
 ivory and gold. It was a revival and glorifi- 
 cation of one of the most ancient artistic
 
 GREECE.— LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 
 
 481 
 
 methods known to the Greeks, namely, the 
 overkiyiiig of a statue with hammered plates 
 of metal. But the rude works of the primi- 
 tive artists gave but little prophecy of the 
 splendors of which this style was capable in 
 the hands of a Phidias. To him also was at- 
 tributed the famous group of Niobe — that 
 mother of anguish, smitten by the gods for 
 her maternal pride. 
 
 After Phidias, Praxiteles stands highest 
 among the sculptors of the Greeks. His 
 
 this artist that Alexander would be modeled 
 by no other. His most famous work is the 
 A2)oxyomenos, now in the Vatican Museum. 
 After the time of Lysippus two schools of 
 sculpture arose, the one having its seat in 
 Pergamon and the other in Rhodes. The 
 artists of these schools followed and imitated 
 their predecessors; but their works in many 
 instances exhibited original force directed by 
 the hand of genius. The Pergamine sculptors 
 were specially noted for the realistic effects at 
 
 PHIDIAS IN HIS STUDY. 
 
 theme was pa.'«ionate love. Venus was his 
 ideal. In five statues lie gave her the form of 
 marble. His Aphrodiie Kn'ulo* is preserveti — 
 in a copy — iu the museum at Munich.' 
 
 At the head of the sculptors of the time 
 of Alexander the Great stood Lvsiprus. He 
 introduced a new quality into statuary — that 
 of an ideal refinement upon nature. His 
 works show a delicacy in liud) and member 
 which could hardly be equaled in those of any 
 other master. So great was the reputation of 
 
 'The TVnits of Melon, by an unknown artist, be- 
 longs to this pericKl, and is regiinle<i as jxir excelknce 
 the most beautiful piece of Grecian sculpture. 
 
 which they aimed in their productions, many 
 of which are wonderful in fidelity. Such ia 
 the celebrated piece representing a dying 
 Gaul in the Roman amphitheater — a work 
 which evoked from the genius of Byron one 
 of his finest stanzas : 
 "I see before me the gladiator lie; 
 
 He leans upon his luind — his manly brow 
 Consents to death, hut conquers agony. 
 
 And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 
 
 And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
 From the red gash, fall heax*}-, one by one. 
 
 Like the first of a tlnindcr-shower ; and now 
 The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
 Ere cea.sed the inhunuui shout which hailed 1ih» 
 wret<-h who won."
 
 182 
 
 UNIVERSAL HIHTORY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Of the Rhodian school of artists ttie work 
 of greatest merit wliieli has been preserved is 
 the group of the Laocooti, the joint product 
 of the three sculptors, Agesandros, Athana- 
 DORUS, and Polydorus. This celebrated piece 
 and the Dying Gladiator, just described, stand 
 
 j)ruductions of Grecian chisels down to the 
 time when the freedom of Hellas was extin- 
 guished by the Romans. From that time 
 forth, though the love of art continued, no 
 artists arose to rival the great masters who had 
 flourished before the days of spoliation and 
 
 THE PARTHENON RESTORED.— Finished 438 B. C. 
 
 in the museum of the Vatican at Rome. A 
 second work of Rhodian art, almost as cele- 
 brated as the Laocoon, is the group of the 
 Famese Bull, representing the binding of 
 Dirke to a wild bull by Amphion and Zethus. 
 It is the joint product of the sculptors Apol- 
 LONHJS and Taukiscus. Such were the last 
 
 servitude. It became the policy of Rome, 
 however, to foster for her own glory the 
 genius of the Greeks; and under her liberal 
 patronage were produced not a few ' of the 
 celebrated sculptures to be hereafter noticed, 
 such as the ApoUo Belvedere and the Venus de 
 Medid. 
 
 CHAFO^ER XXXIX.— IVIANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 HE life of the Greeks was 
 preeminently a life of 
 publicity. At day-break 
 the people rose and went 
 forth. Having broken 
 his fast with some bread 
 dipped in wine, the citi- 
 zen sought the open place to take his part in 
 the busy scene of public and private affairs. 
 Even before this early hour the country folk 
 had arisen and made their way to the markets. 
 In the marts were exposed the products of 
 the field and the garden. Here were vegeta- 
 
 bles and fruit and milk and honey. At the 
 fountains were seen the water-carriers hurry- 
 ing to and fro with their pitchers. The arti- 
 sans and shopkeepers soon thronged the streets, 
 and the city hummed with the noise of indus- 
 try. Nor should the troops of boys hurrying 
 to school be forgotten as an interesting feature 
 of the life that filled the streets of Athens at 
 early morning. 
 
 The public market of the city was a scene 
 of hurry and, withal, of hilarity; for the 
 Athenians were never morose. The buildings 
 stood in the center of town, where the prin-
 
 GREECE.— MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 48S 
 
 cipal streets crossed, affording ready entrance 
 from all directious. Instead of the low booths 
 which iu modern cities so often pass i'or market- 
 houses, the Greeks gave to their buildings 
 used for this purpose much care, both in 
 structure and ornamentation. The place was 
 not only a market but a public promenade, 
 where friend met friend, exchanged the usual 
 civilities of life, and discussetl the affairs of 
 the state. 
 
 In the different apartments of the market 
 the various products were exposed, each after its 
 kind. Some sold wine; others, fruits; others, 
 peas and lentils; others, flowers. For the 
 Oreeks never banqueted uutil they had 
 wreathed themselves with flowers. It was the 
 «stheticism of a natural civilization. The 
 flower-girls of the Greek market-place were 
 many times made the subjects of the painter's 
 brush and the sculptor's chi^^el. 
 
 Not only were the daily needs of the people 
 supplied from the market, but around this 
 eauare of the city were arranged the prineiind 
 buildings belonging to the other vocations: 
 shops of artisijus, physicians' stjUls, artists' 
 studios, places for loungers and gossips. Here 
 the witty assembled. Here the doctors dis- 
 coursed on the art of healing. Here Hip- 
 pocrates prescribed for his patients. Here 
 the popular satirist made the physician smart 
 with his puns and epigrams. Of Dr. Hermas 
 the bitter rogue said : 
 
 " Diophantes, sleeping, saw, 
 Hermas, tlie pliysician : 
 Dioiihaiites never woke 
 
 From that fatjil vision ! " 
 
 Around tlic market were also gathered 
 clowns and showmen, sellers of amulets and 
 charms, venders of nostrums and ointments. 
 In another part were the money-changers and 
 bankers, domestic nu-rchants and importers of 
 foreign goods. The money-changers were the 
 notaries who aut'nenticated documents and 
 certified the validity of contracts. Thev re- 
 ceived deposit.-*, charged commissions, issued 
 checks and drafts. Before their benches were 
 frequently seen many of the wealthiest citi- 
 zens of the state. 
 
 The great majority of those who plied vo- 
 cations in the Greek market were men. The 
 N. — Vol. I — 30 
 
 exceptions were in the case of the sellers of 
 bread and flowers. These branches were man- 
 aged by women and girls. The ladies of 
 Athens went not to market. But of men — 
 old men, youths, striplings — all classes were 
 here congregated from day to day. Here 
 Socrates walked with his demure visage and 
 far-seeing eyes. Here Diogenes carried his 
 lantern. Here came the frivolous dandy with 
 his new suit and cane. Only the public 
 officers, who during market hours were engaged 
 elsewhere in administrative duties, and the 
 artisans plying their vocations, were not seen 
 in the noisy but witty crowds about the public 
 market. 
 
 There is little doubt that several traits of 
 Athenian character — its rage for discussion, 
 its whimsicality, its madness for politics — were 
 in some measure traceable to the life of the 
 market-place. Here grew and was stimulated 
 that tendency to extremes for which the 
 Greelcs have been so much marked by soberer 
 peoples. They were capable within the brief- 
 est period of feeling and exhibiting the highest 
 pitch of enthusiasm and the lowest ebb of 
 despondency. In the market one spirit fired 
 a thousand. There bad news quenched hi- 
 larity and sent all to their homes in despair. 
 
 'ilie citizens of Athens — and Athens is 
 typical of all the free cities of Greece— were 
 a populace. It was the native soil of the 
 demagogue, the sycophant, the statesman. 
 Whether a man would be one or the other de- 
 pended upon his character and genius. Polit- 
 ical parties could but flourish here. Athena 
 was a lawyers' camp. Broils and litigation 
 were the necessary results of that type of free- 
 dom which was claimed by the primitive 
 democracy. 
 
 So vast was the activity and so keen the 
 litigious instincts of the Athenians, that in the 
 heyday of the city's power a fourth or fifth 
 of her people attended court every day ! 
 Aristophanes, in his comedy of the Birds, de- 
 clares that the cicada sings for a month, but 
 that the Athenians buzz with lawsuits to the 
 end of their lives. The satirist then makes 
 two Athenians, tired out with the unceasing 
 contentions of their city, go on high and found 
 another commonwealth in the clouds. But
 
 464 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 scarcely was the new city organized until the 
 Athenian lawyers and sycophants rose in a 
 flock and went to it ! 
 
 While Athens remained under the aris- 
 tocracy, courts were organized in ten different 
 quarters of the city. When the government 
 took on the democratic form, the judicial 
 power fell into the hands of the whole hody 
 of the citizens. From all who were over 
 thirty years of age six thousand were drawn 
 by lot to act as jurymen. Of these one thou- 
 sand were drawn out as talesmen. The re- 
 maining five thousand were divided into ten 
 sections, and each section was assigned to hear 
 causes in one of the ten judicial districts of 
 the city. Except on the occasion of public 
 festivals and holidays, these courts sat every 
 day in the year. High benches were arranged 
 for each of the great juries, and on a lower 
 level in front was the arena where the suitors 
 and their advocates appeared ,n the trial. 
 
 The proceedings were always public, and 
 were attended by great throngs, who were anx- 
 ious to witness what was done, and especially to 
 hear the pleadings. The courts indeed were 
 much more attended than was the Pnyx, where 
 four times a year were held the meetings of 
 the great assembly. The fee which was paid 
 for presence at court was larger than that 
 which was given for going to the Puyx, and 
 for this reason the magistrates had to adopt 
 -the measure of fining in order to secure 
 attendance at the latter. Sometimes a rope 
 smeared with red paint was stretched across 
 the street and carried rapidly forward with a 
 hustling crowd in front ; for whoever was 
 touched with the paint wa.s punished with a 
 fine. A suificient crowd could thus be ob- 
 tained to attend to the legislative affairs of 
 the city. When the people were assembled 
 on the terraces of the Pnyx and order had 
 been secured by the bailiffs and policemen, 
 any citizen might pi-opose a measure and 
 secure, if he could, its adoption. Any one 
 might address the assembly foi or against the 
 proposed measure, and in doing so the speaker 
 wore a crown as a badge of inviolability. So 
 great was the concession to freedom of speech ! 
 
 The edicts of the public ass<=Tably were 
 carried into effect by the Bmde, or Council, a 
 
 body of five hundred citizens, to whom was 
 committed the execution of the laws. The 
 meetings of this body were held in the Bouleu- 
 terium, a pul)lic building situated between the 
 Acropolis and the market-space. The Council 
 was divided iuto ten sections of fifty members 
 each, aud each section was assigned its turn 
 in duty by lot. It was before this Boule or 
 Great Council that the international affairs of 
 Greece were transacted. It had control in 
 general of foreign affairs. It received amba* 
 sadors aud made treaties. To be a member 
 of this august body was the highest civil dig- 
 nity to which an Athenian might aspire ; and 
 yet so complete was the reign of democracy 
 that any one, however humble, might hope 
 for a seat in the Bouleuterium. So great was 
 the difference between the freedom of Greece 
 and the absolutism of the oriental monarchies! 
 
 In entering the domain of the private life 
 of the Greeks what first strikes the attention 
 is their hospitality. It was a fundamental 
 principle with the Hellenes that the stranger 
 should be entertained. Though he were an 
 enemy, Zeus Xenios required that he be re- 
 ceived in a hospitable manner. No question 
 might be asked of the stranger who came unan- 
 nounced. He might take his seat at the board, 
 and should be served with the best. After he 
 had eaten and drank, his nativity and mission 
 might be inquired. From the days of Homer 
 the guest was received with courtesy. He 
 was given a bath. Food and drink were 
 placed before him. Servants attended to his 
 comfort. A couch was spread in the hall. 
 He rested. He went his way in peace. 
 
 With- a development of Greek society, how- 
 ever, there was a necessary curtailment of pa- 
 triarchal hospitality. Travel for travel's sake 
 became more common, the demands upon so 
 cial bounty more numerous. StUl there never 
 was a time when hospitality ceased to be the 
 rule. There was something iu the nature of 
 the Greek analogous to what is seen in the 
 modern Parisian. He was sociable. By pref- 
 erence he ate not alone. He either invited 
 others or was himself entertained. He could 
 not endure solitude. Life with him was de- 
 fined as an opportunity to talk ; and the best 
 of life was with a group of friends at the table.
 
 GREECE.— MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 4S6 
 
 In the earlier times the Greeks lived fru- 
 gally. The fare of the Homeric heroes was 
 of the plainest. The meats were the flesh of 
 the domestic auimals roasted on spits. Home- 
 made bread was pa.sscd from liand to hand. 
 Nor did the ancient Hellenes, like the glut- 
 tons of Rome, eat to repletion and satiety. 
 With the development of the means of living 
 greater variety was introduced. Poultry and 
 game were added to the meats. Fish and 
 cheese liccame staple articles of food. Oys- 
 ters and crabs and Boeotian eels came to be 
 regarded as delicacies on the tables of the 
 rich. Most of the vegetables peculiar to the 
 north temperate zone where it slopes towards 
 the tropics were abundantly served. Then 
 came the wines, of which the variety and qual- 
 ities produced from the vintages of Hellas 
 and the Cyclades were superior to those of 
 any contemporaneous country. 
 
 As a rule the preparation of the feast was 
 intrusted to the supervision of the Greek ma- 
 tron with whom it was a point of honor that 
 her lord and his guests should banquet in 
 good style. Where the feast was of such 
 proportions as to become a public reception 
 rather than a private meal, the services of 
 professional cooks were procured for the occa- 
 sion. Though woman was then, as ever, the 
 presiding genius of the preparation, she was 
 allowed no place at the board. W^hen, how- 
 ever, there were no invited guests, the hus- 
 band frequently dined with his wife in the 
 gymeconilis or woman's apartment of the 
 house. 
 
 At nearly every meal, however, friends were 
 invited ; for in the gymnasia and market- 
 place man met man, and the two went to- 
 getiier to dine. Before the meal was begun 
 all the participants carefully prepared them- 
 selves. They bathed. Thoy perfumed them- 
 selves. They put on their best attire. When 
 all W!»s ready, they exchanged salutations. 
 An ode was sung. The table was spread in 
 the andronUis, or the man's hall of the house. 
 The board was adorned with coverings and 
 hangings. Couches were spread ; for the 
 Greeks reclined at the feast. The left arm 
 rested on a cushion. The head was crowned 
 with a cliaplet of flowers. On each couch 
 
 were two guests. The place of honor was 
 next to the host. Each was assigned his 
 place at the board. A slave spread the 
 viands and brought the cups of wine. A 
 spoon was laid before each guest. Plates 
 there were none ; neither knives nor forks. 
 The meats were served already cut into bits, 
 which the eaters took with their fingers. The 
 drinking was reserved for the close. Then 
 the wine was mingled with two or three parts 
 of water : the Greek was by nature too much 
 of an {esthete to drink fire at a banquet. 
 
 The servants of the table were the young- 
 est and handsomest slaves. They crowned 
 the heads of the banqueters with flowers, and 
 garlanded their breasts with myrtle and vio- 
 lets. After the feast came the song and the 
 dance, generally performed by the servants. 
 The guests were many times heated with 
 wines, and not infrequently the feast degen- 
 erated into a revel. It was, however, the 
 excess of nature rather than the deliberately 
 sought intoxication which the drinkers of the 
 North indulged in for the sheer oblivion which 
 followed. To the Greek, delight, exhilaration, 
 exuberance of spirit, the joyous ecstasy" of 
 companionship, the thrill of elevated emotion, 
 the forgetful ness rather than the oblivion of 
 care and dread, — such were the motives of 
 his abandonment to the pleasures of drink. 
 So he and his poets praised the wine. Anac- 
 reon but expressed the common question of 
 the Greek race in one of his odes : 
 
 " Tliirsty earth drinks up the ruin. 
 Trees from earth drink that again. 
 Ocean drinlis the air, the sun 
 Drinks tlie sea, and him the moon. 
 Any reason canst thou tliiuk 
 I should tliirst while all these drink?" 
 
 Such was the power and influence of the 
 Greek feast that the greatest of the philoso- 
 phers and sages forebore not to participate in 
 its pleasures and to praise both it and its 
 memories. So did even Socrates and Plato. 
 When, in B. C. 416, the poet Agathon, on 
 the day after his victory in tragic verse, gave 
 a banquet to his friends, the greatest minds 
 of the ancient world gathered in honor of the 
 occasion ; and 'he feast itself was made thf 
 basis of Plato's Symjwgium, one of the most
 
 486 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 charming pieces of literature whicli ever j^ro- 
 ceeded from that tall spirit.' 
 
 During the night the streets of Athens 
 were in charge of public slaves and police- 
 men. For such offices Scythians were jjre- 
 ferred. Ai-med with their bows and arrows, 
 they patrolled the public places, and muttered 
 broken Greek at the disorderly. About one 
 thousand two hundred of these uncouth 
 guards were nightly encamped on the Areop- 
 agus. Their services were in constant de- 
 mand to check and repress the uproar and 
 riot of the unmanageable crew of young 
 Athenians who poured through the streets in 
 the reckless abandonment of mischief and the 
 not infrequent perpetration of crime. 
 
 The women of the ancient Greeks had 
 more freedom than among any other primitive 
 people ; and they repaid the gift with a 
 munificent contribution of beauty and faith- 
 fulness. Alcestis gives her life as a ransom 
 for her husband's. Antigone follows a father's 
 wretched fortunes with all a daughter's love. 
 Penelope for twenty years longs for her absent 
 lord. What to her are suitors while he is far 
 away? Andromache stands by Hector to the 
 end. Even Helen is the victim of the in- 
 trigue of the immortals rather than the way- 
 ward and guUty wife, insomuch that, after 
 her return to Menelaiis, she is regarded as a 
 true and noble queen. Such was woman in 
 the age of the heroes. 
 
 In the later developments of Greek civiliza- 
 tion woman suffered. She became restricted 
 in her freedom, and lost her ascendency over 
 the minds of men. Perhaps the cliange in 
 her condition and rank may be attributed to 
 the constant encroachments of democracy, 
 which, by making every man a participant in 
 public afiiiirs, while not conceding like pre- 
 rogatives to woman, gradually drew off one 
 of the sexes to the market-square and the 
 Pnyx, there to discuss the many times facti- 
 
 ' It will be remembered that it was at this feast 
 of Agathoii tliat the mad-drunk Alcibiades broke 
 in unbidden, assumed the role of symposiarch, 
 drank a great bowl of wine, put a garland on the 
 big, brain-knotted head of Socrates, and declared 
 that the reason why the old sage was not already 
 drunken was because there was not wine enough 
 in Greece to intoxicate him ! 
 
 tious issues of politics, while at the same timt 
 the other sex was more and more restricted by 
 domestic duties and limited by the horizon of 
 home. It was the pernicious political dis- 
 covery that each of the sexes has a "sphere" — 
 a discovery which has cost the world centuries 
 of retrogression. 
 
 In the Dorian and Jilolian states, most 
 notably in Sparta, the Greek woman came 
 more nearly maintaining her old-time inde- 
 pendence and consequent influence over men 
 and public affairs than in the more highly 
 civilized commonwealths of the lonians. The 
 Spartans continued to make a boast of their 
 women long after the time when the philoso- 
 phers, to say nothing of the politicians, of 
 Athens had come to pass them by with indif- 
 ference. The Spartan mothers retained the 
 old-time flavor of heroism even as long aa 
 they had a country. They reared their sons 
 and gave them to the state. The epitaph of 
 Damaiueta continued to find exemplification 
 among the heroic daughters of that brave 
 land — 
 
 " Eight sons Damaineta to battle sent, 
 , And buried all beneath one monument. 
 No tear she shed for sorrow, but thus spake^ 
 'Sparta, I bore these children for thy sake.' " 
 
 The Ionian women of the classical age 
 were less esteemed for heroic than for femi- 
 nine qualities. The girls were for the most 
 part secluded. On the occasion of public fes- 
 tivals they apjjeared and took part in the 
 songs and dances. They were bred more and 
 more to the indoor than to the outdoor life. 
 Housekeeping, however, was not taught until 
 after marriage. Then the care of the Greek 
 home devolved almost exclusively upon the 
 woman. In tliis relation she came to be dis- 
 prized as something of a drudge. The poeta 
 and wits made her the object of innumerable 
 satires. She was left to her beauty and grace 
 for protection rather than to any chivalrous 
 sentiment among the men. Nevertheless, 
 with these many disadvantages, the women 
 of Attica continued to be ladylike and noble. 
 The Greek was rarely discourteous to his 
 wife. Her modesty and dignity were not 
 often shocked by rude language or base con- 
 duct. Her home was sacred from the iutru
 
 GREECE.— MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 487 
 
 81011 of Strangers, and she was little annoyed 
 by the recklessness of men. 
 
 In the matter of marriage the selection and 
 contract were made by the parents. In mak- 
 ing choice they were influenced not a little 
 by those social considerations which the over- 
 prudent father and mother have in all time 
 been disposed to substitute for the preference 
 of the parties most concerned. The prospec- 
 tive husband was not infrequently obliged to 
 pay the debts of his father-in-law as a condi- 
 tion of betrothal. But 
 as a general rule the 
 selection of the hus- 
 band or wife was made 
 from the circle of 
 friends and according 
 to the wishes of the 
 young people who were 
 to be joined. Domes- 
 tic happiness was, after 
 all, the rule, and social 
 misery the exception, 
 in the households of 
 the Greeks. 
 
 As it respects fidel- 
 ity, the law was very 
 severe with the women 
 and very lax with the 
 men. The discrimina- 
 tion in this regard was 
 BO great that in some 
 stages of Greek society 
 marriage was well-nigh 
 at a discount in the 
 presence of male aban- 
 donment. In the Io- 
 nian cities of Asia 
 
 Minor and the arcliipdago, and more 
 particularly in Corinth and Athens, a large 
 class of women arose known as hdarw, 
 whose lives and influence were opposed 
 to domestic ties and wifehood. Sometimes 
 wotncii of this class were accomplished 
 to the last degree in the culture of their 
 times. Such was Thargelia of Jliletus, who, 
 in her relations with the king of Persia, exer- 
 cised an influence in favor of her country. 
 Such especially Wiis the renowned Aspasia, 
 who by her association with Percles became 
 
 known and respected throughout all Greece. 
 Such were her gifts and genius that both he 
 and Socrates acknowledged their indebtedness 
 to her for lessons in oratory and philosophy. 
 Nor should mention be omitted of Lais, who 
 obtained an ascendency over the cynical spirit 
 of Diogenes. The story of the Boeotian 
 Phryne is well known, whose charms exposed 
 before the judges saved her from sentence of 
 death, and whose beauty was made the in- 
 spiration of Praxiteles when he modeled the 
 
 TYPES OF GREEK WOJIEN. » 
 
 Venus of Kiiidos, and of Apelles, when ho 
 painted the goddess rising from the sea. 
 
 Looking ibr the home of the Greek we 
 find nothing but description. Not a single 
 house of the classical age has been preserved 
 for tiu' inspection of modern times. No Her- 
 cuhineum or Pompeii has laid its contribution 
 of protecting ashes on a Greek town or vil- 
 lage. But the descriptions of the ancient 
 writers are abundant, and from these may be 
 
 ' For types of Men, see " Heroes of the Trojan 
 War," p. 510.
 
 488 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 drawn a fair reproduction of the abodes of 
 the Hellenes. Their houses belonged to the 
 Southern rather than the Northern type of 
 buildings. Instead of one great hall lighted 
 from without and steeply roofed, the house of 
 the South consisted of an iuelosure about a 
 rectangular court, from which the light is ad- 
 mitted into the various apartments. It was a 
 house of this sort in which the Greeks of the 
 Heroic Age made their dwelling. Whether 
 the common abode of the peasant or the 
 palace of the prince the type was the same, 
 the structure being varied merely in its de- 
 tails and adornment. 
 
 The first distinctive feature of the Greek 
 house within was the division into a man's 
 and a woman's department — the andronitis and 
 the gymeconitis. Above the first court was a 
 second or even a third, according to the 
 wealth and ambition of the builder. In vil- 
 lages and other situations where there was 
 abundance of room, the ground-plan was a 
 rectangle about twice as great in length as in 
 breadth, but in cities where space on the 
 streets was valuable the fronts of the houses 
 were narrowed, and the depth and height of 
 the buildings proportionally increased. 
 
 On the outside the houses of the Greeks 
 were generally stuccoed and painted. In the 
 second story front some small windows looked 
 down on the street. Between two columns 
 below was the door, which was guarded by a 
 slave, and was opened at the signal of knocks. 
 Between the door and the street were the 
 apartments of the servants, arranged on either 
 side of a passage. 
 
 The andronitis, or man's hall, was generally 
 surrounded with columns. This apartment 
 occupied the front of the dwelling. Here 
 the man of the house attended to his private 
 affairs, assisted by his steward and servants. 
 Here he prosecuted his studies. Here were 
 his parchments. Here he received and enter- 
 tained his friends. Here was spread the ban- 
 quet — of which an account has already been 
 given. From the andronitis a passage lead- 
 ing to the rear entered the woman's hall or 
 g}'nseconitis, where were arranged the various 
 apartments for the female occupants of the 
 Jiouse. Here the women lodged, washed the 
 
 linen, spun and wove. From these rooms a 
 second passage, closed by a gate, led into the 
 garden in the rear of the dwelling, or into 
 the street if the building extended the whole 
 depth of the square. 
 
 In the center of the whole establishment 
 was the court called the Prostas—a, place 
 sacred to religious devotions. Here stood the 
 famOy altar. Here in the background waa 
 set up the statue of Hestia, the protectress of 
 the hearthstone. Here were celebrated the 
 festivals and anniversaries of the family. 
 Here were offered the sacrifices and vows of 
 religion. Here the marriage was celebrated. 
 Here the new-born child was joyously wel- 
 comed iuto the household. Here at the altar 
 of Hestia was the refuge of the slave and 
 panting fugitive who fled thither for pro- 
 tectlon. 
 
 From the earliest times the Greeks took 
 pride in decorating their houses. Already in 
 the Homeric age ornaments of metal and 
 ivory were beaten or carved for the adorn- 
 ment of the walls and cornice. In the most 
 ancient ruins which have been uncovered — 
 those of Mycenae and Tiryns — the work of 
 decoration is already fully displayed, even in 
 the Treasure-house of Atreus. The work of 
 the hammer and the chisel preceded that of 
 the brush. So far as artistic painting is con- 
 cerned, it was at first restricted to buildings 
 of a public character. Alcibiades is said to 
 have been the first to employ a painter to 
 fresco and ornament his house with artistic 
 figures in color. Afterwards, however, down 
 to the times of Alexander the Great, this 
 kind of decoration grew in fashion, especially 
 in Athens, until all except the poorest houses 
 bore some trace of the artist's skDl. Even 
 Zeuxis was many times called from his studio 
 to honor with his brush the palaces and villas 
 of the wealthy Athenians. 
 
 It is the peculiarity of modern times that 
 mechanical skill has taken the precedence of 
 art. One of the results of this interchange 
 of faculties is the superior elegance and splen- 
 dor of modern furniture as compared with 
 that of antiquity. Still the latter was not 
 wanting in many evidences of artistic taste, 
 and especially in a certain Oriental magnifi-
 
 GREECE.— MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
 
 489 
 
 cence. Of course, the couches and tables of 
 the kings of the East were gorgeous to the 
 last degree, but in democratic Greece the 
 eame class of motives diil not exLst for rich 
 and costly trappings. Here it was merely 
 the gratification of the [esthetic faculties that 
 led to whatever elegance was displayed in the 
 furniture of the Grecian <hvelling. This taste 
 led to a considerable variety of patterns and 
 designs. The chairs, tables, and couches were 
 frequently of costly workmanship. Sometimes 
 the frames were cast of bronze, or when carved 
 of wood were inlaid with silver and ivory. 
 The feet and expo.'^ed parts of the frames of 
 such articles of furniture were generally exe- 
 cuted in imitation of the form of some animal 
 or creature of mythology — the lion's paw, the 
 dolphin's back, the half^leveloped form of a 
 nymph. JIany of the chairs, especially those 
 of the women, were of great elegance, the 
 backs being carved to fit the person, and the 
 4seats laid with ornamented cushions, upon 
 which the deft fingers of the maidens of 
 Greece had exhausted their skill. 
 
 The Greek couch consisted of a kind of 
 • bench for the mattress, guarded at one end 
 -with a head-board, but without a back. Over 
 •this, in the earlier times, were laid covers, 
 ;but these at a later date were superseded with 
 cushions filled with feathers. The bedstead, 
 ■Jike the frame of the chair, was sometimes 
 artistically designed, and sometimes plaiidy — 
 .even roughly — executed, according to the 
 taste and means of the owner. The frame 
 of the Vied was generally concealed by drapery 
 drawn around it, the same being ornamented 
 with , fringes, tassels, and gold and silver 
 embroidery. 
 
 Preserved in chests in the gyiUBconitis 
 were the articles of the toilet belonging to tiie 
 women — a numerous array of ca.skets, cosmet- 
 ics, and jewelry. Indeed, no peofile, whether 
 ancient or modern, have given more attention 
 to artistic care of the person than did the 
 matrons and niiiidens of Greece. But the 
 peculiarity cif the latter was, to their honor, 
 that their whole notion of personal attractive- 
 ness a.s heightened by art consisted in iieauti- 
 fyinp and not destroying nature. 
 
 Night divides the world with the dav. 
 
 What should the Greeks do in the darkness? 
 It is matter of surprise that the great genius 
 of the race did not more concern itself with 
 the matter of artificial illumination. The 
 problem of light was one in which neither 
 they nor any other people of antiquity seemed 
 to take much interest. The homes of the 
 Greeks were lighted with oil-lamps with wicks, 
 and the streets with torches. In the actual 
 contrivance there seems to have been no 
 advance from the first principles, such as are 
 adopted by half-civilized races in illumination; 
 but in the designs of the lamps it is easy to 
 discover the peculiar and superior qualities of 
 Greek taste. These have the most elegant 
 forms, being of that flat, bowl-like pattern 
 which the best modern art is proud to imitate. 
 They were ornamented with an endless variety 
 of designs, some in color and some in relief — 
 vines and fruits and figures of animals and 
 birds. The materials in most common use 
 were terra-cotta and bronze, but the rich had 
 their lamps of silver and sometimes of gold. 
 They were designetl for hanging or standing, 
 and for the latter use were supported by can- 
 delabra of the slenderest and most beautiful 
 styles. These were set by the couches in the 
 andronitis, and here reclined the Greek in the 
 evening and read. Near by stood the lilu-ary, 
 with its tiers of pigeon-holes, into \vhich were 
 inserted the cylindrical cases containing the 
 rolls of manuscript. 
 
 The material used in writing was prepared 
 papyrus brought from Egypt. Upon this the 
 poem or disquisition of the philosopher was 
 carefully copied by a sc-ibe. The Greek 
 manuscripts were generally executed with 
 great care and exquisite finish as to neatness 
 and accuracy. In the house of a prominent 
 and influential man a small library of favorite 
 authors might always be ex])ected. In the 
 age of the Macedonian ascemlency, however, 
 the library became a public rather than a 
 private enterprise ; and the exanijjle of Alex- 
 ander in founding in Egypt and elsewhere 
 vast collections of books was emulated by 
 nearly all the great men of subsequent times. 
 Book collectors were common in Greece, and 
 the possession of rare or exquisite rolls was in 
 many a rage, as in modern times. Of this
 
 490 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 sort were the poet Euripides and the philoso- 
 pher Aristotle, both of whom distinguished 
 themselves by accumulating large libraries of 
 valuable and rare works. 
 
 Other connoisseurs there were who turned 
 their energies to the collection of articles of a 
 non-literary character. Old things of quaint 
 device and singular pattern were eagerly 
 sought after by the dilettanti and hunters of 
 bric-a-brac, just as the relics and fashions of 
 the fourteenth century are now pursued by 
 the fanciers of what is valuable for being out 
 of date. Indeed, this taste for the rare and 
 curious was as keen in the Greeks as in any 
 of tlie monomaniacs of our day. The lyre of 
 Orpheus was hunted as eagerly as the wood 
 of the True Cross is now sought by those 
 who believe in its virtues. One Greek carved 
 an ivor}- chariot and four horses of such stu- 
 pendous proportions that the whole could 
 be covered by the wings of a house-fly, and 
 another executed two verses of Homer on a 
 grain of sesame ! Art becomes ingenuity in 
 Lilliput! 
 
 The care of the Greek household was 
 largely intrusted to the slaves. These were 
 owned by all families except the poorest. 
 The morality of the institution was never 
 questioned even by the philosophers. With 
 them human freedom meant freedom for the 
 Greek. Not even the author of the Atlantis 
 seems ever to have troubled himself about the 
 existence of slavery in his own country. The 
 slaves were all barbarians, either taken in 
 battle or purchased in the market. He 
 who went to war with a Greek did it with 
 a knowledge that he was running the risk 
 of perpetual servitude with the chances 
 greatly against him. Still, however, the con- 
 dition he would be thus exposed to was far 
 more tolerable than in any other ancient state. 
 
 The slave of the Greek, though subject 
 to his master, was not as a rule treated with 
 
 severity. He might marry and have a house- 
 hold of his own. In sickness and old age he 
 was released from toil, and cared for with de- 
 cency if not with tenderness. Ties of friend- 
 ship and even of intimacy were not infre- 
 quently contracted between slave and master 
 which survived all vicissitude and ended only 
 with life. Albeit the condition of the Helots 
 in Sparta — a subject race belonging to the 
 soil and transferred with it as serfs — was an 
 estate totally different from common chattel 
 slavery as it presented itself in Athens and 
 the other cities of Central Greece. 
 
 The slave-class in Attica was very numer- 
 ous. In a population of five hundred and 
 fifty thousand souls, fully four hundred thou- 
 sand were slaves — being in the ratio of three 
 to one of the free citizenship. This enormous 
 element of population was distributed, as we 
 have already seen, into the houses of the free 
 Greeks and into the factories, quarries, mines, 
 and indeed in all places where "naked human 
 strength " was the thing required. In the 
 house of any well-to-do Greek citizen a reti- 
 nue of about twenty slaves, male and female, 
 was required for the service. Upon them was 
 devolved the entire labor, though not the su- 
 perintendence, of the establishment. In the 
 gynjeconitis the mistress of the house and her 
 daughters sat among the domestics and super- 
 vised and directed in all that was done. The 
 householder meanwhile ordered his division of 
 the servants to their various tasks, and then 
 went to the market-place to talk politics and 
 discuss the management of the war. There 
 is little doubt that the institution of slavery 
 among the Greeks was thus the blind com- 
 plement of that factious democracy which, 
 uncurbed by useful tasks of labor, inserted its 
 idle talons in the breast of the state and tore 
 out her vitals. — Such were the manners and 
 institutions of the Hellenes in the times of 
 their power and renown.
 
 GREECE.— RELIGION. 
 
 49) 
 
 CHAF-TER XIv.— reliqion. 
 
 y.RIEF sketch of the 
 icligiou of the Greeks, 
 ( niisidered ajoart from 
 iheir system of mythol- 
 ' jy, will be appropriate 
 iiiore the traditions aud 
 Ivil history of the race 
 are presented. Wheu we consider the moral 
 elvation of the Olympian hierarchy there is 
 not miK-h to admire. The gods who dwelt on 
 that sublime height were of the same sort 
 ■with the men who dwelt at its base. "Like 
 men like gods," might well ajiply to the Greek 
 family, whether terrestrial or celestial. There 
 is not much wonder, therefore, that the for- 
 mer should not greatly respect the latter, 
 eiuce they saw them as beings of like passions 
 Tvith themselves. 
 
 Consulting the literature of the Greeks 
 from Homer to Aristophanes one might well 
 conclude that the Hellenes were a j)cople de- 
 void not only of the genuine religious instinct 
 but even of a decent respect for their deities. 
 Such, however, would be far from a true con- 
 clusion. Perhaps in many instances the fan- 
 tastic legends of tradition were brushed aside 
 by the lucid intelligence and skci)tical dispo- 
 sition of the Greeks, but behind the fictiim 
 the substance of the thing remained in the 
 imagination of the people : and the substance 
 was adored with a sincere veneration. 
 
 The beings, then, whom the Greeks wor- 
 shiped were regarded as the guardians of 
 mankind and the avengers of evil. To them 
 belonged the reward of virtue and the pun- 
 ishment of crime. They hasted not in their 
 work, Uut their work was sure. They ob- 
 served the minds and hearts of men, honored 
 the upright, regarded the faithful, heard the 
 voice of supplication. This wa.s the ground- 
 faith of the Greek, whether philosopher or 
 peasiint. Nor does it appear that the most 
 skeptical spirit ever wholly shook it of!'. Soc- 
 rates himself was in the habit of prayer, and 
 disdained not to consult an oracle. 
 
 There was thus in the ofttimes frivolous' 
 nature of the Greek a sincere vein of piety. 
 His earliest efforts in art were permeated with 
 devotion. Homer's heroes believe most im- 
 plicitly in the gods — pray to them, fear them. 
 The Grecian states, taking up the theme, de- 
 nounce impiety. He whose teachings seem 
 dangerous, or whose life is sacrilegious, i» 
 banished or put to death. The memory of 
 the impious is execrated. All this shows a 
 deep-seated, though often misdirected, vein 
 of religious sentiment in the people. 
 
 All the principal acts in the drama of 
 Greek life were introduced with religious- 
 ceremony. The man of the house was the 
 priest. He needed no other. He said his 
 own prayers. He made his own offerings for 
 himself and his family. Wheu he prayed t» 
 the gods of the air he stood with upturned 
 face and held his hands aloft. If he suppli- 
 cated the deities of the deep, his hands were 
 stretched to the sea. The birth of the child, 
 the betrothal, the marriage, the funeral — all 
 the chief events in the life of the household — 
 were sanctioned with some religious rite. 
 
 As early as the days of Homer the Greeks 
 raised the altar of sacrifice. Upon this th& 
 worshiper offered his gifts and victims. Of 
 things without life those most brought to the 
 sacrificial fire were fruit and cakes, oil and 
 wine, milk and houej'. In offering living 
 victims the best of the flock or herd was 
 selected, and sometimes, as in the case of the 
 hecatomb, as many as a hundred animals were 
 slain at once. Not all of the creature offered, 
 but only certain ])arts were burned in the 
 fire ; the remainder was eaten by the wor- 
 shipers and the priests. Even in the shed- 
 ding of bI(H)d the lesthetic taste of the Greek 
 appeared, for the beast to be ofl'ered was- 
 wreathed as to his head and horns with a gar- 
 land of flowers. The neck of the animal was- 
 sj)rinkled with salt and consecrated barley, 
 and then the knife let out the creature's life. 
 
 As already said, every free Greek — and
 
 492 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 «very Greek was free — could act as his own 
 priest. The introduction, therefore, of a class 
 •of priests was merely a matter of preference 
 and division of labor. It was rather in con- 
 nection with certain sacred places, seats of the 
 gods, oracles, etc., that the services of a regu- 
 lar priesthood seemed to be demanded. In 
 the great temples, also, groups of priests were 
 a necessity of the service ; but they gathered 
 about the shrine, not by hereditary right or 
 by appointment of a superior hierarchy, but 
 simply by that natural selection which, work- 
 ing among men, sends some to one vocation 
 and some to another. The rank and rights 
 of citizenship were no more sacrificed by the 
 assumption of priestly duties than by the 
 doctor in treating a patient or the lawyer in 
 pleading a cause. 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that the 
 priests, having once assumed the sacred office, 
 acquired thereby a certain dignity and honor. 
 They were respected and venerated by all 
 classes. The popular imagination associated 
 them with the holy rites which they cele- 
 brated, with the solemn temple where they 
 lived, and even with the high gods whom 
 they served. They thus acquired a great 
 reputation for sanctity, and a consequent in- 
 fluence over the minds of the people. Nor 
 was their reputation less distinguished for the 
 learning which they claimed by tradition and 
 oracular response. They were well acquainted 
 with the old unwritten laws and venerated 
 customs of the Greeks, and thus became a 
 conservative force in the state — a force not 
 without a salutary influence on the distract- 
 ing and revolutionary tendencies of such a 
 people. 
 
 Among the Greeks the belief in prophecy 
 was very general ; and here again freedom 
 had her way, for any one might be a prophet. 
 The gods were no respecters of persons. The 
 voice of the deity might be heard by any one 
 as well as bv a priest. If the latter was more 
 frequently in communion with the supernal 
 powers, it was only because he dwelt near 
 some shrine or sacred haunt which the god 
 delighted to frequent. The signs by which in 
 earth or sea or sky the deities made known 
 their will were not of private interpretation ; 
 
 and so the many rather than the few heard 
 and recognized the voices from on high. 
 
 But in the case of the oracles the divine 
 responses were delivered by the priests. The 
 inquiries of those who would learn the mj's- 
 teries of the future and of fate were borne to 
 the inner place by priestly hands and sub- 
 mitted to the god for answer. Such was the 
 usage at Dodoua, in Epirus, the most ancient 
 oracle of Zeus. In the rustling of the oak 
 leaves were heard the breathings of that great 
 Immortal who was held to be the first among 
 the powers of heaven ; but the noise in the 
 oaks was unintelligible save to the sacred per- 
 sons who were by holy life and residence in 
 the groves acquainted with the meaning of 
 the mysterious messages. Such also was the 
 method of obtaining responses at the still 
 more famous shrine of the prophetic Apollo, 
 at Delphi. This oracle was the most cele- 
 brated in Greece, perhaps in the world. In 
 the classical age the greatest intellects recog- 
 nized the validity of the Delphic responses, 
 and the weightiest afl'airs of state hung breath- 
 less until the answer was delivered. 
 
 The spot chosen by Apollo for his favorite 
 haunt was a wild ravine at the foot of Par- 
 nassus. The scene was grand and solitary. 
 Only the murmur of a brook broke the im- 
 pressive silence. On either hand rose ver- 
 tical walls of rock. Here in this gorge the 
 god of light and poesy and song had slain the 
 Pj^hon, the great dragon of darkness and 
 barbarism. The Castalian fountain sprang 
 from the spot, and the ISIuses made it their 
 home. Here from a cleft in the rock issued 
 that intoxicating vapor which benumbed the 
 senses of man and brought him into commun- 
 ion with the deity. The tongue of the intoxi- 
 cated became the oracle of the god. Around 
 the sacred spot holy men gathered to muse 
 and pray. Here houses were built. Here a 
 shrine was erected for the deity. Here rose 
 the holy city of Delphi, whose fame as the 
 seat of divine inspiration spread first through- 
 out all Greece and then to the ends of the 
 civilized world. 
 
 He who would inquire of Apollo came 
 
 bringing gifts. Something precious must be 
 
 I brought in recompense for prophecy. Treas-
 
 GREECE.— RELIGION. 
 
 493 
 
 ures of gold and silver and sculpture and 
 painting were east in profusion iuto the divine 
 thesaurus, until the shrine became rich beyond 
 estimate. In times of turbulence and war 
 the eyes of the irreligious were cast longingly 
 towards the accumulated treasures in the 
 house of Apollo, and more than once the 
 profane hand of expediency was laid upon 
 them. 
 
 The Delphic responses were obtained 
 through the lips of a priestess called the 
 Pythia. (She was chosen from the women of 
 Delphi, and was especially consecrated to her 
 
 verse, but in later times the priests, grown 
 less careful, gave back the reply in prose. 
 
 In these conditions were laid the founda- 
 tions of the priestly lore which was cultivated 
 at Delphi. It was the business of the college 
 to know the actual state of aflairs, not only 
 in Greece, but, as far as practicable, in all the 
 surrounding nations. By such information 
 the priests could know, and did know, before- 
 hand the kind of inquiries which would arise 
 out of the political and social conditions of the 
 country. They accordingly busied themselves 
 in framing and answering supposititious (jues- 
 
 DELPUI AND PARNASSUS. 
 
 eacred office. Once every month she purified 
 herself by fasting and altlutioiis. She chewed 
 laurel leaves, i)atiii(l in and drank from the 
 Castidian .-pring. Then .-^hc went into that 
 part of tiic temple where the fissure in tlie 
 native rock still gave fi)rth its vapor. She 
 seated herself on the tri|)oil, and was soon in- 
 to.xicated with the gas. Tlicn she fell down 
 in a swoon. Slie uttered wild ejaculations in 
 her delirium, and those were caught up by 
 the attendintr priests and wrought into oracu- 
 lar — gcncrallv andii^Mious — responses to the 
 inquiries wliich lia<l bcin propounded. As a 
 rule the answers were rendered rn hexameter 
 
 tions, and in this line of work acquired not a 
 little skill. In the ordinary adhirs of jiolitics 
 and war they were very well prepared to give 
 intelligent advice, or even to predict with ap- 
 proximate certainty the natural course of 
 events. When, liowcver, it came to the 
 actual domain of prophecy and to matters of 
 which the priest could know no more than 
 another, he had necessary recourse to fraud, 
 and this he found in the construction of am- 
 biguous responses — couplets which could be 
 made to read both ways in the light of the 
 denouement. Thus Croesus was told that if 
 he crossed the Halys he would destroy a great
 
 494 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 kingdom. Whose kingdom? His own, or 
 that of Cyaxares ? The former, as it proved ; 
 the latter, as it was hoped. Thus was the 
 credit of Apollo and his priests maintained 
 against the hazard of contingency. 
 
 There were, however, those among the 
 witty Greeks who fathomed and derided the 
 double utterances of Delphi. The comic 
 poets found the Apollonian ambiguity a 
 precious morsel. They imitated the style of 
 the confused priest, and made him the butt 
 of profane mirth. Aristophanes introduces 
 
 leveled against them, the Delphic priesthood 
 held their own for many centuries, and did 
 not perceptibly wane in their influence over 
 the jjublic mind until after the establishment 
 of the Roman Empire. 
 
 Of scarcely less importance than the ora- 
 cles were the ^Mysteries of the Greeks. These 
 were rites celebrated in secret orders, and in- 
 tended to gratify a higher grade of religious 
 aspirations than could be satisfied by the 
 popular faith. The orders were open only to 
 those who could establish by satisfoctory proofs 
 
 THE FVTHIA ON THE TRIPOD. 
 Drawn by H. Leutemann. 
 
 the leather-seller Cleon and a sausage-maker, 
 and the decision of a squabble between them 
 is thus oracularly rendered: 
 
 " Moreover, when the eagle in his pride. 
 With crooked talons and a leathern hide. 
 Shall seize the black and blood-devouring snake,' 
 Then shall the woeful tan-pits quail and quake; 
 And mighty Zeus shall give command and place 
 To mortals of the sausage-selling race : 
 Unless they choose, continuing as before, 
 To sell their sausages for evermore." 
 
 The satire was all the keener for being in 
 the exact vein of the Delphic utterances. 
 But despite the sharp darts that were thus 
 
 ' Meaning a sausage! 
 
 the previous rectitude and purity of their 
 lives. To such the promise of a calmer and 
 more elevated frame of mind, a deeper hope 
 of present peace and future immortality, was 
 held forth on condition of entering the mys- 
 teries. Every pure Greek might aspire to 
 membership in one of the sacred orders. 
 Even women were admitted with the men to 
 equal participancy in the new life of holiness 
 and consecration. 
 
 To attain the highest rank in one of the 
 mysteries, the candidate had to pass three de- 
 grees. He was first initiated; then, after a 
 season of probation, advanced to a second de-
 
 GREECE. —RELIGION. 
 
 495 
 
 gree; and finally admitted to the third or 
 highest rank, iu which he was enrolled with the 
 epopke, or "beholders" — for such were allowed 
 to behold the unveiled myths of the national 
 religion. 
 
 The two principal mysteries of Greece 
 were those celebrated at Eleusis and at Sam- 
 othrace. The latter place was a small island 
 in the iEgean, on which from the earliest 
 times a society had flourished whose ami was 
 to interpret and illustrate the secrets of nature. 
 What these secrets were, and by what cere- 
 monies they were interpreted, have never 
 been ascertained — so thick and carefully 
 drawn was the curtain l)etween the "initiated" 
 and the outer worlil of vulgar sense. More 
 famous far were the mysteries known as 
 Eleusinian. These were celebrated at the 
 city of Eleusis, in Attica. The society was in 
 great repute, and many of the most distin- 
 guished Athenians were proud to be num- 
 bered among the epoptte. Here, too, the 
 secrecy was profound. Only thus much is 
 known, that the mysteries of nature — es- 
 pecially those appertaining to life — were 
 sought to l)e unveiled to the senses and per- 
 ceptions of men by the rites of the celebrants. 
 The two deities honored within the veil were 
 Demeter, the great Earth-mother, an<l Diony- 
 sus, the wine-god. Eleusis was the seat of 
 one of the most celebrated of the Greek 
 myths — that in which Demeter, after search- 
 ing long by lanil and sea, at last learned that 
 her lost daughter Persephone had been mar- 
 ried to Hades, the dark specter of tlie under 
 world, and that she was now his queen in the 
 realms below. Here the mother procured her 
 daughter's return to life and joy — at least for 
 a season." The myth became the biisis of the 
 mystery which the initiated were to explain 
 and illustrate with their rites — the mystery of 
 the varying and l)cautiful processes of life. 
 
 In the months of August and September 
 of each year, after the harvests had been 
 
 'Persephone represents Life.- In the summer 
 alie rejoices in leaf and bml and flower. Hut in 
 winter Pluto takes her under the earth, .^he is 
 seen no more. .Slie i.s queen of ll)e dark abodes 
 in the Ijind of Gloom. With the sunshine of 
 spring she returns and gladdens her mother, 
 Earth. 
 
 gathered, a period of twelve days was set 
 apart for the celebration o*^ the great feast 
 known as the Eleuslnia. Athens abandoned 
 herself to the occasion. Strangers came from 
 all parts of Greece to be present at tlie anni- 
 versary. First the candidates and initiates 
 prepared themselves by bathing in the sea, 
 by fasting and sacrifice. Then for five days 
 oflerings were made to Demeter and Dionysus ; 
 and on the sixth was the great procession, in 
 which the ancient statue of Dionysus, gar- 
 landed with flowers and bearing a torch in his 
 hand, was brought with loud acclaim and 
 laughter and song from Athens to Eleusis. It 
 was always arranged that the procession should 
 not reach its destination until nightfall. The 
 image of the god was borne after dark into a 
 great l)uilding, where the mysteries were cele- 
 brated, and here under the flickering glare of 
 torches were begun the awful ceremonies 
 which occupied the remainder of the festival. 
 Before the close of the mysterious proceedings 
 Persephone was welcomed l>ack to earth, and 
 then hilarity and banqueting succeeded to the 
 previous despondency and gloom. 
 
 The proper feast of Dionysus was wilder 
 and more extravagant iu character than that 
 of Demeter. As sometimes celebrated, it was 
 an orgy in which the participants abandoned 
 themselves to frantic excesses. At the Dtony- 
 sia in Athens it was regarded as a duty in 
 those who took part in the exercises to become 
 drunken. Every one crowned himself with 
 ivy and flowers, and oflfered to him whom he 
 met a cuji of wine. The image of Bacchus 
 was borne about in processions, and a wild 
 crew of Satyrs, Bacchantes, and Pans rushed 
 madly along, piping and shouting till the day 
 became an uproar and the night hideous. 
 
 The great local religious festival of the 
 Athenians was called the Panathemca. It was 
 celebrated every fourth year iu honor of 
 Pallas Athene, the patron goddess of the city. 
 On the return of the anniversary Athens was 
 crowded w^ith strangers. Hither came a 
 throng of poets, musicians, artists, gymnasts, 
 .showmen, mountebanks — every type of hu- 
 manity known to the world of the Greeks. It 
 was a time of excitement, of competition, of the 
 exliil)ition of skill in achievement and strength.
 
 48(j 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The great day was the day of the proces- 
 sion. In the morning outside of the city the 
 throngs gathered. Here the column was 
 formed. At the head of the procession came 
 a band of flute players and citharists. Then 
 followed the Athenian soldiery — infantry and 
 cavalry. Behind this division marched all 
 those who had ever been crowned as victors 
 in the public contests of the country. The 
 next division was composed of priests, leading 
 
 burst of music was sounded from the instru^ 
 ments, and then, in the sublime presence of 
 the Protectress of the city, the votive gifts 
 were laid and the sacrifices ofiered by the 
 priests. 
 
 If the Greek mind, participating in these 
 great festivals, could have been fathomed, 
 there would have been revealed a double class 
 of sentiments ; the one looking joyfully upon 
 life, and the other scanning dtath with appre- 
 
 TtTE ET.iroSIOTAN FEAST.— Drawn by H. Vogel. 
 
 the animals presently to be offered in sacrifice. 
 Next followed the old men of Athens, each 
 carrying some costly gift to be offered to the 
 goddess. Then came the woman's column of 
 the procession — matrons and maidens chosen 
 for their beauty and reputation. In the 
 midst they drew in a car the peplos, or em- 
 broidered robe, with which the statue of Pal- 
 las was to be clad at the end of the march. 
 
 Through the beautiful streets of the city 
 the procession made its way, pausing at the 
 various shrines and altars, and then ascended 
 the hill to the citadel. Before the temple a 
 
 hension and dread.' There were exhibited in 
 the different parts of the ceremonies the traces 
 of these conflicting feelings, the one class 
 tending to produce merriment and even rap- 
 
 • No one can thoughtfully study the life of the 
 Athenians without being constantly reminded of 
 the Parisians of the last and present centuries. 
 Athens was the Paris of antiquity, and Paris is 
 the Athens of the modern world. There are to 
 be seen in both peoples the same qualities of na- 
 ture — that same excitability of temper, in which 
 are strangely mingled the opposites of heroism 
 and weakness, of excessive joyousness and deep 
 gloom, of hope and despair.
 
 GREECE.— RELIGION. 
 
 4©T 
 
 ture under the beautiful aspects of the world, 
 and the other class tending to gloom and de- 
 spondency under the shadow of the coming 
 doom ! To the Greek, Life meant every 
 thing of happiness which tiie most exuberant 
 fancy could depict, and Death meant what 
 Homer and the heroes believed it to be, a 
 dreary and joyless existence beyond the inky 
 Styx." 
 
 In those matters which the ancients desig- 
 nated by the general name of piety the Greeks 
 were worthy to be commended. Suffering 
 excited their sympathy. Sorrow called for 
 khidred tears. To tlie dead were due the 
 sacred rites of sepulture. Even the passing 
 stranger should, for humanity's sake, sprinkle 
 a few handfuls of earth on the unburicd corse 
 exposed by the way. The atrocious s])ite of 
 the Orientals in pursuing the lifeless body of 
 the foe with insult and mutihttion was ab- 
 horred by the sensitive Greeks, who sjiw in the 
 lifeless frame only the sad relic of mortality. 
 Only in the highest heat of battle was any 
 indignity oHered to the dead by the humane 
 soldier of Hellas. 
 
 When a Greek fell into his last slumber, 
 the friends immediately cjmjjosed the body 
 and laid upon the mouth the ferriage-fee for 
 Cliaron. The corse was clad in white and 
 laid upon a bier. Flowers were brought by 
 the mourning friends, who put on badges of 
 sorrow. On the morrow the corse was burned 
 and the ashes committed to an urn. In 
 the later times the horror known as earth 
 burial became common, and finally prevailed 
 over the former beautiful and cleanly method 
 of purification by fire. 
 
 After burial in the earth became the usual 
 method of bestowing the dead, cemeteries were- 
 arranged outside the city walls. Sometimes 
 there were single tombs here and there, where 
 some distinguished person had been buried 
 within his own premises. In other parts there 
 were public burying-grounds, in which there 
 was a vast aggregate of graves. Over each 
 was raised a mound of earth, and on this 
 were planted ivy and roses. The cofiin of the 
 Greeks was an elongated ellipse, generally of 
 terra-cotta, resembling somewhat the "dish- 
 cover" burial cases of the Chaldseans.' Over 
 the grave was erected a memorial stone or 
 monument, and on this was an inscription 
 giving the name of the dead, an effigy per- 
 haps of his person, a word of j)raise for his 
 virtues, and an ejsigram composed for his mem- 
 ory. Tlie epitaphs of the Greeks were of the 
 highest order of merit and originality ; nor 
 was there about the grave any of those sym- 
 bols of lugubrious woe which since the Mid- 
 dle Age have added so much to the horrors 
 of the city of the dead. 
 
 In the coffin of the Greek, Superstition 
 performed her usual little drama. The per- 
 sonal ornaments worn by the deceased were 
 laid witli his body — a pardonable weakness 
 and mark of respect. But there were also 
 vessels for fruit and oil — the drinking-cup, the 
 cake of bread, the beverage for the departed. 
 The articles thus put away with the dead for 
 liis use have risen for the edification of man- 
 kind ; out he to whom they were given in 
 death — 
 
 " Sleeps the sleep that knows not breaking." 
 
 ' See Book Second, p. 127.
 
 •4»8 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE AXCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Chapter XLI.— IVTyth and Tradition. 
 
 TRUE iuterpretation of 
 the myths of the Greeks 
 has been one of the most 
 difficult problems im- 
 jjosed ou modern scholar- 
 ship. Longfellow tells a 
 story how the infant 
 Christ, Iniviuy; forgotten the name of the letter 
 deph, and being informed by his teacher that 
 it was alepli, suddenly startled his instructor 
 with the question. "But, please good Eabbi, 
 what does aleph meanf" The question of the 
 myth to us is, not so much What is itf but, 
 What does it mean? 
 
 Many theories have been advanced to ex- 
 plain the origin and true nature of the myths 
 of antiquity. They are the peculiar property 
 of the Aryan race. Among the Semitic na- 
 tions mythology did not, could not, flourish — • 
 this for reasons to be hereafter exf)lained. 
 But the Aryans were a people whose brains 
 teemed with myths. 
 
 In the next place it should be observed that 
 all branches of the Aryan family had the 
 same myths, almost infinitely varied and in- 
 :flected, it is true, but yet at bottom the same. 
 Just as the different languages of the Indo- 
 European race are fundamentally identical, 
 80 the mythology of that race in aU its mul- 
 titudinous outbranchings flows from a common 
 fountain and has the same identical substance. 
 The myths of India, Greece, Italy, Germany, 
 and Scandinavia difier not in material, but 
 ordy in development. The same story runs 
 from tlie valley of the Indus to Iceland, from 
 the frozen North to the waters of the southern 
 ■seas. 
 
 But of all the mythologies no other was so 
 highly developed as that of Greece. The 
 same exuberance which characterized the 
 other elements of Greek life seems to have 
 given a double impulse to the myths of 
 HeUas. Both in number and completeness 
 they far surpass the fictions of any of the 
 «ister peoples of the ancient world. 
 
 In the first place it may be well to sketch 
 again what may be called the "personnel of 
 Grecian mythology. In the beginning was 
 Chaos. Chaos wedded Night. From them 
 sprang the Heaven and the Eaeth. The 
 Heaven was Uranus; the Earth, Gmx. 
 Uranus succeeded Chaos in the government 
 of the universe. Then was born Ceonos. 
 Cronus had Uranus, the Heaven, for his 
 father, and Giea, the Earth, for his mother. 
 Time was born of the Heaven and the Earth. 
 Gsea had other children, born perhaps of 
 Chaos. These were the Cyclopes and Beoxte 
 and Sterope. Bronte and Sterope were Thun- 
 der and Lightning. These chaotic ofispring 
 were hurled by Uranus into Tartarus ; but 
 Gsea was in pain for the banishment of her 
 children. She persuaded Cronos and the 
 other children of Uranus to mutiny against 
 him. He was seized by them, mutilated, de- 
 throned ; and Cronos, the eldest of the sons, 
 took the throne of the father. Time usurped 
 the dominion of Heaven. 
 
 Cronos wedded Rhea, another daughter of 
 Uranus and Gsea. Rhea was the Earth.' Of 
 Time and Eai'th were born the days. But 
 Time swallowed his ofispring as soon as they 
 were born, and Rhea was in anguish for her 
 children. About to be delivered of Zeus, she 
 gave her lord a stone, and he swallowed that 
 instead of the child. Zeus inherited the 
 heavens, and became first among gods and 
 men. He was the Blue Sky. He was the 
 Light. Though the Days perished he was 
 immortal. — Such is the first s])an from Chaos 
 to Zeus — from Confusion to Light and Order. 
 
 Zeus enthroned delivered the Cyclopes 
 from their dungeon. In return they gave 
 him back Bronte, the Thunderbolt. With 
 this he warred against the Titans. In the war 
 he was aided by Forethought. Forethought 
 was Prometheus ; but Prometheus filched fire 
 from heaven and kindled it for men below. 
 
 ' Rhea = the Greek era, by transposition of th« 
 r = Latin terra, earth.
 
 GREECE.^MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 4M 
 
 For this was Forethought seized and bound to 
 the rugged clifis of Caucasus to suffer unend- 
 ing tortures. Afterwards Zeus and his two 
 brothers, Hades and Poseidon, drew lots for 
 the different parts of the universe. The 
 eovereignty of heaven fell to Zeus; the sea, 
 to Poseidon ; and the world below to Hades. 
 
 Zeus was thus established at the head of 
 the Greek pantheon. He took for his spouse 
 his sister HiiUA,' daughter of Cronos and 
 Rhea. A numerous divine progeny sprang 
 dp to the Father of gods and men. His 
 ileven children, constituting with himself the 
 013-mpian hierarchy, or " twelve gods," were 
 Leto aud her two children, Apollo and Ar- 
 temis, Arks, Hermes, Atiiexa, Heph.estus, 
 Hestia, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hera, 
 who is sometimes reckoned as the daughter 
 rather than the sister of Zeus. These gods held 
 their court on Olympus, as the two subor- 
 dinate courts of Poseidon and Hades were 
 held respectively in the sea and the under- 
 world of darkness. — It will be appropriate to 
 notice briefly the power and province ascribed 
 by the Greek imagination to each of these 
 gods and goddesses. 
 
 Zeus was the chief deity of the Hellenic 
 race. He was subject to nothing but Fate. 
 The Greeks believed in an absolute Necessity 
 which held the universe in its clutches. To 
 this all men and gods must bow in submission. 
 Zeus was constrained by the Absolute. Other- 
 wise he was supreme. He did his will. He 
 estai)lished his seat on Olympus, aud from 
 that cloudy summit ruled the world. In final 
 causation every thing, whether good or bad, 
 flowed from him. The destiny of all mortals, 
 and in some sense of all immortals, was di- 
 rected by his nod. He took for his wife 
 Metis, by whom he became the father of 
 Athena; then TeEjns, who was the mother 
 of the HoRiE and the Parc^e — the Hours aud 
 
 ' It will he well in this connection to j.'ive once 
 for all the Uitin and Greek equivalents for the 
 names of the jmncipal deities — thus: Ourano8= 
 Uranus; Cronos^Saturn ; Zeus— Jupiter, or Jove; 
 Hades— Pluto; Poseidon=Neptnno ; Hera=Juno; 
 Apollon=.\pollo; .\rtemis— Diana; Leto=Latona; 
 Are8=Mar8; Hermes=Mercury ; Athena=Mi- 
 nerva; Hephw8tU8= Vulcan ; He8tia= Vesta ; De- 
 meter^Ceres; Aphrodite= Venus. 
 
 N.--Vr)l. i—w 
 
 the Fates ; then Eurynome, of whom were bom 
 the Graces; then Hestia and Mnemosyne, 
 whose children were Persephone and the 
 Muses; then Leto, who bore him Apollo and 
 Artemis; and then Juno, who became the 
 mother of Ares, Hebe, aud Hephtestus. So 
 the king of the gods took to himself the 
 ej)ithet "Olympian." He sat on his throne 
 aud hurled the thunderbolt. To him was 
 erected the shriue among the oaks of Dodona, 
 and afterwards the sjjlendid temple at Olym- 
 pia, the latter containing the celebrated 
 
 COtX)SSAI. HEAD OP ZEUS. 
 
 The Otricoli mask, of the Vatican. 
 
 chryselephantine statue of the god done by 
 Phidias. 
 
 Hera was regarded by the Greeks as the 
 queen of heaven. She bore, in some sense, 
 the same relation to women as Zeus did to 
 men. She was the patroness of marriage, 
 and under the epithet of Eldhjia )u-csided 
 over the birth of mortals. In the Homeric 
 legends she is represented as the least amiable 
 of the divinities — jealous and petulant to the 
 extent of keeping the other Olympians, and 
 especially Zeus, in perpetual trouble. She 
 even organized a conspiracy with Poseidoa 
 against her husband to dethrone and imprison
 
 600 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 him ; but he, discovering the plot, seized her 
 and hung her in the clouds. She was haughty 
 and imperious. In the Trojan wi 
 
 he 
 
 COLOSSAL HEAD CI" HtRA.— Villa Ludovici. 
 
 rapoused the cauje of the Greeks, and was 
 regarded as the chief source of the woes of 
 Hium. Her principal seats of worship were 
 ftt Argos, Samos, and Sparta. At the first- 
 named place was built her finest temple, and 
 in this was her colossal statue done in ivory 
 and gold. 
 
 When the lots were cast for the sovereignty 
 of the universe the sea fell to Poseidon, son 
 of Cronos and Rhea. He was not especially 
 represented as inhabiting the waters, but 
 rather as having dominion over the move- 
 ments of the great deep. His vicegerent, 
 Nekeus, lived in the sea, just as Helios dwelt 
 in the sun, while the destiny of the orb was 
 controlled by Phcebus Apollo. The meaning 
 of the name of Poseidon is not certainly 
 known, and from that source nothing can be 
 gathered of his nature. He is represented in 
 the Iliad and Odyssey as equal in dignity to 
 Ze-.is, but inferior to him in power. To Po- 
 seidon was attributed a part of the work of 
 creation. He was said to be the maker of 
 
 the horse. He was called the "Keeper of 
 the Earth," and the " World-Shaker "—titles 
 indicative of almost Jovine majesty. In one 
 legend he disputes the sovereignty of Greek 
 cities with Athena, Hera, and Helios. As a 
 rule he was loyal to Zeus, cheerfully conced- 
 ing to him the supreme dominion ; but in one 
 instance, at the instigation of Hera and 
 Athena, he conspired to dethrone the king of 
 the gods, but the plot was revealed by Thetis ; 
 and the hundred-handed BRLiEEUs was placed 
 beside the throne to guard it against rebel- 
 lions. 
 
 Poseidon had his palace in the deep waters 
 near -3Egse, on the shores of Eubcea. Here 
 he kept his golden-maned horses, which bore 
 him swiftly in a sea-chariot over the surface 
 of the deep. He controlled the ocean in 
 time of storms, lest it shoidd sweep the land 
 from its foundations and overwhelm the world. 
 Unlike Zeus, Poseidon was subject to other 
 wills besides his own. He was sometimes com- 
 pelled by the authority of his brother to do 
 great works for men. He it was who, to- 
 gether with Heracles, was obliged by the 
 council of the immortals to rebuild the walls 
 of Troy for Laomedon, who refused to pay 
 him for his services. The god, incensed at 
 
 POSEIDON.— iluseo Chiaromonti. 
 
 this treatment, espoused the cause of Agamem- 
 non and Meuelaiis, and helped to wreak venge- 
 ance on the Trojans. But the most famous 
 legend of Poseidon is that in which he con- 
 tends with Athena for the naming of Athens. 
 Zeus decreed that the name should be given
 
 GREECE.— MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 501 
 
 to that deity who conferred the greatest boon 
 on the human family. Poseidon created and 
 gave the horse. Atheua offered as her gift 
 the olive-tree. The award was made ,to 
 Atlieua, for the olive, symbol of peace, was 
 better than the horse that men ride to battle. 
 Poseidon had for his wife the goddess Ampiiu 
 TRITE — that jealous Nereid who threw the 
 herbs into the well of Scylla and thus trans- 
 formed her rival into a monster. 
 
 To Hades, brother of Zeus and Poseidon, 
 fell the dominion of the unseen abodes under 
 the earth, the dreary and desolate kingdom 
 of darkness. The world was flat. Its surface 
 belonged to the cheerful gods of light. All 
 the gloomy realm below was the realm of the 
 somber Hades. He was in some sort the an- 
 tagonist of light and life. ,He seized Per- 
 sephone, the fair daughter of Demeter, and 
 drew her down from the upper world to be 
 nis wife in the abodes of gloom. Then the 
 bereft mother Earth went about all' winter 
 long searching for her daughter Life ' The 
 gloomy Hades agreed to give her up for half 
 the year, but the other half she should dwell 
 with him, and the Earth should be desolate 
 in her absence. 
 
 Hades had charge of the mineral treasures 
 of the earth. They lay hidden in dark caves, 
 and were his especial property. And more 
 especially since death is a mystery, since it is 
 the coming of darkness, since man goes away 
 into the shadows and is seen no more — to 
 Hades was assigned the dominion of the dead. 
 They went to him. His kingdom was the 
 place of the unseen spirits. There, in his 
 sunless abode, must the banished sons of mor- 
 tality find their place. Hence was Hades 
 called I'ohjdcfjmoii, the Receiver of Many — for 
 he received many into his cheerless kingdom. 
 Sometimes Hades was called the Zeus of the 
 Nether World. His authority was absolute in 
 
 ' Persephone is close to Eve. Eve means Life, 
 and should liave been so rendered, and would 
 have been but I'or tlie blundering of the English 
 translators. The Seventy ven,' properly rendered 
 the Hebrew word by ^f— "Life;" but King 
 James's scholars fe'l back unon a corrupt imitation 
 of tin- spelling of the Ilebiuw word, and the sense 
 was lost. The woman was called Li/e ; for she 
 was the motlier of all living. 
 
 his place of darkness. There he had his pal- 
 ace ; and by the portals sat the grim dogs 
 Orthros and Cerberus, the latter with his 
 three terrible heads, guarding the approach 
 to the abode of his master. 
 
 Athene was the daughter of Zeus. She 
 sprang from his forehead cleft by the. axe of 
 Hephiestus. That is, the Dawn sprang from 
 the forehead of Light split by the Sun! 
 Athene is sometimes called Tritogenia, mean- 
 ing Daughter of the Sky. She Vvas the god- 
 dess of the Greek people just waking from 
 the night of unconscious barbarism to the 
 light of civilization. Her birds were the owl 
 and the cock; the one sounding out the night, 
 and the other trumpeting the clarion of day* 
 break. To wake from slumber is to know. 
 To know is to be wise. Hence, Athene was 
 the goddess of wisdom. She knew the mind 
 of Zeus. She is the Virgin Divinity of the 
 Greek race. She is serene and high. Only 
 once does she act unworthily. She it waa 
 who dressed Pandora when she was sent to 
 Epimetheus bearing the fatal casket which 
 contained the woes of the woild. But she 
 gave the olive-tree to Athens and received the 
 name of the city. 
 
 Demeter was the Earth and the mother of 
 Life — that beautiful Persephone whom the 
 unfeeling Zeus gave to Hades. When the 
 unsuspecting maiden was gathering flowers at 
 Enna, the ground suddenly opened, and 
 Hades, riding in a chariot drawn by coal- 
 black horses, seized her and bore her down 
 below. Demeter put on a mourning-robe, 
 and wandered with a torch in her hand, 
 searching for her daughter. She met Hecate, 
 who told her that she had heard the cry of 
 Persephone when Hades seized her. The 
 mother then went to Helios, the Sun, and ha 
 told her the story of her daughter's doom. 
 Then she wandered to Olympus, refusing to 
 be comforted. Nor did the Earth any more 
 yield her increase of fruits or flowers until 
 Hermes was sent below to bring back Life 
 from the darkness. 
 
 Hestia was the eldest daughter of Cronos 
 and Rhea. She was the goddess of that sacred 
 fire that burned on the hearthstone of home. 
 The primitive theory of society was that all
 
 602 
 
 UNIVERSAL HTSTOPT.—THE AXCIENT WORLD. 
 
 men are enemies until reconciled. The hearth 
 was the place of reconciliation; the fire was 
 its sj-mbol; Hestia, the divinity by v.hose 
 agencj' it was accomplished. Of her but few 
 myths are recorded. One recites that she was 
 solicited to become the wife of Poseidon, but 
 refused. The influence of this goddess, how- 
 ever, was as deeply felt as that of any other 
 of the Olympians, Her worship required the 
 performance of actual religious duties. Her 
 altar became the conservator of home. He 
 who acted treacheioMsly, who broke the peace, 
 who violated the . aws of humanity, could 
 never be a trut votary of Hestia. She re- 
 quired truth v< the inner parts, piirity of 
 heart, iiprigri^iiess of action, sincerity of pur- 
 pose and ' . life. 
 
 The j)eace of the domestic hearthstone was 
 not enough. Each town had its Pryfanehim, 
 where a sacred fire was kept burning on a 
 public hearth; and if at any time it was 
 extinguished, it must be rekindled either by 
 rubbing together pieces of wood or with a 
 burning-glass; for a common fire was profane. 
 Around this holy flame kindled from above 
 the jirytanes, or elders of the city, assembled 
 and debated in homelike spirit the peace and 
 welfare of the state. Likewise — so recounted 
 the myth — there was in the center of the 
 earth a hearthstone on which the fire was kept 
 forever burning — the hearth or Prytaneium of 
 the whole world. 
 
 Ares, son of Zeus and Hera, was the god 
 of the tumult of war. He was not, as is 
 popularly believed, the deity who gave direc- 
 tion and decided the issues of war, but rather 
 the god of din, of uproar, of slaughter. He 
 had little steadiness of character or purpose. 
 He changed from side to side. He was any 
 thing for a continuance of the noise and con- 
 fusion of battle. He was an enemy of men, 
 sending among them violence, plagues, fam- 
 ines. He was of gigantic stature, and when 
 fallen his bo<ly measured rods on the earth. 
 He might be wounded, and in that event his 
 roaring was like the groans of ten thousand. 
 He was called the "Grinder," for he ground 
 into dust the hopes and pleasures of mankind. 
 He gained Aphrodite for his wife, but when 
 she was seen to prefer Adonis, Ares converted 
 
 himself into a wild boar and wounded hia 
 rival to death. Having slain Halirrhothius, 
 son of Poseidon, Ares was tried before the 
 Olympian council, and being acquitted, was 
 honored with the name of the great court of 
 Athens, the Areopagus, which held its sittings 
 on tlie Hill of Mars. 
 
 Aphrodite sprang from the foam of the sea. 
 One legend of her origin made her the daugh* 
 ter of Uranus and Hemert;, the Heaven and 
 the Day. In another — and this is the story 
 of the Liad — she is called the daughter of 
 Zeus and Dioue. She was the goddess of 
 beauty, of love, of passion. She was ever 
 attended by the Hor£e and the Charites. In 
 honor of her origin she was given the names 
 of Eualia and Pantia. Sometimes, as the 
 goddess of pure aflTection, she was called 
 Urauia. The principal legend of this divin- 
 ity is that which recites the award to her of 
 the prize of beauty. At the marriage of 
 Peleus and Thetis, Eris, the god of Strife, 
 threw down a golden apple with the inscrip- 
 tion, Tchthemost Beautiful, It was claimed by 
 Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite. Zeus left the 
 award to be made by Paris, the son of Priam, 
 and by him the prize was given to Aj>hrodite. 
 She gave him in return the most beautiful 
 woman in Greece, Helen of Sparta, wife of 
 Menelaiis. And hence the Trojan war. 
 
 Aphrodite had for her husband Hephjestus, 
 but she preferred Adonis, who loved her not 
 in return. Once she was beloved by Posei- 
 don; once, by Ares. Her human lover was 
 Anchises of Troy, by whom she became the 
 mother of ^neas, the ancestor of the Ro- 
 mans. The myths of Aphrodite are many 
 and sometimes contradictory. Her charactei 
 is that of vicissitude. She changes. Some- 
 times she is pure and tender; sometimes 
 vehement and passionate. In the Spartan 
 temple she was represented as a victorious 
 goddess, conquering rather than winning, 
 subduing rather than sustaining the spirits of 
 her votaries. 
 
 Hephaestus was the presiding genius of the 
 Olympian smithy. He was puny at birth, 
 but powerful — as well as lame and ugly — 
 when grown up. His delight was the forge. 
 Here he fashioned the weapons of the goda
 
 GREECE.— MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 603 
 
 anil the heroes. His career was hard and 
 inglorious. Kis mother, Hera, was so dis- 
 pleased with his iigliuess that she would ban- 
 ish him fioin Olympus. Afterwards he es- 
 poused her cause in a quarrel with Zeus, and 
 by him was hurled down into the island of 
 Leranos. He subseijeutly regained a measure 
 of favor, but never rose to a dignity higher 
 than that of cupbearer to the gods. One of 
 his myths is tiiat when the armor of Achilles 
 had been taken by Hector from the body of 
 Patroclus, Hephoestus, at the prayer of The- 
 tis, made for her son a new suit burnished 
 till it flashed like the sun. His good fortune 
 in winning Aphrodite for his wife was blasted 
 by the wamlering of her affections to Adonis. 
 
 Apollo had nearly always the epithet of 
 Phoebus. He was the overpowering Bright- 
 ness of the Sun. He did not, however, have 
 his residence in the great orb of day, that 
 being reserved for Helios. Phoebus was the 
 son of Zeus and Leto. His mother wandered 
 through many lands until she came at last to 
 Delos, and promised that in return for .shelter 
 the island should become famous as the birth- 
 place of her son. Here Phoebus was born ; 
 and the pledge of the mother was fulfilled ; 
 for from henceforth Delos became one of the 
 uacred places of the Hellenes.' The island, 
 once rocky and sterile, was covered with 
 flowe.-s and verdure. The nymj)lis came and 
 wrappe the infant Apollo in a white robe. 
 Themis feci him with nectar and ambrosia. 
 He took a harp in his hand and declared 
 himself the revealer of the will of Zeus to 
 mankind. 
 
 As a god, Phoebus was the bringer of the 
 light. Light was the harbinger of knowl- 
 edge. He became the patron of learning 
 and art and song. It was the ushering in 
 of the Beautiful, not only for Greece, but for 
 all the world. Barliarism drew a cowl over 
 his leaden eyes and slunk into a cavern. 
 The morning of civilization arose with the 
 resplendent sun, drawn in the car of Phoebus. 
 
 "'T)ie isles of Ctieece, tlie isles of Greece, 
 Wliere burninij; Sapplio lined and sung, 
 WIhtc grew the .irts of war imd (leace. 
 Where Delos rose and I'lutbus sprung." 
 
 — Hvron. 
 
 Darkness shivered and died in the sweet dawn 
 of poesy. The flash of beauty and the vic» 
 toiy of thought began in the lumiuous myth 
 of Apollo. 
 
 He had limbs, for strength and whiteness, 
 
 Like the war-maid Amazon's, 
 And his eye shot forth the brightness 
 
 Of the Oriental sun's. 
 By his mighty side and shoulder 
 
 Hung the quiver and its darts; 
 And the world has grown no older 
 
 Since Apollo gave the arts ! 
 
 The great oracle of Phoebus was at Del* 
 phi — the most famous of all the shrines of 
 the Hellenes. Here it was that Apollo slew 
 the Typhon, the terrible dragon of darkness 
 that had so long kept the world in terror. 
 Here it was that the inspiration of the gods, 
 breathing from the crevice of the rocks, gave 
 the Pythia her prophetic powers and made 
 men acquainted with the future. Of all the 
 worship known to the Greeks that of Apollo 
 was most widely spread and influential. His 
 voice, speaking through the oracle, not infre- 
 quently changed the current of Hellenic his- 
 tory. Under the shadow of his temple the 
 Amphyctionic council of the Greek states, 
 the greatest and wisest body of the nation, 
 held its meetings, as if to gain for their de- 
 liberations the highest sanctions of wisdom 
 and religion. 
 
 Like unto Apollo was his sister, Artemis. 
 She possessed in general the same powers and 
 attributes with her brother. With her name, 
 however, are associated fewer myths than with 
 most of the other divinities. She took part 
 in the afllairs of men more as a friend than an 
 enemy. She gave to Procris her hound and 
 spear. She healed .^neas when he fell 
 wounded befoi'e Troy. But she insisted that 
 Ipiiigenia should be sacrificed, and was iri* 
 placable. 
 
 Hermes, son of Zeus and ^Faia, began \ii% 
 career by extemporizing a cithara from a tor* 
 toise shell. From this he proceeded to the 
 theft of the cattle of Phoebus. Then he kin- 
 dled fire by the friction of wood, and thus 
 gave to the world the warmth of the cheerful 
 flame : all this during the first day of his life 
 Then followed the contest between himself 
 and I'iuebus respecting the stolen herd, the
 
 604 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 trial of the cause in the court of Zeus, the 
 placation of Apollo's temper by the device of 
 music, the interchange of the lyre of Hermes 
 for the wisdom of Phoebus, and to the treaty 
 between the two deities — one of the most 
 elaborate, interesting, and witty myths of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 Such was the Olympian hierarchy. Be- 
 sides the "twelve gods," however, there were 
 many others believed in by the Hellenes. 
 Such was Dionysus, the wine-god, to whom 
 frequent reference has already been made. 
 As to his parentage the myths are various. 
 the most rational being that he was the son 
 of Zeus and Semele, daughter of Cadmus, 
 king of Thebes. She, tempted to her ruin, 
 was visited by Zeus, and was destroyed by his 
 lightnings ; but Dionysus was born in the 
 midst of the thunderbolts. He was brought 
 up in Naxos, and passed through many and 
 grievous toils before coming to his fame. His 
 principal legend is that which recounts the 
 history of the introduction of the vine. 
 Dionysus stood on a cliff by the sea. Some 
 Tyrrhenians passing in a ship saw him and 
 took him. They bound him with withes, but 
 these were broken off. As they sailed away a 
 stream of wine flowed over the deck of the 
 vessel, and a vine clambered up the masts. 
 In the midst of the leaves hung bunches of 
 luscious grapes. 
 
 One of the most famous of the myths was 
 that of Heracles. He was the son of Zeus 
 and Alcmene. By his father the greatness of 
 his physical strength was predicted. In his 
 cradle, as he lay sleeping, two serpents coiled 
 themselves around him; but on waking he 
 clutched them by the throats and choked 
 them to death. As he grew he became the 
 abused servant of Eurystheus, grandson of 
 Perseus, who by the craft of Juno was sub- 
 stituted for Heracles in the kingdom. The 
 latter was condemned for twelve years to toil 
 for the benefit of man. His whole life was 
 spent in performance of heavy tasks, too 
 grievous to be undertaken by any other than 
 this divine toiler. Twelve stupendous "la- 
 bors" were imposed upon him, but neither did 
 his patience fail nor his strength prove inade- 
 quate to his tasks. He strangled the great 
 
 lion that infested the Nemtean valley. He 
 slew the huge, nine-headed LeruEean hydra. 
 He captured the Arcadian stag that had 
 golden horns and bi-azen feet, of surpassing 
 swiftness and strength. He took the Eryman- 
 thian boar, having chased him through the 
 deep snow until exhausted he was caught in a 
 snare. lie cleansed the Augean stables, 
 where three thousand oxen had been stabled 
 for thirty years. To wash out the horrid ag- 
 gregation the rivers Alpheus and Peneus were 
 turned into the stalls, and the work was done 
 in a single day. He destroyed the birds of 
 Stamphalia, terrible creatures with claws and 
 wings and beaks of brass, feeding upon the 
 flesh of men. He captured the mad bull of 
 Crete that Minos had neglected to sacrifice 
 when sent by Poseidon. He carried away the 
 wild mares of Diomedes that fed upon human 
 beings, and brought them tamed to Mycense. 
 He took away th'e girdle of Hippolyte, queen 
 of the Amazons, which she had received as a 
 gift from Ares. He seized the red oxen of 
 Geryones, guarded as they were by the giant 
 Eurytion and the two-headed dog Orthrus. 
 He obtained the golden apples of the Hes- 
 perides, given by Rhea to Juno and protected 
 by the dragon Ladon. Finally, he -seized and 
 carried to the upper world the three-headed 
 dog Cerberus that stood guard at the portals 
 of Hades. In his further career he went 
 about doing good to men, in beating back the 
 adverse forces of nature and subduing the 
 monsters that infested the primeval world. 
 
 In tracing the course of Grecian mythology, 
 it is quite impossible to tell precisely where 
 the godlike ends and the heroic begins. 
 There is a point at which the deeds of tht. 
 actor become the exploits of a man — exagger- 
 ated doubtless beyond the range of human 
 performance, but still essentially the exploits 
 of a man. At that point the myth proper 
 descends into a legend ; the element of the 
 supernatural gradually disappears ; and tradi' 
 tion begins to lay the foundation of history. 
 But before entering the domain of what may 
 be called the traditions and legends of Greece 
 as distinguished from her mythology proper — 
 or so much of it as appertains to the lives 
 and deeds of the gods — it will be appropriate
 
 GREECE.— MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 606 
 
 to add a few paragraphs on the signification 
 of the Hellenic myths. What did they meanf 
 How did they originate? How did the gods 
 of the Greeks become what they were in the 
 imagination of the people? Tliese (juestions 
 are not to be answered with over-assurance of 
 certainty, but with a modest caution and 
 reserve. 
 
 In the first place, then, the mythology of 
 the Hellenic race should be regarded a System 
 of Natural PhiIo.<ophy. It was an effort of the 
 human mind to interpret Nature. Knowledge 
 consists in a perception of cause. To be able 
 to refer one fact to another as its antecedent 
 and that to another, is the first step in natu- 
 ral science, and indeed in any science. Na- 
 ture has always presented herself to the mind 
 as a mystery to be solved. Her ever-varying 
 and beautiful phenomena are precisely of a 
 sort to fascinate the senses and challenge the 
 reason of men. She has thus offered herself 
 to all races, but her petition to be known has 
 been felt as an ardent ajipeal by only a few 
 peoples of vigorous intellect and active imag- 
 ination. Of this sort were the Aryan races, 
 who have all manifested a ketd interest in 
 the great mystery which at once evokes their 
 admiration and awakens their curiosity. The 
 Aryans, under favorable conditions, have 
 always been a people of the liveliest sense- 
 perrriitlon. They have seen with keener ap- 
 preciation the beautiful pictures of Nature, 
 and heard with purer delight the rhythm of 
 her melodies than have any other of the 
 families of mankind. 
 
 Among these Aryan races — Indians, Per- 
 sians, Medes, Italicans, Germans, Celts — the 
 Greeks were preeminently the people of high- 
 est intellectual power and liveliest imagina- 
 tion. They were especially curious to know — 
 eager to hear, to see, to understand. Their 
 senses were susceptible of the most vivid im- 
 pressions. Their interest in the great pano- 
 rama of Nature was unflagging. Imagination 
 and reason were ever on the alert to explain 
 the shifting scenery of the visible world. 
 
 So the Greeks began to put into language, 
 to describe, to interpret the j)lienoniena of 
 earth and sky ami sen. Here at the outset 
 they were opposed with a serious obstacle. 
 
 Nature in some parts of the world, as in 
 Egypt and Chaldaia, displays herself in a suc- 
 cession of orderly aspects. She varies but 
 little. Day after day, through cloudless skies, 
 the great sun travels the jjrescribed path to 
 his western exit into darkness. Night after 
 night the tremendous wheel of the silent 
 universe is revolved in solemn grandeur over* 
 head. There is little variation. Observation 
 is stimulated by the regularity and steadiness 
 of the phenomena, and the lines of causation 
 from consequent to antecedent, unbroken by 
 interferences or accident, are easily traced from 
 step to step. But in Greece the exact op- 
 posite of all this is true. Here, if anywhere 
 in the world, Nature knows no law. The 
 coasts of Hellas are bounded by a line of in- 
 describable irregularity. The sea gnaws at 
 the shore, and the shore thrusts out to sea. 
 The surface of the country is set at all slopes 
 and angles. Hills rise from the valleys, and 
 mountains overtop the hills. Forests, glens, 
 grottoes, vistas, fountains, sequestered spots, 
 thickets of tangled vines, rocky chasms with 
 the murmur of waters in the bottom, patches 
 of the bluest sky seen through gnarled 
 branches of hoary oaks, — every aspect of 
 smile or frown which Nature can well assume, 
 is here the expression of her face. She is 
 whimsical, capricious. A flash of warm sun« 
 shine transfigures the landscape, and then — 
 
 Cliill and murk is the mighty blast 
 Where Pindus' mountains rise. 
 
 And angry skies are pouring fast 
 The deluge of tlie skies. 
 
 In the midst of this almost infinite com- 
 plexity the Greek mind stood confused. 
 Nature here seemed without law. Her pro- 
 cesses were everywhere broken and interrupted. 
 The consequent was detached from the ante- 
 cendent. The different parts of the natural 
 world seemed to be under the dominion of 
 individual forces. Unity was indiscoverable 
 in the multiplex aspect of Nature. She 
 seemed made up of antagonisms and conflicts. 
 In her moods was the mingling of calm and 
 storm, of light and darkness, of joy and sor- 
 row. The interpretation of such a variable 
 and capricious Fact as that with which the 
 Greek fouml himself environed would of
 
 606 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 necessity be broken into parts, confused in 
 detaik, contradictory in statement. 
 
 What, then, more particularly were the 
 facts and phenomena which the imagination 
 and reason of the Greeks, and the ancestors 
 of the Greeks, were called upon to explain? 
 They were the visible phenomena of the ex- 
 ternal world. Here were, first of all, the 
 three great facts of sky and earth and sea. 
 Here, also, were the two principal orbs of 
 heaven, the sun and the moon. Here, in the 
 next place, and especially, were the attributes 
 and effects of those bodies — light, heat, dawn, 
 twilight, day as one fact and night as another. 
 Here were clouds floating overhead. Here 
 were fountains bubbliug from the earth. 
 Here were the unseen but powerful winds. 
 Here were the waves of the deep sea — the 
 murmur of their music, the roar of their 
 wrath. Here was the hot lightning, flashing 
 through the vapor-burdened air of summer, 
 and the deep roll of the thunder, shaking 
 both earth and heaven. 
 
 Of these things what explanation? The 
 mind of primitive Arya stood before the prob- 
 lem. It began descriptively. TJw first stage 
 of mythology is simple description. The phe- 
 nomena of Nature and her simpler processes 
 were merely described. They were described 
 as they would be by a people of a vigorous 
 eense-perception and lively imagination. But 
 there was at the outset no impersonation — no 
 oi&ripition of active causes to natural phenomena 
 mdside of themselves. The facts and sequences 
 of Nature were at the first merely expressed 
 in such words as seemed to give the truest im- 
 pression of the things described. That is to 
 say, the primitive natural philosopher of the 
 Aryan race spoke of Nature, described her as 
 she appeared to his senses. He said : The 
 sun rises. He rises from the sea. The light 
 comes from the east. The light is from the 
 sun. The dawn precedes the day. Darkness 
 flees before the dawn. Darkness goes under 
 the world when day comes. The sun dries 
 up the dew. The clouds give rain. The 
 clouds are the creatures of the air. The sky 
 is over a?L. The sky is the highest thing. 
 Tht sky thunders. The sky lightens. Fire 
 is from the sun. Fire warms. Water 
 
 quenches. The sea is troubled. Man is 
 afraid. The powers are stronger than he. 
 Underground is dark. Love is sweet. War 
 crushes. All things go on and on. 
 
 Such was the natural language of man 
 attempting to depict and explain the things 
 which he saw. It was merely the rudiments 
 of a natural philosophy, which in a literary 
 and enlightened age would erelong have be- 
 come Science; but, being in a pre-literary and 
 unenlightened age, it became MytJwhgy. It 
 only remains, then, to explain the process by 
 which the rudiments of the primitive natural 
 philosophy of the Aryan races were mytholo- 
 gized — converted into myths. The explana- 
 tion of this process is to be sought and found, 
 whole and perfect, in the history and muta- 
 tions of human speech. It is to the Science 
 of Language that we must look for the inter- 
 pretation of the metamorphosis of the prim- 
 itive philosophy of nature into myths. 
 
 It must be understood that the original 
 Aryan tribes of Bactria broke up and rolled 
 away in migratory bands in several directions. 
 The tribes fiUed India, the Great Plateau of 
 Iran, the shores of Asia Minor, the islands' 
 and mainland of Greece, Italy, Germany, 
 Scandinavia, the whole of Europe. These 
 peoples had an original language, which was 
 spoken before the tribal separation. It via* 
 during the migration and settlement of these na 
 tions in distant paiis that Nature became a>i of 
 ject of study and description. But, while this 
 process was going on, while the Indians were 
 becoming Indians and the Greeks Greeks, the 
 languages of the nations about to be were 
 undergoing rapid processes of growth and 
 decay : growth — for the new objects which 
 constantly appeared before a migratory and 
 developing people, especially if those people 
 were possessed of lively sensibilities, would 
 constantly demand new names and new 
 descriptions ; decay — for the transfer of place 
 and scene and sentiment would with equal 
 certainty remand large numbers of words and 
 phrases, descriptive of things no longer seen 
 and heard, to the ever-increasing list of obso- 
 lete and obsolescent fragments which time and 
 change were daily tossing into the waste-basket 
 of human speech.
 
 GREECE.— MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 607 
 
 Now, it is this waste-basket of human 
 speech that contains the mythology of the an- 
 cients. The words, phrases, and scraps of de- 
 scription which were cast therein were, when 
 80 dropped among tlie debri.-<, merely unfig- 
 urative expressions for the things previously 
 seen and heard. But it must be borne in 
 mind that in a prc-litorar)' age this mass of 
 waste fragments of dying speech would for a 
 long time be carried along with the migrating, 
 and even by the settled, tribes, and that obso- 
 lete and ob-solescent words and phra.ses would 
 continue to be heard on the tongues of people 
 who, having no lexicon in which the original 
 meanings of such words and phrases were 
 crystallized, would use them in a new sense 
 unknown to their fathers. It thus came to 
 pass that the alphabet and rudimentary les- 
 sons of the primitive natural philosophy, be- 
 ing couched in an obsolescent phraseology, 
 were gradually transformed into myths. The 
 old word which had been merely a name or 
 descriptive epithet became, when its meaning 
 was lost and when that meaning was expressed 
 by a new word coined in the fertile brain of 
 invention, the name of a person rather than the 
 name of a thing. And this is the sum and 
 substance of the mythologizing process by 
 which the merely descriptive phrases of early 
 science were transformed under a natural law 
 of linguistic change into a new sense descrip- 
 tive of imaginary Causes and Personal Agen- 
 cies apart from the facts to be interpreted. 
 It is thus that the Science of Language, not 
 by theory and speculation, but by the actual 
 demonstration of truth, has revealed the true 
 origin and nature of the myths of antiquity. 
 It only remains to elucidate the subject with 
 a few examples and illustrations caught almost 
 at random from the language of mythology. 
 The word zeiis meant originally the blue 
 Bky. It had no other signification. This 
 meaning was not known to the Greeks them- 
 selves. The true sense of the word has been 
 discovered only in recent times, by an exam- 
 ination of the cognate Sanskrit in which dijaus 
 pUar (^zeiM jxiter in Greek) means simplv 
 father of the sky, the dyaiis being the word 
 for sky. Neither Socrates nor Plato ever 
 dreamed of such a fact in their language. 
 
 To them the word Zeus had issued from the 
 prehistoric shadows as the name of the su- 
 preme god of their race — nothing more, noth- 
 ing less. But it is now clearly seen that 
 sometime during the Hellenic migration the 
 word zeus became^ mythologized — lost its old 
 scientific meaning of sky, passed through the 
 stage of sky-yo(I, and then, since the sky is the 
 highest thing, became the name of the Fathe- 
 of gods and men, the supreme deity of the 
 race. This simple method of illustration can 
 be carried forward with entire satisfaction 
 through the whole list of the gods and god- 
 desses of Greece, the fictions thus unraveled 
 being of the highest beauty in the light of 
 the new interpretation. 
 
 Thus, for instance, dew in the original 
 Aryan speech was called jn-ocris. One of the 
 names of the sun was cephalm. The child at 
 early morning, beholding the dew-drops on 
 the grass, might well wonder and grieve to 
 see them disappear in the sunlight. The par- 
 ent would explain that cephaJiis had taken pro- 
 cris away — had killed her with kisses. So the 
 phrase would arise that eephalm loved 2)roeri» 
 and devoured her. It is at first a poem in pri- 
 mary science. But so soon as the original 
 meanings of cephalus and j:>?-oen's have been 
 supplanted by other words and the original 
 words have become obsolescent, then the 
 myth-making imagination, retaining the old 
 phrase-poem, preserves it in the legend that 
 the god Cephalus, loving the maiden Procris, 
 devoured her with kisses. In the same way 
 Phoebus, the sun, pursues Daphne, the dawn, 
 and gives her no rest from his tierce passion ; 
 but she returns in the twilight of evening to 
 watch with faithful tenderness beside the 
 couch of her dying 'ord. The myth of Cro- 
 nos devouring his oflspring means no more — 
 whatever it may have meant to the Greek — 
 than that time eats up the days and years: as 
 soon as they are bori. It is all a mutation 
 of speech, beginning with an attempt to 
 explain in plain language the phenomena of 
 Nature, and ending by the giving to obsolete 
 words of a new sense significant of a Cause 
 rather than descriptive of a Fact. It 
 was thus that the wonderful, the beautiful 
 fabric of Grecian mythology was built up un-
 
 608 
 
 UNIVERSAL fflSTORY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 consciously out of an attempt of the primitive 
 Hellenes to formulate a system of natural 
 philosophy, and out of the transformation of 
 that system by the mythologizing processes 
 ■of human speech. 
 
 After the myth of Heracles, there is a 
 gradual descent in the system of the Greeks 
 to the plane of human possibility. Thus, 
 though Perseus is still the son of Zeus, he be- 
 gins to appear as one of the mortals. He 
 was brought up by King Polydectes, by whom 
 he was sent to fetch the head of the gorgon 
 Medusa. To save himself from being con- 
 verted into stone on beholding the monster, 
 Perseus employed the device of a mirror, and 
 thus succeeded in cutting off Medusas head. 
 Finding Polydectes to have been treacherous, 
 he converted him and his household into 
 stone by displaying the head of the dead 
 gorgon. After this, being unwLUing to return 
 to Argos, of which he is the reputed founder, 
 Perseus exchanged governments with King 
 Megapeuthes, and received for his kingdom 
 Tiryns, in return for his own city of Argos. 
 
 Of like character is the tradition of The- 
 BEUS, the legendary hero of Attica. His 
 parents were mortals, his father being ^geus, 
 king of Athens, and his mother the daughter 
 of Pittheus, king of Troezena. His royal 
 parentage was concealed from him until his 
 maturity, when he returned to Athens and 
 was about to be destroyed by Medea. He 
 afterwards engaged in a series of adventures, 
 or labors, like those of Heracles, undertaken 
 for the good of his countrymen. He even 
 devoted himself to death by a self-oflering to 
 the Minotaur of Crete, but Ariadne, daughter 
 of King ^liuos, furnbhed him a sword and a 
 •ball of thread, by means of which he traced 
 the labyrinth and slew the Minotaur in his 
 ■den. On his return to his own country with 
 Ariadne he forgot to hoist the white sail, 
 ■which was to be the signal of his victory, and 
 King ^geus, believing his sou destroyed, 
 threw himself into the sea. Theseus thus be- 
 came king of Attica. He afterwards subdued 
 the Amazons, went on the Argonautic expe- 
 dition, and fought against the Centaurs, those 
 fabulous horse-man monsters that inhabited 
 the plains of Thessaly. 
 
 Similar, also, is the legend of CEdipus, the 
 great hero of Thebes. On account of a warn- 
 ing from the Delphic oracle he was exposed 
 at birth by his father, Laios, but was rescued 
 and taken to Coriuth, where he was adopted 
 as the son of Polybus and Merope. Journey- 
 ing towards Thebes, he met an old man in a 
 chariot, who ordered him out of the way and 
 struck him. OEdipus was enraged aud slew 
 him, and the dead man afterwards proved to 
 be his father, Laios. Not knowing what he 
 had done, Qi^dipus went on to Thebes. There 
 the merciless Sphinx had brought drought and 
 distress upon the city; for none could answer 
 the riddles which the monster, sitting on the 
 brow of the hill above the city, propouryied 
 to the people. But QDdipus solved the dark 
 sayings of the Sphinx, and she threw herself 
 down from the height and perished. The 
 deliverer was rewarded by the gift of locaste, 
 the queen, who was bestowed on him in mar- 
 riage. Now, locaste was his mother! So the 
 oracle was fulfilled. A plague came on the 
 city. Qildipus tore out his eyes, and locaste 
 died of despair. 
 
 Nor should the legend be omitted of Cad- 
 jvius and Europa. They were the children of 
 Agenor and Telephassa. In childhood, Europa 
 was carried away by Zeus, who appeared in 
 the form of a white bull. Then the mother 
 and brothers went to search for her who was 
 abducted. In Thessaly, Telephassa died, but 
 Cadmus, under direction of Phoebus Apollo, 
 went on to Delphi and found his sister. 
 After the discovery, he was directed by the 
 god to follow a cow that should appear before 
 him, and where she should lie down there he 
 should found a city. He did so, and thus 
 laid the foundation of Thebes. 
 
 The founding of Athens by Cecrops intro- 
 duces another interesting legend. According 
 to one myth this great hero ivas of Pelasgic 
 origin, but the commonly received tradition 
 made him an Egyptian from Sa'is. He is 
 said to have brought a colony into Attica and 
 to have founded the Acropolis. In the tem- 
 ple of Artemis a statue was placed to his 
 honor; for in a dispute between that goddess 
 and Poseidon he had decided for her, and 
 the olive-tree, instead of the trident, was
 
 GREECE.— MYTH AND TRADITION. 
 
 509 
 
 taken as the symbol of Atheus. After the 
 foundations of the city were laid, Cecrops di- 
 vided Attica into twelve communities. He 
 _gave good laws, established marriage, abol- 
 ished bloody sacrifices, encouraged agriculture 
 and the building of shij)S, brought in the 
 dawn of civilization. 
 
 Many other legends of like sort might be 
 recited from the treasure-house of Grecian 
 story. One of peculiar interest is that of 
 AflCLEPios.' He wa.s the reputed son of Apollo 
 and the nymph Coronis. At his birth Phoebus 
 left the mother and went his ways. Then 
 came Ischys from Arcadia and won her love. 
 For this disloyalty Artemis slew Coronis, but 
 Asclepios was saved alive. He was reared by 
 the centaur Cheiron, who 
 taught him the mysteries of ^„ _ r 
 
 the healing art, by which ^^5* 
 the pupil gained a world-wide 
 fame. He even i-aised the 
 dead; but by doing so he pro- 
 voked the wrath of Hades, 
 who complained to Zeus that 
 his kingdom would be unpeo- 
 pled. Zeus thereupon smote 
 Asclepios with a thunderbolt. 
 For this, Apollo, being en- 
 raged, slew the Cyclopes, 
 servants of Zeus; but the lat- 
 ter squared the account by 
 condemning Ajiollo to serve 
 the house of Aduietus, king of Pherie, 
 
 Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and 
 Clymene. In him is preserved the tradition 
 of the Grecian flood. In the time of King 
 Lycaon and his sons the wickedness of the 
 world became intolerable. Zeus resolved to 
 destroy mankind with a deluge of water. So 
 he sent a flood. As the waters rose Deuca- 
 lion entered the ark which he had ])rcpared 
 in accordance with the warning of his father, 
 Prometheus, and for eight days was borne on 
 the breast of the waters. Then the ark rested 
 on Parnassus. Deucalion came out with his 
 wife Pyrrha, and prayed for the restoration 
 of mankind. ITernios, in answer, told him 
 that he nnd Pyrrha, in desi'ending tlie nioun- 
 
 'Usnal.y known by his I^tin name of ^Escu- 
 .lapius. 
 
 tain, should cover their faces with mantles 
 and cast behind them the bones of their 
 mother. Deucalion was a rationalist. By 
 "mother" he understood the earth, and by 
 " bones" he understood stones ; for the stones 
 are the bones of the earth. So he and Pyrrha 
 did as Hermes had bidden ; the stones which 
 they flung behind them became human beings, 
 and the world was repeopled. 
 
 Another interesting legend is that of Pro- 
 metheus and Eplmetheus, the Forethought 
 and Afterthought of the Grecian myth. The 
 story of Prometheus has already been given. 
 On one occasion he slew an ox in sacrifice, 
 and, placing the flesh and entrails under the 
 skin in one place and the bones under the fat 
 
 for 
 
 ^Gj^v&fyt; 
 
 a year in 
 
 r.riNS OF TROAS. 
 
 
 in another, told Zens to take his clioiee. The 
 ruler of gods and men chose the fat and got 
 the bones. Finding himself outwitted, and 
 Proniotbeus being gone, Zeus proceeded to 
 punish Al'terthought in his stead. He ordered 
 Hephaestus to make a clay-woman. He com- 
 manded Athene to clothe her in beautiful 
 robes, and Hermes to give her the power of 
 speech to deceive and betray mankind. So 
 Pandora was made and given to Epimetheua 
 for a wife ! When she was received into hia 
 house she there opened a great cask, out of 
 which flew all the plagues of the world. 
 Every thing escaped except Hope, and she was 
 left imprisoned ! 
 
 In the domain of exploits the two most 
 famous jjreserved in the legendary lore of the 
 Greeks were the Argonautic Expedition 
 qnd the Trcian War. The first of these waa
 
 610 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY. — TEE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Mudertakeu by the Grecian chiefs for the re- 
 coTery of the Golden Fleece. This fleece 
 belonged to the ram of Phrixus. He was the 
 son of Athamas and Nephele. When Nephele 
 died Athamas married Ino. Phrixus and 
 Helle, his sister, were very unhappy until the 
 ram with the golden fleece came and carried 
 them away. While lie bore them aloft Helle 
 fell ofi and was drowned in the narrow strait 
 thenceforth called the Hellespont. Phrixus rode 
 onward to the palace of jEetes, king of Col- 
 chis. By him was the ram sacrificed to Zeus 
 and the fleece hung up in the palace until 
 
 among the armed men that sprang up from 
 the teeth of the dragon. On doing this, the 
 armed men fell to slaying each other. Then 
 Medea lulled the dragon to sleep. Jason 
 quickly slew him and Ijore away the Golden 
 Fleece in triumph. 
 
 The story of~the Trojan \N'ar is perhaps 
 the most famous tradition of antiquity. In 
 the poems of Homer it has acquired an im- 
 mortality of fame. The circumstances lead- 
 ing to the war have already been referred to 
 in the myth of Venus, to whom, by the judg- 
 ment of Paris, was awarded the golden apple 
 
 Diomedes. Odisaexis. Nestor. Achilles. 
 
 HKROES OF THE TROJAN WAR. 
 
 what time the chiefs of the Greeks should 
 come and recover it. 
 
 The Greek leaders were gathered for this 
 mission by Jason. They sailed away in the 
 good ship Argo — Heracles, Meleagros, Am- 
 phiaraos, Admetus, and many others. They 
 passed the rocks called the Symplegades, that 
 opened and closed so quickly that scarcely 
 might a bird dart through with safety. They 
 traversed the land of the Amazons, and came 
 to Colchis. jEetes refused to surrender the 
 fleece until Jason should plow the land with 
 the fire-breathing bulls and sow it with the 
 teeth of the dragon, who guarded the fleece. 
 Medea aided him. She anointed his body so 
 that the breath of the bulls should not destroy 
 him, and instructed him to throw a stone 
 
 thrown by Strife among the deities at their 
 banquet. When it was known that Helen 
 was abducted from the house of her lord. Men- 
 elaiis, king of Sparta, there was a general 
 uprising among the princes of Greece for her 
 recovery. A great expedition was undertaken 
 by water against Troy, the city of Priam, on 
 the upper coast of Asia ISlinor. The gods 
 and goddesses were nearly all involved in the 
 conflict. Hera and Athene were for the 
 Greeks: Aphrodite for the Trojans. The city 
 was besieged for ten years, and was finally, 
 when naked valor had failed, taken by the 
 device of the Wooden Horse. Famous in 
 all the world is the story of the stratagem. 
 The Greeks made of sawn fir a huge effigy 
 of a horse, and filled the cavernous body
 
 GREECE— MYTH AXP TEADITIOX 511 
 
 V '' a company of soldiers. This monstrous j carried off, Helen herself recovered and bonie 
 enij^ > they left standing on the sand, and back to her Spartan home. The cojidition of 
 then s..iled away as if they were f^iviiig up Greece in the time of the return of the expe- 
 
 the siege. They took care, however, to con- 
 vey to the Trojans a lie so carefully contrived 
 
 dition — the social life, manners, and institu- 
 tions of the race — are depicted with great 
 
 ■| hi: wdoiiKS )i()iiM;, 
 
 as to induce them to cut their walls and ilniw hcauty in the imperisluihle pages of the 
 in till- (hmgerous horse. At night the lient-^ '>'/i/'<.«'i/.- Such, then, are the mythological and 
 up soldiers came forth; the Greeks sailed back | legendary antecedents of that brilliant people 
 from Tenedos. and Troy was taken. Priam's whose career in peace and war is now to be 
 palace was sacked and burnt, its treasures narrated.
 
 512 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Chapter XLII.— The Hellenic dawn. 
 
 T wliat time and in what 
 manner the states of 
 Hellas Tvere first colo- 
 nized can not now — j)er- 
 haps never will — be 
 known. History opens 
 upon the scene with set- 
 tled tribes, walled cities, and petty kings al- 
 ready established in the country. StUl, at 
 the very dawn of Greek histor}', we are met 
 with a commotion among the tribes, a general 
 jostling of one race by another to the ex- 
 tent of undoing a previous condition and the 
 establishment of a new in its stead. One of 
 the earliest of these movements is that of the 
 Boeotians from Thessaly into their own coun- 
 try, known as the Bceotian iliGEATiON. Their 
 original seat was in the district of TEnlis in 
 Central Thessaly, from which jjosition they 
 were driven by the incoming of rude tribes 
 from Epirus. Beiug thus dispossessed, the 
 Boeotians moved to the south aud obtained a 
 footing in the country afterwards called Bceo- 
 tia. There was thus begun from the north a 
 movement which jostled tribe after tribe of 
 the primitive Hellenes from their seats until 
 nearly all the states had felt the influence of 
 the agitation. The date of this migration is 
 uncertain. Presumaljly, the event was subse- 
 quent to the Trojan War; for neither this 
 migration of the Boeotians, nor the later one 
 of the Dorians, is mentioned in the Iliad or 
 Odyssey. 
 
 It is not improbable that the removal of 
 the Boeotians into Central Greece gave the 
 initial impulse in the larger and more impor- 
 tant movement of the Dorians, known as the 
 Dorian Migration or the Retuex of the 
 Herac'lid.e. Here tliere is a mingling of 
 history aud fable. It is easy to see how the 
 people, displaced by ttie Boeotians from their 
 little state of Doris in Central Greece, would 
 in turn fall upon some of the tribes further 
 south, and that thus the wave cf agitation 
 would roll on into Peloponnesus. But tradi- 
 
 tion has taken up the lay and gives a more 
 elaborate account of the movement. 
 
 The Dorians, according to their belief, 
 had original clauns in Peloponnesus. These 
 claims were based upon the relati:23 of this 
 people with the descendants of Heracles. To 
 him belonged the rightful sovereignty of 
 Southern Greece ; but of this he was deprived 
 by the wiles of Hera, who contrived to have 
 Eurystheus preferred for the kingdom of Ar> 
 gos. Heracles was condemned to service, apd 
 his descendants to exUe. Under the lead of 
 Hyllus, the son of Heracles, they had at- 
 tempted to regain their lost patrimony ; but 
 Hyllus was slain by Echemus of Tegea, and 
 they tliemselves were bound to renounce all 
 efforts at recovery for the space of a hundred 
 years. Finally, however, the century elapsed, 
 and the grandsons of Hyllus — Temenus, Cres- 
 phontes, and Aristodemus — determined to 
 recover their birthright. In this effort they 
 were joined by the Dorians, who retained a 
 grateful recollection of how Heracles, in for- 
 mei times, had aided tlieir king JEgimius in a 
 war with the Lapithfe. So the Heraclidse 
 aud the Dorians made common cause in the 
 attemjJt to gain possession of Peloponnesus. 
 
 Meanwhile, the sons of Heracles were 
 warned by an oracle not to attempt to pasH 
 through the isthmus of Corinth, but to crossi 
 the gulf at its mouth. They were given freei 
 passes through ^tolia, the king himself act- 
 ing as their guide. The Ozolian Locrians, 
 also, lent their aid by giving them a harbor 
 in which to construct the necessary ships, and 
 this place was henceforth known as Naupac- 
 tus or Shiptown. Aristodemus died here, but 
 his two sons, Eurysthenes antl Procles, and 
 the remaining brothers led the people across 
 the gulf into Achaia. 
 
 At tills time the most powerful chief in 
 Peloponnesus was Tisamenus, S(m of Arestes. 
 Against him the Heraclidse and the Dorians 
 marched, and he was defeated in battle. 
 Gathering his subjects together, however, lie
 
 GREECE. — THE HELLENIC DAWN. 
 
 olS 
 
 retired into the northern districts of Southern 
 Greece, then occupied by the loniaus. Them 
 he expelled, and then took possession of their 
 country. The victory of the Heraclidte being 
 complete, they proceeded to divide among 
 themselves and the Dorians the coiKiuered 
 states of Peloponnesus. Oxylus, the Jitolian, 
 received the kingdom of Elis. Temenus and 
 Cresphontes and the two sons of Aristode- 
 mus then drew lots for the three states of 
 Sparta, Argos, and Messenia. The first fell 
 to the children of Aristoderaus ; Argos, to 
 Temenus ; and 3Iesseiiia to Cresphontes. Nor 
 was there serious opposition on the jjart of 
 the people of the country. The Epeaiis, wlio 
 were the primitive people of Elis, submitted 
 after the death of their king. Bands of 
 .^iltolians were brought into the country from 
 the north of the gulf, and from henceforth 
 the new people were called Eleans. Temenus 
 secured Argos without difficulty ; and his sous 
 soon enlarged the kingdom by conijueriug 
 Troezenia, Epidauria, Egina, and Sicyonia, 
 thus extending the state of Argolis to the 
 iimits defined in a preceding chapter. The 
 state of Sparta was secured to the sons of 
 Aristodemus by the treachery of the Achseau 
 PhUonomus, who was rewarded with the sov- 
 ereignty of Amycla;. The towns of Sparta 
 all submitted with the exception of Helos, 
 whose people, the Helots, were for their ob- 
 stinacy reduced to servitude. Of them much 
 will hereafter be said as the servile class in 
 Sparta. Melanthus, king of Messenia, gave 
 up without a struggle, and withdrew with a 
 large pa;-t of his subjects iuto Attica. 
 
 A short time subsequent to these events 
 the state of Corinth was also taken by the 
 Dorians. When the Heraclidce were about 
 to embark from Naupactus, on their mission 
 of conquest, one of the leaders, named Hip- 
 potes, had killed a priest by the name of 
 Camus, and for this he was banished by the 
 other sons of Heracles and forbidden to share 
 with them in the division of Peloponnesus. 
 For ten years he was an exile ; but after his 
 death his son, Aletes, revived his father's 
 claims, marched into Corinth with a body of 
 Dorians, overthrew the dynasty of the Sisy- 
 phids, and took the kingdom. The original 
 
 -3Dolian inhabitants were banished from the 
 country. Thus were the Heraclidse established 
 as the rulers of all Peloponnesus. But no 
 date can yet be assigned for these haif-legend- 
 ary movements of the Hellenic tribes. 
 
 The previous political condition of the 
 couutry thus overrun by the Dorians may be 
 briefly noticed. Peloponnesus was, during the 
 Heroic Age, the seat of those kingdoms from 
 which the most of the Greek chiefs were 
 gathered for the conquest of Troy. That 
 most ancient city ^lyceuse, in Ai-golis, was the 
 capital of Agamemnon, known as the "king 
 of men." His brother Meuelaiis was, at the 
 same time, king of Sparta, and from him was 
 his wife Helen, the beautiful cause of the 
 woes of the Greeks, taken away by the con- 
 trivance of Aphrodite and the willingness of 
 Paris. At the same time Argos was ruled by 
 Diomedes, who bore so heroic a part in the siege' 
 of Troy. Other princes held sway in different 
 portions of the couutry. The central mount- 
 ainous region was inhabited — as it continued 
 to be after the Dorian conquest — by the Ar- 
 cadians, a primitive race thought to have- 
 been the descendants of the Pelasgians. The 
 two principal towns of this region were Tegea 
 and Mantiuea. The rest of the country was 
 occupied with villages and rustic settlements, 
 which, from their seclusion, bore no active 
 part in the history of Greece. Such was that 
 condition of affairs which was superseded by 
 the establishment of the kingdoms of the 
 Heraclidse in Southern Hellas. 
 
 Meanwhile, other tribal movements had 
 been precipitated by the invasion of the Do- 
 rians. Many of the original inhabitants of 
 Peloponnesus, driven from their homes by the 
 Heraclida;, sought refuge in foreign lands. 
 The coasts of Asia Minor became the principal 
 resort of these fugitives and exiles. The 
 first band was made of those Achaans of Pel- 
 oponnesus, who, jostled from their native 
 haunts on the Corinthian gulf, went first int» 
 Boeotia. Then they were joined by others, 
 principally of the Jilolian race, and soon de- 
 parted for new homes on the other side of the 
 .iEgean. They settled along the northern 
 coast of Asia Minor, taking possession ot the 
 islands of Lesbos and Tenedos ; and here they
 
 514 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 laid the toundations of those cities which 
 were afterwards joined in tlie iEoLiAN Con- 
 federation. 
 
 More important by far was the migration 
 of the lonians. These people had been ex- 
 pelled by the Achasans from their native seats 
 on the Corinthian Gulf, and had sought refuge 
 in Attica. Here they were joined by others 
 of the same race, just as the ^oliaus had 
 gathered head in Boeotia. Many strangers, 
 exiles, and refugees also assembled with the 
 ■emigrants who departing from Attica were 
 led by the family of Codrus, the last king of 
 Athens, to their chosen homes among the Cy- 
 clades and on the coast of Asia Minor. Here 
 was founded the Ionian Confederation. 
 The country in which the cities of this league 
 were located lay along the shore from the 
 river Hermus to the Meander, and has already 
 been described in the Book on the History of 
 Persia. The two principal islands belonging 
 to Ionia were Chios and Samos, with which 
 were included many others of smaller import- 
 ance. Twelve cities in this part of Asiatic 
 Oreece belonged to the confederation, many 
 of them of great importance both commer- 
 cially and politically. 
 
 In the partition of Peloponnesus it hap- 
 pened that some of the Dorian chiefs could 
 not be provided with a "kingdom" on the 
 main-land of Greece. For this reason, they 
 with their followers and many of the native 
 Achteans, also left the country and established 
 themselves in Asia Minor. The part of the 
 coast selected la}' to the south of louia, and 
 included the two important islands of Rhodes 
 and Cos. In the former three of the six 
 cities belonging to the colonies known as the 
 Doric Hexapolis were founded — Lindus, 
 lalysus, and Camirus. On the main-land 
 were situated the two important towns of 
 Halicarnassus and Cnidus. 
 
 So runs the tradition of the various migra- 
 tions — Dorian, Ionian, ^olian — which oc- 
 curred at the close of the Heroic Age of 
 Greece. These narratives can not be accepted 
 without many grains of allowance. It is now 
 well known that Ionia was the oldest civilized 
 state of the Greeks, UTid that enlightenment 
 «pread westward from the shores of Asia 
 
 Minor, until, diffused among the Cyclades, it 
 finally flashed its radiance into Hellas Proper. 
 From this it will be seen that the only rational 
 view to be taken of the alleged migrations 
 from the West is that which represents the 
 lonians of the main-land, disturbed by the 
 movement of the Dorians from the North, as 
 (joing hack and settling among their own 
 countrymen, already for a long time the dom- 
 inant people on the coast of Asia Minor. 
 Nor is there any thing incongruous in this 
 view of the case; for people, when driven by 
 invasion from their homes, are just as likely 
 to return to their kinsmen as to strike out 
 into unoccupied regions. Criticism, therefore, 
 simply demands that the migration of the 
 jEolians, lonians, and Dorians shall be read 
 the return of the ^-olians, etc., which is, in- 
 deed, the very language given by tradition to 
 the movement of the Heraclidse from the 
 North into Peloponnesus. 
 
 The colonies sent out by the Greeks in 
 these early times were not all directed to the 
 Cyclades and Asia Minor. Tradition also de- 
 scribes a migration of Dorians into Crete. 
 This island had been the scene of many pre- 
 historic wonders. Here Minos, the great law- 
 giver and hero, had established his institutions 
 in the old mythological dawn, when Zeus's love 
 for Europa gave a benefactor to men before 
 the days of Deucalion. For that fabulous 
 navigator was the son of Minos. He, having 
 from his father a pledge that all of his 
 prayers should be granted, and aspiring to be 
 king of Crete, prayed that a buU might come 
 from the sea as a sacrifice for Poseidon. But 
 when the animal appeared he was so beautiful 
 that another was led to the altar instead of 
 that sent. Poseidon was offended, and as a 
 punishment afflicted the wife of Minos by in- 
 spiring her with an insane passion for ihe 
 bull. So was born the monster Minotaur, 
 whom Minos shut up in the Cnossian Laby- 
 rinth. He then obtained the throne of Crete 
 and became famed as a law-giver. From him 
 Lycurgus was said to have obtained the 
 models of those institutions which he gave the 
 Spartans. So into Crete, at the close of the 
 Heroic Age, a band of Dorians, driven by 
 Sparta from the town of Amyclse, was led
 
 GREECE.— THE HELLENIC DAWN. 
 
 515 
 
 ard colonized. There they founded the two 
 cities of Gortyna and Lyttns. The new- 
 comers represented themselves as being of the 
 same race with the primitive Cretans, and 
 claimed the glories of Minos as their own. 
 There was thus effected a solidarity of Dorian 
 interests, not only in Southern Peloponnesus, 
 but also in the islan<ls of Crete, Melos, and 
 Thera. In the' political struggles of after- 
 times, the Sparfens could always depend 
 upon these island populations for sympathy 
 and aid. 
 
 These migratory movements of the Hellenic 
 tribes, in the shadowy era just subsequent to 
 the Heroic Age, are the events in which the 
 myths and traditions of the preceding times 
 gradually melt away, and the daydawn of ac- 
 tual history is ushered in. From this time 
 forth dates maybe fi.xed with approximate 
 certainty ; yet actual certainty is not attained 
 until the establishment of the Olympic games ; 
 and since this event is the Year One of Gre- 
 cian chronology, it will be proper here to re- 
 count the circuriistances of the establishment 
 of the Olympiad, and of the other great 
 periodic gatherings of the Greeks. 
 
 After their belief in a common descent 
 and the possession of a common language, 
 the facts which most closely allied the Hellenes 
 were their great j)eriodic games and festivals. 
 To participate in these was to be Greek ; not 
 to participate was to be liarbarian. A spirit 
 of union was engendered among all the states, 
 which, though net always triumphant over 
 jealousy and faction, was nevertheless of in- 
 calculai>le advantage in promoting the com- 
 mon interests of the race in its competitions 
 and struggles with the outside world. Of 
 these national festivals, in which the predom- 
 inating feature was the game or contest, there 
 were four in number: the Olympic, the 
 Pythian, the Isthmian, and the Nemean. 
 They were open to all persons of the Hellenic 
 race, and were attended by enormous throngs 
 gathered from all parts of the Grecian world 
 and from kingdoms beyond the seas. At 
 what lime they were instituted is not known ; 
 for they came, like most of the other institu- 
 tions of Greece, out of the shadows of the 
 mvihical ages. 
 
 N. — Vol. I — 32 
 
 The Olympian Games, the most famous 
 and popular of all, took their name from the 
 town of Olympia, on the banks of the river 
 Alpheus, in Elis. Here stood an ancient 
 temple of the Olympian Zeus ; and here, at 
 some time in the prehistoric period, the games 
 began to be celebrated. As yet they were 
 only a local institution, and continued such 
 until they were revived and amplified by 
 Iphitus, king of the Eleans, and Lycurgus, 
 the law-giver of Sparta. This important 
 event took place in the year B. C 77G. So 
 great was the celebrity which the ga nes under 
 the new patronage at once achii :ed, that 
 henceforth their mythical history was neg- 
 lected and the celebration above referred to 
 was numbered as the First Olympiad ; and 
 from that were dated all the subsequent events 
 of Grecian history. So strong a hold did this 
 Era obtain in public usage throughout all 
 Greece and the civilized world, that the 
 methotl of dating by Olympiads was not aban- 
 doned until the close of the fourth century, 
 and then only by an edict of the Roman Em- 
 peror Theodosius. 
 
 The Olympian games were celebrated 
 every fourth year. In the first stages of their 
 development they embraced merely a contest 
 for the palm in foot-racing, the celebration 
 lasting for but a single day. In a short time, 
 however, the competition was extended to 
 other sports. Trials of strength, as well as 
 of fleetness, were introduced. Then came the 
 competition of skill. Wrestling, boxing, 
 jumping, throwing the quoit, hurling the 
 javelin, were the more common of the sports. 
 Afterwards, the exciting horse-race and the 
 chariot-race were added. The driver entered 
 the coui-se with four fiery steeds, harnessed 
 abreast to the car in which himself was 
 mounted, and went whirling away like mad 
 to gain a jilace in advance of his competitors. 
 At the same time that the scope of the con- 
 test was enlarged, the period was extended 
 from one day to five. During the festival 
 almost every hour witnessed a renewal of the 
 sport. The competition, though of the keen- 
 est edge, was always friendly, and during the 
 whole time of the prevalence of the institution 
 fighting with weapons was forbidden.
 
 516 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The only prize with which a victor in the I 
 Olympian games was rewarded was a wreath 
 of wild olive ; but this was considered the 
 greatest honor which a Greek could achieve. 
 
 No other distinction conferred in peace or war 
 was reckoned of equal honor. The winner 
 was gratified with every mark of appreciative 
 regard which it was possible for an enthu- 
 Biastic people to bestow. His name was pro- 
 
 claimed before all Greece, and applauded 
 by all his countrymen. His family was 
 ennobled by his victory. His statue was 
 set up in the sacred grove of the Olympian 
 
 Zeus. On his re- 
 turn to his own 
 city he was re- 
 ceived without the 
 walls by a proces- 
 sion, and was es- 
 corted to his home 
 with shouting and 
 the music of flutes. 
 The rh a psodists re- 
 cited his praises. 
 Rewards were 
 voted to him by 
 the citizens. His 
 taxes were re- 
 mitted, and he 
 was given a dis- 
 tinguished seat in 
 all public assem- 
 blies. If a Spar- 
 tan, he might 
 henceforth in bat- 
 tle fight next to 
 the person of the 
 king. His victor's 
 wreath was hung 
 up as a precious 
 legacy to his chil- 
 dren's children, 
 who were thereby 
 to be reminded 
 of a glorious an- 
 cestry. 
 
 The attendance 
 at the Olympic fes- 
 tival was enor- 
 mously large, and 
 embraced the best 
 people of all. 
 Greece. The gen* 
 eral management 
 was intrusted to a committee of Eleans, 
 who appointed a court of judges, called the 
 HellanodiccB. These decided all the contests- 
 and made the awards to the victors. During 
 the continuance of the festival all violence
 
 GREECE.— THE HELLENIC DAWN. 
 
 517 
 
 ceased. No act of hostility was permitted in 
 sJl Greece. The territory of Elis became 
 jacred, and the marching of any armed force 
 mpon it was an act of sacrilege. Every thing 
 that could add to the interest of the great 
 celebration was carefully attended to. With 
 the progress of the contests the enthusiasm of the 
 throng rose to the highest pitch, and a feeling 
 of unity and goodfellowship, most essential to 
 the welfare of the Hellenic states, was gener- 
 ously cultivated. Especially was this true 
 after artistic, musical, and poetical contests 
 were added to those of mere bodily skill and 
 endurance. The humanizing tendency of the 
 festival was felt as a creative force in all the 
 highest branches of human achievement, and 
 not a few of the great works of the Greek 
 mind might without sophi.stry be traced to the 
 influence of the national games. 
 
 After the Cirrha;au war, in B. C. 585, a 
 new festival called the Pvtiiiax was instituted 
 by the Amphictyonic Council. It was cele- 
 brated once in three years in the Cirrhjean 
 plain, and was on the same general plan as 
 the Olympic games. The Amphictyons pre- 
 sided, and, since the festival was in honor of 
 Apollo, music and poetry, a.s well as bodily 
 contests, were from the first a part of the ex- 
 ercises. 80 great was the success of the in- 
 stitution thus established that the Pythian 
 games became second only to those at Olympia. 
 
 The Nemean festival was, as indicated by 
 its name, celebrated in the valley of Nemea, 
 in ArgoHs. It was instituted in the fifty- 
 second Olympiad, B. C. 572, and was held in 
 each alternate year. Before this time there 
 had been local games at Nemea, running 
 back in their origin to the mythical ages. 
 The celebration was in honor of the Nemean 
 Zeus, and was at the first open only to war- 
 riors; but afterwards this restriction was re- 
 moved, and all Greeks might particij)ate. In 
 the contests, however, some military features 
 were preserved, such as that between foot- 
 racers clad in armor. But in general the 
 competition was like that in the Olympic and 
 Pythian games. At the beginning, the victor 
 in a Nemean contest was crowned with a 
 chaplet of wild olive, but afterwards the 
 olive was replaced with parsley. 
 
 The Isthmian games were celebrated on the 
 Isthmus of Corinth, in the month of April, 
 on each second ami fourth year of the Olym- 
 piad. They are said to have been first insti- 
 tuted by Athamas, king of Orchomenus. 
 Afterwards they were revived by Theseus in 
 honor of Poseidon, and finally, in the sixth 
 century before our era, were made a national 
 festival for all Greeks. The celebration was 
 conducted under the auspices of the Corin- 
 thians and the Athenians, but at a later period 
 the Sicyonians held the exclusive right of 
 presiding and deciding the contests. After 
 Greece had fallen under the dominion of the 
 Romans, gladiatorial shows were introduced, 
 as were also contests of wild beasts — a kind 
 of sport always repulsive to the refined tastes 
 of the Hellenes. The prize offered for victory 
 in an Isthmian contest was a garland of pine 
 leaves, and to this a law of Solon added a 
 reward of a hundred drachmse. 
 
 In connection with these great games, con- 
 sidered as institutions calculated to create and 
 foster a pan-Hellenic spirit, mention should 
 also be made of the Amphictyonic Council. 
 Its general character was that of a kind of 
 sacred congress. It had a mythical and re- 
 ligious origin. Amphictyon, the reputed 
 founder, was one of the heroes. The associ- 
 ation was in the first place a religious body, 
 which met at stated intervals to perform sac- 
 rifices and supervise the rites of the country. 
 Having their head-quarters in the great temple 
 at Delphi, to which all Greece was wont to 
 look for the omens of prophecy, the Amphic- 
 tj'ons gradually acquired an ascendency over 
 other associations of like sort in different parts 
 of the country. Influence grew into author- 
 ity, and the Council came to be recognized 
 as a determining influence in the weightiest 
 affairs of the Greeks. It was the great court 
 of appeal to which inter-state disputes were 
 referred for settlement ; but its power to reg- 
 ulate and determine questions of national im- 
 portance never rose to true congressional 
 proportions, else the destiny of the Hellenic 
 communities, resolved into a Union, might 
 have withstood both Philip and the Romans. 
 
 The Council held two sessions annually, 
 the first in the spring at the shrine of A])ollo,
 
 518 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 in Delphi, and the other in the autumn, in 
 the temple of Demeter, at Therraopylfe. Its 
 members were called Ajiphictyons, and were 
 chosen as deputies by the twelve states repre- 
 sented in the court. The delegates from each 
 state consisted of a Hieromnemon, or chief, 
 and several subordinates called Pylagorm; but 
 each delegation acted as a unit in the Coun- 
 cil, and cast two votes in the name of the 
 state represented. The different tribes who, 
 by the appointment of deputies, recognized 
 the authority of the Amphictyons were the 
 Thessalians, the Boeotians, the Dorians, the 
 lonians, the Perrhcebians, the Magnetes, the 
 Locrians, the CEtseans, the Achseans, the Pho- 
 cians, the Dolopians, and the Malians. From 
 the names of these constituent peoples it will 
 readily be seen how ancient was the Amphic- 
 tyonic institution ; for several of these tribes 
 had virtually disappeared before the classical 
 age of Greece. 
 
 Among the first duties of the great Coun- 
 cil was to uphold the influence of the oracle 
 and temple of Delphi. The interests of the 
 states represented were carefully, though not 
 always efficiently, guarded. On the assump- 
 tion of their duties the deputies were required 
 to take the following oath: "We will not 
 destroy any Amphietyonic town, or cut it off 
 from running water in war or peace. If any 
 one shall do so, we will march against him 
 and destroy his city. If any one shall plun- 
 der the property of the god, or shall be cogni- 
 zant thereof, or shall take treacherous counsel 
 against the things in his temple at Delphi, 
 we will punish him with foot and hand and 
 voice, and by every means in our power." 
 
 It is clear from the tenor of this obligation 
 that the primary objects of the Council were 
 religious rather than secular. It was only 
 in later developments that the Amphictyons 
 became an important power in the political 
 affairs of Greece ; nor did their influence ever 
 become so great as to entitle them to be con- 
 sidered a congress, in the modern sense of that 
 ■word. Perhaps the most important general 
 result of the organization was that it tended 
 to the nationality of Greece. The lino was 
 thus drawn more distinctly than ever between 
 Greek and Barbarian. The Amphictyons 
 
 were themselves united in one body, and the 
 unity of the twelve states represented was 
 thereby symbolized and stimulated. The name 
 of Hellenes, applied to the whole Greek people, 
 acquired a new significance because of this fed- 
 eral title adopted by the Council. 
 
 A second result of scarcely less importance 
 was that of a fixity of territorial limits for the 
 several Greek states. This was one of the 
 matters of which the Amphictyony took spe- 
 cial cognizance. The determination of borders 
 which might not be disputed was a matter of 
 great moment in the maintenance of peace 
 and the promotion of civilization. 
 
 The early character of the Council may be 
 inferred from its relation to the First Sacred 
 War, which occurred between the years B. C. 
 595 and 585. The Phocian town of Crissa 
 was situated on the heights of Parnassus, near 
 the oracle of Apollo. Its territory extended 
 from the mountains to the gulf of Corinth. 
 Its seaport was the little town of Cirrha. 
 Having commercial advantages it grew to im- 
 portance. The visitors who came from all 
 parts of the Grecian world to consult the ora- 
 cle landed and embarked at Cirrha. With 
 the increase of population the place became 
 ambitious. Crissa, not without cause, grew 
 jealous; and, when the Cirrhreans proceeded 
 to enrich themselves by levying exorbitant 
 contributions upon the pilgrims going to and 
 from the shrine of Apollo, took cognizance of 
 the matter and declared war. The Thessalians 
 and Athenians were summoned to the aid of 
 Crissa, and for ten years Cirrha was invested 
 by the forces of the Council. At last the 
 town was taken by a stratagem not very hon- 
 orable in so sacred a cause. It is said that, 
 at the suggestion of Solon, the lawgiver of 
 Athens, the waters of the river Plistus, which 
 flowed through the besieged city, were poi- 
 soned, and the Cirrh:eans were thus driven 
 to sin-render. The town was leveled to the 
 ground. The rich plain in which it stood, 
 extending northward towards Delphi, was 
 consecrated to ApoUo, and curses were pro- 
 nounced upon him who hengeforth should 
 ever attempt its cultivation.' Thus, by the 
 
 ' It was in this plain that the P>'thian games 
 were celebrated. See p. 517.
 
 lOOO B. C. 
 
 900 
 
 800 
 
 700 
 
 600 
 
 500 
 
 Tbe Heroic Affe. 
 
 The Trojan War. 
 
 Dorian conquest of Pel 
 
 Period or the coloni 
 
 Asia Minor by 
 
 oponnesus. 
 
 zation of tbe Cycladesaud 
 
 tbe lonians. 
 
 Are or Homer. 
 
 84. Date of the legislation 
 
 Tbe ascendency of the 
 
 Age of the Oligarch! 
 
 of Lycurgus. 
 Archonship at Athens, 
 c revolutions. 
 
 GREECE. 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Period of Myth and 
 Tradition 
 
 TO 
 
 the Roman Conquest. 
 
 76. Epoch of the Olym 
 
 56. The Decenuia 
 
 46. Revolution i 
 
 43. Beginning 
 
 Messe 
 
 Messenia i 
 
 8par 
 
 pi ads. 
 
 I Archonship established. 
 
 n Corinth. 
 
 of the First 
 
 nian War. 
 
 s overrun by the 
 
 tans. 
 
 85. Second Messenian War 
 
 84. Annual Archonship es 
 
 76. Revolution in Sicyo 
 
 74. Founding of Chalc 
 
 69. Tyranny of Pisis 
 
 68. End of the Seco 
 
 57. Founding of 
 
 Beginnin- 
 
 asceni 
 
 24. The leg 
 
 est 
 
 20. Sacri 
 
 96. Beginning of the First 
 
 sacred War. 
 M. Solon appointed to re- 
 vise tne Laws of At 
 He completes his work 
 and goes into exile. 
 Age of tbe Seven Wise 
 
 Greece. 
 70. Tbales founds the I 
 62. Comedies tirstex 
 in Athens. 
 60. Pisistratus the 
 Usurps the G 
 He patronizes t 
 34. Thespis intr 
 Tragedy a 
 Epoch of Py 
 27. Accessio 
 Hip 
 They are 
 The Gov 
 tion 
 The Ost 
 begins. The 
 
 tablished at Athens. v 
 
 uia. 10. Me 
 
 edon. 
 
 tratus at Athens. 2. R 
 
 nd Messeniaa War. 1. I 
 
 Byzantium, 
 of the Spartan 
 eiK*y in Greece, 
 islation of Draco 
 ablished at Athens. 
 lege of the Alcmteonldee. 
 
 Men 
 
 [los >h 
 onic it- 
 hibit 
 
 Tyra 
 over I* 
 
 he A It 
 oduc , 
 C At) w 
 
 tha:/ ■' 
 
 n nl 
 par' 
 OVt-r 
 ernii )i 
 ized ( 
 raci- i 
 part ' 
 des 
 gal'. 
 ni\ ■■ 
 evciii 
 nsur ■! 
 Citi- n 
 90. n 
 Ba e 
 A ft 
 les 
 
 X I* 
 
 H T\ 
 
 ! B 
 
 ullin 
 man c 
 ere<! ■ 
 s to ! I 
 libyl h 
 pe o; lU' 
 puis I c 
 tabl' n 
 nsiil ip 
 isod" ri 
 The R 
 W. 181 
 93. le 
 
 First Settlement In 9ta 
 
 Cumse in Campania foun 
 Italy colonized by for 
 
 ena Orneia. 
 
 ded. 
 eigners. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Earliest Settlements in 
 Italy 
 
 TO 
 
 the Christian Era. 
 
 53. Rome fouude 
 
 The Sabine w 
 
 ofRo 
 
 Sabinia unit 
 
 Joint rei^n 
 
 35. Naxos in 
 
 34. Syracus 
 
 Cori 
 
 20. Syba 
 
 16. Ace 
 
 He 
 
 10. Cr 
 
 8. Ta 
 
 d by Romulus. 
 
 omen are seized by the band 
 
 mulus. 
 
 ed with Rome. 
 
 of Romulus and Titus Tatias. 
 
 Sicily founded. 
 
 e founded by a colony of 
 
 nthians. 
 
 ris founded. 
 
 ession of Numa Pompiliua. 
 
 gives laws to primitive Rome 
 
 otona founded. 
 
 rentum founded. 
 
 Locrl founded. 
 
 73. Accession of TuUus 
 
 Episode of Horatii a 
 
 48. Founding of 
 
 43. Ancus Mar 
 
 He restores 
 
 15. Access 
 
 Buildi 
 
 and 
 
 Tarq 
 
 78. Accession of Servius T 
 
 Reorganization of Ro 
 
 54. Servius is murd 
 
 Tarquin accede 
 
 The Cumean si 
 
 9. Ra 
 
 Ex 
 
 Es 
 
 Co 
 
 Ep 
 
 Hostilius. 
 
 nd Curiatii. 
 
 Himiera. 
 
 tins reigns. 
 
 the services of religion. 
 
 ion of Tarquinius Prisons. 
 
 ng of the Circus Maximus 
 
 Cloaca Maxima. 
 
 uln changes the ConstltutioD 
 
 Age of Perdleca* I. 
 
 [sicedonla peopled by the 
 Illyrlan Tribe*. 
 
 GHRONOLOGIGAL CHART 
 No. 11. 
 
 The BEairaiHGS of Aeym Civilization 
 
 TO THE ChRISTIAH EeA. 
 
 Prepared by JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D. 
 
 OOr»~5rE*IOKTBID, xasB. 
 
 ReigD of ArgEeus. 
 Reign of Philip I. 
 Keign of ^ropus. 
 Reign of Alcetas. 
 
 Beginning 
 
 of tl Pf 
 
 MACEDONIA. 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Reign of Perdiccas 
 
 TO 
 
 the Conquest by the Romans. 
 
 37. Reign ol Amyntas. 
 
 Persia under tbe 
 Aryan 
 
 dominion of 
 Tribes. 
 
 Aefacemenes 
 HerHian 
 
 He is succeeded 
 Persia tribut 
 
 PERSIA. 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Epoch of Achaemenes 
 
 TO 
 
 the Macedonian Conquest. 
 
 I 
 
 48. Cyrus subdu 
 prisoner, 
 38. Cj-rusinva 
 founds tbe 29. Death of 
 Kingrdom. Cyrus 
 
 )y Teispes. Accessio 
 
 arv to Media. Camby: 
 
 80. Birth of Cyrus. The lat 
 58. Cyrus over- 
 throws Cyaxares He inva 
 and founds the 22, Access 
 Medo-Persian Smer 
 
 Empire. He rest 
 
 Accession of 21. Dariu: 
 
 Canibyses. volt 
 
 He enlarges the He res 
 
 borders of Reorg 
 
 Persia. 14. The 
 
 esl lU 
 
 des vb 
 90 .11 
 s \> 
 n 01 
 es I 
 ter ir: 
 
 des 1^
 
 400 
 
 300 
 
 200 
 
 lOO 
 
 A. D. 
 
 <t Persian Army d 
 
 mutioii of tbe Co 
 
 sfinniiig uf the At 
 
 anishment of Th 
 
 i6. Cinioii suppres 
 
 'A. P.i'fjinnlng of t 
 
 1 he Atbftiian 
 
 Kevolt uf H.p 
 
 . lieroiJdtus II 
 
 Ascf iiUency 
 
 Athena bee 
 
 40. Keducti 
 
 SI. Declar 
 
 ■ [ices. nesl 
 
 30. The Sp 
 
 age 
 
 ;jo. Athens 
 
 3 and 2*1. Destru 
 
 The spa 
 
 Rise 
 
 ?VOlU- Siege o 
 
 tbenes. 21. Peac 
 
 >duced. Appe 
 
 menesla- 15. Th 
 
 13. Ru 
 
 Is an Ri 
 
 race. Re 
 
 xoa. 7. R 
 
 of the Greek 5. fi 
 
 ta Minor. 4. L 
 
 invades Greece. 
 
 Maralhon. 
 
 icy of Theniisto- 
 
 d Aristidi-s. 
 
 repares tu overw 
 
 :^ersiaii army adv 
 
 les of Thermopyl 
 
 riven out of Greece, 
 nfederation of Deloa. 
 henian Ascendency, 
 emistocles. 
 
 sea the Nailan Revolt, 
 he Third Mesaenian War. 
 s gain Maritime Supremacy 
 otia. 94. League of the Greek 
 ourishes. Battle of <Jorouea. 
 of Pericles, 
 omea glorious in Letters and 
 on of the Samiana. [Art. 
 
 ation of War by tbe Pelopon 
 an League. 87. Peace of Anta 
 artans Kav- Age of Plato. 
 Atiica. 71. Battle of Le 
 
 smitten with tbe Plague, 
 ctionof Platese. 63. Battle of 
 rtans butcher tbe Plateaus. 
 
 56. Second S 
 f Spbacieria. Age of X 
 
 e of Nicias. 38. Tiniol 
 
 arance of Alcibiades. Battl 
 e Sicilian Expedition undert 
 in of the Athenian army in S 
 se of Pisander. Rise o 
 
 volution in Athens. Begin 
 ecall of Alcibiades. enc 
 
 attle of .Egospotaml. 35. Al 
 ysander takes Athens. 
 Rule of the Thirty Tyrants. 
 99. Death of Socrates. 
 The Anabasis of Cyrus. 
 06. Agesilaus makes war ii 
 lielm ine Greeks. Greec 
 
 ances. 17. Re 
 
 g, Salamts. Platese. and M y c 
 
 98. Athens taken by Demetr 
 
 Age of Zeno and Epicurus. 
 
 81. Formation of the Achfe 
 
 73. Pyrrbus slain in an 
 
 51. Renewal of the 
 
 Decline of th 
 
 States against Sparta. 
 
 tcidas. 
 
 Man tinea. 
 
 acred War begins, 
 enophon and Aristotle, 
 eon conquers Sicily, 
 e of cheerouea. 
 aken. 
 icily. 
 
 f Demosthenes, 
 ning of Macedonian Intlu- 
 e in Greece. 
 
 exander is proclaimed Gen- 
 eralissimo of the Greeks. 
 
 Asia Minor. 
 
 e becomes an appanage of M 
 
 ign of Cassander. 
 
 ale. 
 
 ius PoUorceteB. 
 
 an League. 
 attack on Argos. 
 Achcean League by Aratus. 
 e Grecian Commonwealths. 
 
 96. The Protectorate of Rom 
 
 Corinth. 
 
 91. Sparta joins the Achsea 
 
 88. Philopocmeii, Genera 
 
 46. The Consul 
 
 I ty— Greec 
 
 nam 
 
 e established over Greece Tby FlaminluB at 
 
 n League. 
 
 lissimo of the League. 
 
 Metellus extinguishes Grecian National- 
 
 e becomes a Roman Province under tbe 
 
 e of Acbaia. 
 
 90 The Social War breaks out. [Pontua. 
 
 8M. War declared against Milhrldates, of 
 
 Tbe Marian proscriptions. 
 Si. Sulla returns from tbe East. 
 Kl. Massacre of the partisans of Marlus. 
 79. War in Spain. 
 72. Pompey ends the Rebellion. 
 Insurrection of the Gladiators, 
 nization. 70. Impeachment of Verres. 
 nests in the East, 
 of Macedonia at Cynocephalse. 
 
 67. Pompey sent to suppress piracy, 
 educed to a Roman province, 
 ifticulties with the Achiean League, 
 vade 66. Passage of tlie Mamlian Law. 
 
 &i. The Cmispiracy of (.'atiline. 
 of the Third Rise of Julius Ciesar. 
 War. 59. He is chosen Consul. [Ince. 
 
 f Corinth. 68. He receives Gaul as his prov- 
 comesa 66. Subjugation of the Gaulish 
 
 province. nations. [umvirate. 
 
 on of Carthage. Formation of the First Tri- 
 h Variathus in Spain. 
 
 vile War. 54. Roman invasion of Britain, 
 
 s (iracchus 48. Outbreak of the Civil War. 
 ted Tribune. 47. Battle of Pharsalia. 
 Roads. 45. Csesar appointed Dictator. 
 
 us slain. 44. He is assassinated, 
 
 lishment of the province of Asia, 
 ing of Cains 4.3. The Second Triumvirate 
 
 acchus. formed by Octavius,An- 
 
 .Tugurthine War. tbony.and Lepidus. 
 
 rica reduced by 42. Battle of Philippl. 
 31. Battle of Actium. 
 
 The Republic transform- 
 ed into the Empire. 
 Accession of Augustus. 
 18. War with Germans. 
 
 quin and Tullia. 
 
 )ne. 
 
 e. 
 
 la. 
 
 le Tariiutns from 
 
 , of the Roman R 
 
 Brutus anil I'olla 
 
 iennaof tlusium 
 
 ictatorship. 
 
 cession of the Ro 
 
 ce of Tribune oft 
 
 ) of the Agrarian 
 
 rease of I'lebeian 
 
 of \'olero. 
 
 lent Political Strl 
 
 S. Dictatorship of 
 
 Preparation of 
 
 49. Banishraen 
 
 45. Appoliitm 
 
 I'awNage 
 
 37. Creation 
 
 Aggres 
 
 Vo 
 
 6. T 
 
 96. The town of Veil taken b 
 
 90. Siege of Rome by tbe t 
 
 They are driven away b 
 
 Camillus. 
 
 82. E.xecution of Marc 
 
 69. Abolition of the 
 
 Rome. 65. Rome visited 
 
 epublic. Election of th 
 
 tfnua. 43. Outbreak of 
 
 40. Conquest of 
 
 38. Subjugatio 
 
 man Commons. 21. Overth 
 
 he People. at t 
 
 Law. 20. The Sa 
 
 power by the law 10. Ba 
 
 fe in Rome. 
 
 Cincinnatus. 
 
 tbe Ten Tables. 
 
 t of the Decemviri. 
 
 ent uf Military Tribunes. 
 
 seviTal popular reforms. 
 
 oftbH office of Cen.sor, 
 
 sioiis of the ^quians and 
 
 Iscians. 
 
 he Roman army supported 
 
 by regular pay. 
 
 y Camillus. 16. Bat 
 
 auls under Brennus. Dec 
 
 y the Dictator 12. Sie 
 
 7. Ba 
 us Manlius. 2. H 
 
 Military Tribuneship. 8i 
 with a plague. En 
 
 e First I'lebeiau Consul. Ro 
 the First Samnite War. R 
 the Latin (.ities. T 
 
 n of Campania, 
 row of the Roman army 
 he Caudine Forks, 
 mnites defeated by the Ro 
 ttleof the Vadimonian Lake, 
 
 98. Beginning of the Third S 
 
 90. Capture of Pontius, and 
 
 contiict. 
 
 War declared against Ta 
 
 80. King Pyrrbus, of Epirn 
 
 He assists the Tarenti 
 
 the Romans 
 
 74. Pyrrhus Is routed and 
 
 66. Coniiuest of all Italy 
 
 Epoch of tbe constr 
 
 64. Outbreak of the Fir 
 
 41. The First Punic 
 
 27. Conquest of S 
 
 Beginning o 
 
 cial s 
 
 The Roman: 
 
 The Gauls d 
 
 Carthaginia 
 
 19. Beginn 
 
 18. Hanni 
 
 Battle 
 
 9S. Accession of Philip IV. 
 I. 94. Reigu of Demetrius, 
 r II. and Perdiccas III. 
 
 83. Antiochus Soter ml 
 he Paconians and the Aleria 
 b2. Reign of Ptolemy C 
 ace. 78. Reign of Antigo 
 
 ed War. Decline of Macedi 
 onea. 42. Accession of 
 
 of Philip. .^. Accession 
 
 Alexander the Great, 
 rder in Macedonia and Gree 
 Generalissimo. 20. Reign o 
 es the conquest of Persia. 
 Granicus. 
 s. 
 
 bela. 
 
 of the conquest of tbe Persia 
 reaches the Indus, 
 ecomes the capital of the Em 
 lexander, 
 
 re divided among Alexander 
 dacus reigns in Macedonia, 
 f Cassander. 
 
 cus founds the Greek klngdo 
 ray Lagus reigns in Egypt. 
 imacbus. king of Thrace. 
 
 tie of cannse. [Cause 
 
 line of the (.'arthaginian 
 ge and capture of Syracuse, 
 ttle of Metaurus. 
 annibal recalled to Carthage, 
 ipio invades Africa, 
 dof the war. [iterranean, 
 man ascendency in the Med- 
 ome adopts the policy of colo 
 he Republic begins her conq 
 97. Flaminius defeats Philip 
 68. Battle of Pidna, 
 Macedonia is r 
 mans. Beginning of d 
 
 The Romans in 
 Greece. 
 amniteWar. 49. Beginning 
 end of the Punic 
 
 46. Capture o 
 rentum. Greece be 
 
 s, lands in Italy. Roman 
 
 nes and defeats 46. Destructi 
 43. War wit 
 [Italy. 34. The Ser 
 expelled from Tiberiu 
 
 by the Romans. elec 
 
 uction of the Great Military 
 St Punic War. 3.3. Tibefi 
 
 War ends. , 29. Estab 
 
 ardinia. 21. Kill 
 
 f the Roman Provin- Gr 
 
 ystem. [mian games. The 
 participate in tlie Isth- 6. Af 
 efeated at Ariminum M 
 
 n conquest of Spain. 1. I 
 
 ing of the Second Punic War. 
 bal invades Italy, 
 s of the Trebia and Lake Tr 
 
 arius and .Silla. 
 taly invaded by 
 the Cimbri. 
 
 asimenus. 
 
 in invasions. 
 r Alexander I. 
 ador of the Per- 
 sians to Athens, 
 esslon of Perdicc 
 :edonta invaded 
 of Thrace, 
 35. Secession of 
 Physical d 
 of Mace 
 
 Reign of Orestes. 
 '^" Accession of Amyntas II 
 Brief reigns of Alexande 
 60. Accession of Philip. 
 He makes war on t 
 66. Birth of Alexander 
 Philip subdues Thr 
 39. The Third Sacr 
 38. Battle of Chier 
 36. Assassination 
 Accession of 
 He restores o 
 as II. Is appointed 
 by Sitalces, 34. He undertak 
 Battle of tbe 
 Achelaus. 34. Battle of Issu 
 evelopment 30. Battle of Ar 
 donla. 30. Completion 
 27. Alexander 
 Babylon b 
 23. Death of A 
 23. The Empi 
 Philip Ara 
 17. Reign o 
 12. Seleu 
 Ptole 
 Ly 
 
 es in Syria. 
 
 ns. 
 
 eraunus. 
 
 nus Gonatus. 
 
 onia. 
 
 Demetrius II. 
 
 of Antigonus Doson. 
 
 ce. 
 
 f Philip V. 
 
 97. The Roraansconquer the 
 
 78. Accession of Persus. 
 
 68. Battle of Pidna. 
 
 Macedonia bee 
 
 n Empire. 
 
 pire. 
 
 '8 successors. 
 
 m of Syria. 
 
 Macedonians at CynocepbalsB. 
 omes a Roman province. 
 
 iSesCrcesus 
 Of the war wit 
 .__, stakes the cap 
 eflftated at Marat 
 lion of Xerxes. 
 inning of the Gr 
 jruction of the P 
 Smerdls. 
 Vcce'ision of Arta 
 quers Egypt 
 > 60. Revolt In E 
 49. Peace of 
 3. 36. Acces 
 
 eads a re- N 
 le throne. 7. Ar 
 R 
 overnment. B 
 the war with the 
 
 h the (ireeks. 
 
 ital, and ends the Later Em 
 
 hon. 
 
 87. Peace of Antalcidas. 
 
 eat Invasion. 
 
 ersian army at Salamla and 
 
 61. Accession of ( 
 xerxes. He invades and 
 
 :J6. DiiriusCod 
 ■ypt. Persia inv 
 
 'allias. Battles of 
 
 sion of Darius 31. Overth 
 
 thus. 12. I*er 
 
 taxerxes II. takes the tiiron 
 ehollion of Cyrus the Young 
 attle of Cunaia. 
 Scythians. 
 
 pIre. 
 
 48. Founding of 
 17. Roign 
 Hem 
 
 Platiea 
 
 llUS. 
 
 overruns Egypt. 
 
 onianus takcis the throne. 
 
 aded by Alexander. 
 
 Issus and Arbela. 
 
 row of the Persian Empire. 
 
 sla falls to Seleucus Nicator. 
 
 e. 
 
 er. 
 
 the Dynasty of tbe Arsacldse. 
 
 of Arsaces Artabanus. 
 
 akes war with Antiochus tbe 
 
 56. Restoration 
 
 Parthi 
 
 asc 
 
 of Persian Influence by Mithrldates I. 
 
 a remains independent during the Roman 
 
 endency.
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 523 
 
 diligence of the great Council was the honor 
 of Phoebus vindicated. From this time forth 
 his oracle was more consulted than ever, and 
 richer gifts were poured into his treasury. The 
 influence of the Amphictyons was extended 
 
 throughout all Greece. It was seen that in 
 them the national religion and traditions had 
 found an immovable bulwark against aggres- 
 sion — a power jealous of whatever seemed to 
 threaten the unity and renown of Hellas. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII.— GROW^TH AND LA^?V. 
 
 !OST notable of the facts 
 belonging to the second 
 period of Greek develop- 
 ment — a period extending 
 from the epoch of the 
 Dorian migrations to the 
 revolt of the Ionian cities 
 against the l'ii>ian> — were the growth and pre- 
 ponderance of Sparta anc" Athens as the two 
 leading Hellenic states, and the establishment of 
 institutions l)y the legislation of Ijycurgusand 
 Solon. The first fact unfortunately involved 
 a rivalry of the two commonwealths which 
 became the bane of Greek history, but the 
 other contained those legislative germs which, 
 springing here and there in the soil of free- 
 dom, have contributed not a little to the 
 growth of human liberty. 
 
 After the agitations consequent upon the Re- 
 turn of the Heraclidre had somewhat subsided, 
 there appeared in Peloponnesus the three 
 leading states of Laconia, Argos, and Mes- 
 senia. It wa.s in the first of these that the 
 new Dorian population from the North became 
 most easily and completely predominant. 
 Argos was not so much revolutionized, and 
 Messenia was still less affected in her jjopula- 
 tion and institutions by the invasions. A 
 period followed in which the new masters of 
 Southern Greece had to struggle and fight for 
 the maintenance of their supremacy. By and 
 by, when tliat supremacy was fully established 
 and acknowledged, the two leading states of 
 Peloponnesus — Sparta and Argolis — fell into 
 quarrels and went to war. After the Dorian 
 invasion of Argolis, that state still remained 
 for a while a confederacy of free cities. Such 
 were Argos — the capital — Cleonte, Phlir.s, 
 Sicyon, Kpi(huiriis, Tnezeii, and AZglna,. 
 
 These were leagued together in the common 
 worship of Apollo, and each of the cities 
 maintained a temple in his honor. The cen- 
 tral shrine was in Argos, and from this place 
 the authority of the confederacy was exer- 
 cised. Her privileges increased until the time 
 of Phidon, who was king of Argos, and who, 
 about B. C 747, reduced the free cities and 
 established himself in a despotism. 
 
 It seemed that Argolis under his leader- 
 ship was going to win an easy supremacy 
 over all the Dorian states. He made a con- 
 quest of Corinth. He claimed to be par ex- 
 cellence the representative of the great ancestor, 
 Heracles, and in his name demanded the sub- 
 . mission of his kinsmen, the leaders of the 
 Heraclidse. In the Eighth Olympiad he in- 
 terfered with the presidency of the games, 
 deprived the Eleans of their privileges, took 
 the presidency himself, and then set up the 
 Pisatans instead of their deposed rivals. 
 
 This act, however, soon led to his down- 
 fall. For the Eleans, unwilling to lose the 
 honorable prerogative of presiding over the 
 Olympic festival, rippealed to Sparta to aid in 
 the maintenance of their rights. The appeal 
 was favorably heard. The Spartans espoused 
 the cause of the petitioners, went to war with 
 Phidon, defeated him in battle, and destroyed 
 the pretensions of Argolis to the leadership of 
 Southern Greece. From this time fortli there 
 was never any doubt that Sparta was destined 
 to the first place among the Pelopounesian 
 states. 
 
 It will be remembered that, when the 
 Heraclidse drew lots for the distribution of 
 territories, Laconia fell to the two sons 
 of Aristodemus. This fact remained a pre- 
 cedent in S])artan institutions, and a
 
 524 
 
 L'XIVERSAL HISTORY.^THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 double, instead of a single, royal house was a 
 part of the primitive constitution of the coun- 
 try. Up to the time of the war with Argolis 
 and the establishment of the supremacy of 
 Sparta, that state had had the same general 
 type of civilization and development as the 
 other Doriau communities and cities; but 
 from this time onward a separation took filace 
 between Sparta and all the other Hellenic 
 commonwealths, untd she was almost as much 
 distinguished in her institutions and popular 
 characteristics from her sister Doric states of 
 Argos and Corinth as she was from Thebes 
 and Athens. Only with Crete did the cus- 
 toms, manners, and laws of the Spartans hold 
 them in fellowship and sympathy. This sepa- 
 ration — amounting to an isolation — of Sparta 
 from the other Grecian states, and her conse- 
 quent assumption of an independent career, 
 were traceable to the work of her great law- 
 giver, Lycurgus. 
 
 The dissensions in Laconia between the old 
 and the new populations constituted a serious 
 drawback to the progress of that state. The 
 Dorian warriors, who had taken possession of 
 the country, were too strong to be displaced, 
 but the mass of the people smarted under 
 their exactions, and would have rebelled but 
 for fear of the consequences. Besides this 
 source of trouble, the evil of a double royal 
 house, involving the reigu of two kings 
 simultaneously, was felt as a dangerous ob- 
 stacle to the public welfare. The Spartans, 
 moreover, were by nature and previous his- 
 tory a lawless tribe, little disposed to accept 
 the restraints of civilized society. All of 
 these embarrassments combined in producing 
 a necessity for a complete revision of existing 
 laws, and in short for the establishment of a 
 fixed constitution of government. 
 
 The preparation of such a constitution was 
 committed to Lycurgus. Tradition, makes 
 him to have been of the Heraclidse. He was 
 the son of Eunomus, a brother of the King 
 Polydectes. When the latter died, Lycurgus 
 became guardian of his son Charilaiis, who 
 was heir to the throne. In spite of the tempta- 
 tion to which he was subjected by the widow 
 of the late king, who wished Lycurgus to 
 murder the child and marry her, he remained 
 
 true to the state, and, taking Chardaiis into 
 the agora, had him j)roclalmed as king. He 
 himself left Sparta and went into Crete. 
 
 Here he became a student of the laws and 
 institutions of Minos, and them he is said to 
 have made the basis of the code which he 
 afterwards reported to his countrymen. From 
 Crete he traveled into Egypt and Ionia, and 
 even — if the tradition may be trusted — as far 
 as India. While abroad he became acquainted 
 with the Homeric poems, which had not 
 hitherto been recited in Peloponnesus. On 
 his return to his own people he found the 
 state in anarchy, and a common belief that he 
 was to be the agent of the resciie of his coun- 
 try. He accordingly yielded to public solici- 
 tation, consulted the oracle at Delphi, and 
 undertook the preparation of a new frame of 
 government. The oracle itself furnished the 
 fundamental articles of the constitution, so 
 that Lycurgus returned trom Delphi with the 
 sanction of Apollo. Appearing in the agora 
 with thirty leading citizens, he made known 
 his mission, which was gladly accepted by a 
 majority of the people ; but Charilaiis and a 
 few of his partisans yielded with reluctance, 
 and were overawed by the popular voice. 
 
 Lycurgus thus came to his countrymen in 
 the double character of a law-giver and a 
 messenger fiom Delphi. Necessity and Phoe- 
 bus Apoi.o were the joint sponsors of his 
 lecrislation. After a season the new constitu- 
 tion wafj prepared and given to the state. It 
 was wisely based upon the fundamental con- 
 ditions which were present in the country. 
 The Doric race was recognized as in every re- 
 ?t)ect predominant. The whole body of the 
 population was divided into three classes' 
 first, the Spartans of Dorian descent, who con- 
 stituted the ruling caste ; second, the Perioecae, 
 or Laconians, who far outnumbered the Spar- 
 tans; and third, the Helots or slaves. 
 
 The Dorians had taken the land by conquest. 
 They were accordingly retained as the soldier- 
 class forever. No work, no business, was evei 
 to interfere with their profession of arms. 
 Estimating their numbers at nine thousand, 
 Lycurgus divided the fruitful valley and 
 plain of the Eurotas into nine thousand equal 
 parts, and to each soldier one part was as-
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 525 
 
 signed for his support. But the tillage of the 
 land was reserved for the servile class, -the 
 Helots, who were bound to the soil by a sys- 
 tem of serfdom. The remaining lauds of 
 Laconia, chiefly eousisting of mountainous 
 districts in the interior, were dividt'il into 
 thirty thousand parts and distributed to the 
 original inhabitants of the country, thence- 
 forth called Perioecse, or "dwellers around." 
 The Perioecse were to remain free, but were to 
 devote themselves to agriculture, trade, and 
 commerce. They were also subject to mili- 
 tary service at the call of the dominant class 
 of Spartans. There was thus, as nearly as 
 practicable, an adaptation of all classes to the 
 previous conditions existing in the state. 
 
 As another conservative measure, the two 
 kings were left undisturbed, but their preroga- 
 tives were reduced to a mere dignity and to 
 leadership in war. The legislative power was 
 given to two assemblies. The first and high- 
 est consisted of thirty members called the 
 Geroyifes, or " old men," of whom the kings 
 were two, whatever might be their ages. The 
 remaining twenty-eight must be over sixty 
 years old. The right to originate all laws 
 and measures of state polity belonged to this 
 body. The other assembly embraced as mem- 
 bers all male Spartans over the age of thirty. 
 These met once a month and voted upon the 
 measures proposed by the Gerontes. The 
 voting was to be by acclamation, aye or 7w; 
 and no debate was permissible. From the 
 first all discussions and wrangling were odious 
 to the Spartan sj)irit. 
 
 The constitution of Lycurgus also estab- 
 lished an overseership of six Ephors, or magis- 
 trates. To them was intrusted a supervisory 
 power over the laws passed by the assembly, 
 and a final voice in all public matters. Even 
 the kings were accountable to the Ephors for 
 their conduct. The kingly ofhce was thus so 
 greatly hedged with restrictions as to be re- 
 duced to a minimum of influence, and in this 
 shorn condition was permitteil to survive in 
 Sparta long after the complete destruction of 
 royal jtrerogative in the other states of Greece. 
 
 The Lycurgian statutes next proceeded to 
 the education of the Spartans. The theory 
 of the government was that all cla.sses existed 
 
 for the benefit of the state. The individual 
 was for the commonwealth — nothing else. 
 There has, perhaps, never been in all history 
 another instance in which the idea of indi- 
 vidual subordination to the public good was 
 carried to such lengths as in Sparta. The 
 principle lay at the very bottom of Spartan 
 society, and explained many otherwise inex- 
 plicable circumstances and peculiarities of the 
 national character. It followed naturally 
 from this theory that the citizenship should 
 be atlapted by proper training to the uses of 
 the state. Of the dominant Spartans this 
 would be true in the highest measure. 
 
 The system contemplated simply the mak- 
 ing of soldiers. At birth the child was in- 
 spected to determine itg fitness to live. There 
 was no compunction. It was simply business. 
 The Ephors decided the question. If weak or 
 deformed the babe was exposed in the hills of 
 Taygetus to perish. If robust and promising 
 it was given to the mother for the first seven 
 years and then taken from her. Henceforth 
 the lad belonged to the state. He was put to 
 school. The school was a gymnasium. No 
 metaphysical nonsense was allowed about the 
 establishment. It was for the development 
 and hardening of the body. A course of 
 rigid discipline and athletic exercises was pre- 
 scribed, so severe and heartless as to defy a 
 parallel. The youth must wear the same gar- 
 ment winter and summer. Hunger, thirst, 
 and exposure must be endured without a 
 murmur. When starving for food the lad 
 might steal, but if caught in the act he was 
 punished for that. One boy stole a fox, hid 
 it under his garment, and suffered the beast 
 to tear out his bowels rather than betray the 
 theft. Once in his life each youth was taken 
 before the altar of Artemis and scourged till 
 his back ran gore. The boy was <5bliged to be 
 silent or to say ye.-i and no — no more. Whatever 
 was more than these came of evil. He must 
 be laconic, impa.ssive. He must endure pain 
 and smile. So must the Spartan girl ; for the 
 discipline was nearly alike for both sexes. 
 All feeling must be eliminated. She who 
 must presently give uj) her own babe to fill 
 the belly of a Laconian wolf must do so 
 smiling. At the age of thirtv the boy was
 
 526 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TME ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 promoted to manhood. He might then marry 
 and engage in public affairs. He still, how- 
 ever, belonged to the state in the same sense 
 as before. He slept in the public barracks, 
 and was not released from military service 
 until he reached the age of sixty. 
 
 One feature of the Lycurgian system is de- 
 serving of special mention, and that is the 
 public mess. A table was spread, at which 
 every male citizen was obliged to take his 
 meals. The institution was called SyssiUa, 
 that is, "eating together." Each table was 
 arranged for the accommodation of fifteen 
 persons, and no others than those eating 
 regularly at this bench could be admitted ex- 
 cept by unanimous consent, she system was 
 communistic. Each eater sent to the table 
 monthly his quantum of provisions, consisting 
 of a little barley-meal, wine, cheese, and figs. 
 A small money contribution was also levied 
 for the purchase of meats and fish. These 
 articles, however, were only eaten on occasion. 
 At the common meal the principal dish was a 
 kind of blacK: broth, which was unsavory ex- 
 cept to the half-starved whose ravenous stom- 
 achs craved filling, no matter with what. 
 
 As to intellectual accomplishments, the 
 Lycurgian system provided for two — singing 
 and plaj'iug on the lyre. But the idea in 
 both was warlike. The song was a psean for 
 battle. The lyre was merely to waken martial 
 enthusiasm. The poets of Sparta were the 
 bards of the barracks. They sang and shouted 
 nothing but war. In the times of Spartan 
 greatness Homer was the favorite. Tj'rtseus 
 was a popular hero. ArchUochus, who in one 
 of his poems chanced to mention his own 
 flight from the battle-field, was banished from 
 the country! 
 
 What the Greeks of Central Hellas re- 
 garded as civilization was abhorred on the 
 banks of the Eurotas. Elaborate speech, po- 
 liteness, affable companionship, lively man- 
 ners, these were frivolities of which a Spartan 
 would not be guUty. Luxury was more to 
 be dreaded than the plague. Riches meant 
 inequality. Money was a necessary evil. To 
 make it as little desirable as possible Lycur- 
 gus decreed that the coin of Sparta should be 
 of irrni. So should he be satirized and pun- 
 
 ished who traded, and he who took valuables 
 to market would require a cart and oxen to 
 bring home his money.' In such a school of 
 roughness and austerity were the warlike vir- 
 tues of the Dorians nursed into full vigor. 
 
 The system bore its fruits. The man be- 
 came a soldier, utterly indifferent to hardship, 
 exposure, death. The woman became the 
 mother of such men, and was proud of it. 
 She gave her son a shield with the injunc- 
 tion, " Return with it or on it." When he was 
 brought home stark from the battle-field, she 
 said no word. The Spartan mother must not 
 disgrace herself! She had only given her son 
 to the state. It was for that she bore him. 
 He had died on his shield. Why grieve for 
 one who had served his country ? — Thus it 
 was that the Spartans became a race of sol- 
 diers ; and such were their valor and stoicism 
 in fight that there was just one way to defeat 
 them, and that was to destroy the last man I 
 As long as one remained, Sparta was in- 
 vincible. 
 
 All of the early history of PeloponnesuB 
 is involved with that of Sparta. Two-thirds 
 of the peninsula was completely under her 
 control ; and the rest acknowledged her lead- 
 ership. With one state, however, she had a 
 protracted and obstinate contest. This was 
 Messenia, on the west, a commonwealth in 
 which the supremacy of the Dorians had 
 never been fuUy established or quietly ac- 
 cepted. It was only a question of time when 
 the domination of Sparta would lead to an 
 outbreak. The date assigned for the begin- 
 ning of the first confiict is B. C. 743. Before 
 this, one of the Spartan kings had been killed 
 by the Messenians at the temple of Artemis, 
 on Mount Taygetus, but the murderers gave 
 such an account of the affair as justified the 
 killing. Shortly afterwards, however, a pri- 
 vate quarrel led to open war. Polychares, a 
 leading Messenian, who had won a crown at 
 an Olympic festival, was robbed of his cattle 
 
 ' It has been urged with some plausibility that 
 the statute for iron money did not properly be- 
 long to the laws of Lycurgus, but to a later date. 
 As a matter of fact no gold or silver money had 
 as yet been coined in Greece ; and the practical 
 satire of the Lycurgian system would, under the 
 circumstances, be no satire at all.
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AXD LAW. 
 
 527 
 
 by a Spartan, Eujephnus, who added to the 
 crime by murderiug the son of Polychares, 
 who was sent for redress. The father ap- 
 pealed to the Spartan Epliors for justice, but 
 was turned away. He then took matters into 
 his own hands, and gave his herdsmen orders 
 to kill all the Lacediemonians whom they 
 should meet. The Spartans, who were prob- 
 ably not displeased, secretly prepared for rios- 
 tilities, marched across the frontier, took the 
 fortress of Aniphia, and killed the garrison. 
 
 War broke out in earnest. For four yeai's 
 the Messenians defended themselves with 
 vigor, but in the fifth they were defeated and 
 driven into their stronghold, the old fortress 
 of Ithorae. They appealed to the Delphic 
 oracle, and answer was given that the king's 
 daughter would have to be sacrificed to Hades 
 in order to secure victory. The king was 
 about to comply when the girl's lover inter- 
 fered, and she was killed in a scandalous man- 
 ner. Although this was no sacrifice, the 
 superstitious Spartans were kept at bay by 
 the news for several seasons. In the thir- 
 teenth year of the war, however, the struggle 
 was renewed. The king of Messenia was 
 killed in battle, and was succeeded by Aris- 
 todenius, who fought bravely for his country. 
 Theopompus, king of Sparta, marched against 
 him, and his forces were augmented by a large 
 band of Corinthians. The Messenians were 
 aided by the Arcadians and Sieyonians. In 
 the eighteenth year of the struggle a great 
 battle was fought in which the Spartans were 
 defeated and driven into their own territories. 
 
 It was now their turn to apply to the ora- 
 cle. An answer was returned which promised 
 success on condition of a stratagem. Mean- 
 while, however, Ari.stodemus was dismayed by 
 dreams. His murdered daughter appeared 
 and beckoned him to follow. In despair he 
 went to her tomb and killed himself. The 
 Messenians were disheartened, and abandoned 
 Ithome. The Spartans thereupon gained jios- 
 session and leveled the fortress to the ground. 
 The whole of Me.ssenia was quickly overrun. 
 Some of the inhabitants fled into Arcadia; 
 others to Eleusis and Athens. Those who re- 
 mained were reduced to a condition of servi- 
 tude like that of the Helots. They were 
 
 obliged by the conquerors to pay them one- 
 half of the produce of their lands and to 
 submit to intolerable marks of degradation. 
 
 After thirty-nine years, however, the spirit 
 of the Messenians revived. In B. C. 6S5' 
 Aristomenes claimed the kingdom, and soon 
 showed himself to be a warrior worthy to lead 
 his people to freedom. A revolt broke out, 
 which, before it was quelled, drew into the 
 vortex of war nearly all the states of Pelopon- 
 nesus. The haughty conduct of Sparta had 
 borne the natural fruits of disloyalty, and thfr 
 Argives, Arcadians, Sieyonians, and Pisatans- 
 all espoused the cause of the Messenians 
 against their oppressors. As in the previous- 
 war, however, the Corinthians sided with 
 Sparta and sent her a contingent of troops. 
 
 The first conflict was indecisive, but the 
 advantage was with Aristomenes. As a piece 
 of effrontery he crossed the Spartan frontier 
 by night, went to the temple of Athena of 
 the Brazen Horse, and hung up a shield with 
 this inscription : " Dedicated by Aristomenes to- 
 the goddess from the Spartan spoils." Such, 
 was the efiect of this piece of audacity that 
 the Spartans again cried to the Delphic oracle 
 for advice. The answer was returned that 
 they should apply to the Athenians for a 
 leader. This was wormwood to both the 
 parties ; but the Athenians, fearing to dis- 
 obey the voice of Phoebus, selected a lame 
 schoolmaster and poet named Tyrtfeus, and 
 sent him to lead the warrior Spartans to vic- 
 tory ! The latter received him with honor, 
 and he .soon showed both them and the senders 
 what a bard may do in war. He began to- 
 compose martial songs so inspired with the 
 spirit of battle that the courage of the Spar- 
 tans was revived and themselves fired with 
 the greatest zeal for the conflict. Tyrtieu* 
 was made a citizen of the state, and the war 
 was renewed with vigor. 
 
 At the first battle, however, fought at the 
 Boar's Grave, in the plain of Stenyclerus, the 
 Spartans and Corinthians were defeated with 
 great losses. During the second year Aristo- 
 menes still kept his foe at bay, but in the 
 third a decisive battle was fought which, 
 through the treachery of one of the allied 
 chiefs, resulted in a signal disaster to the
 
 528 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Messenians. Aristomenes was obliged to re- 
 tire from the opeu field to the mountain 
 fortress of Ira, where for eleven years he 
 maintained the cause of his country. From 
 this stronghold he would as occasion offered 
 sally forth in successful raids against the foe. 
 
 Such was his prowess that three times he 
 celebrated the sacrifice of Hecatomphonia for 
 having in each instance slain with his own 
 hand a hundred of the enemy. Three times 
 he was taken. Twice he broke away from 
 his captors, but in the third case he was car- 
 ried with fifty others to Sparta and thrown 
 into a deep pit. All the rest were killed, but 
 he fell' to the bottom unhurt. The next day 
 he saw a live fox in the pit, and seizing the 
 beast by the tail, he followed it through the 
 fissures in the rocks till he found an exit and 
 escaped. Equal was the surprise both to his 
 own friends and the enemy when he reap- 
 peared at Ira. 
 
 Nevertheless, the indomitable energy of 
 the Spartans gradually gained the ascendency. 
 Aristomenes was said to have forfeited the 
 favor of the gods. He was wounded, and, 
 while in a disabled condition, was attacked by 
 the Lacedfemonians, who succeeded in captur- 
 ing Ira. Aristomenes escaped with a band of 
 followers. They fled first into Arcadia, and 
 afterwards into Rhodes, where the hero passed 
 the rest of his days. iNIany others of his 
 countrymen, led by his sons, left Messeuia and 
 found refuge in Rhegium in Southern Italy. 
 The memory of their brave king was long 
 cherished by the Messenians, whose bards re- 
 cited his heroism and recounted his reappear- 
 ance in battle. 
 
 Thus, in the year B. C. 668, ended the 
 Second Messenian War. The people were again 
 reduced to serfdom. For three hundred years 
 they remained in a .state of abject dependence 
 upon the wills of their conquerors. Their 
 history during this long period is known only 
 in connection with that of the dominant state. 
 Their territory was annexed to Laconia, 
 whose limits were thus extended across Pelo- 
 ponnesus from sea to sea. The supremacy of 
 the Spartan oligarchy was thus completely 
 established in all the southern portion of the 
 peninsula. The adjacent parts of Arcadia 
 
 were also brought under their sway, and as 
 far north as the gulf of Corinth there were 
 none left, except the Tegeans, courageous 
 enough to dispute their leadership. 
 
 The city of Tegea, however, situated in 
 the south-eastern portion of Arcadia, deter- 
 mined to fight for independence. The people 
 were brave and had a warlike history. Twice 
 they had already measured spears successfully 
 with the Spartans. In the reign of Charilaiis, 
 nephew of Lycurgus, the Lacedaemonians had 
 marched against Tegea, but were disastrously 
 defeated. Their king and all the survivors 
 of the battle were captured. In B. C. 580, 
 the Spartans again invaded the territory and 
 were again routed. The prisoners were taken 
 and enslaved, being obliged to toil in the very 
 chains which they had brought for the Te- 
 geans. The latter thus maintained their in- 
 dependence for thirty years. In B. C. 560, 
 however, the struggle was renewed by the 
 Spartan kings, Anaxandrides and Ariston. 
 The Delphic oracle sent the Spartans a mes* 
 sage that they should be successful when they 
 secured the bones of Orestes, son of Agamem- 
 non, now buried at Tegea. This feat was ac- 
 complished by a stratagem, and the relics 
 were carried in triumph to Sparta. Then the 
 tide turned against the Tegeans. They were 
 defeated in several engagements, their city 
 was taken, and themselves reduced to depend- 
 ency. In this case, however, the conquering 
 state preferred the alliance rather than the 
 enslavement of the people, and Tegea was 
 spared the fate of Ira and Ithome. 
 
 The Spartans also succeeded in annexing 
 the district of Cynuria to their territories. 
 This province had belonged to Argos, and the 
 attempt of that city to recover their possession 
 brought on war. It was agreed between the 
 two states that the question should be decided 
 in a single combat between three hundred 
 chosen warriors on each side. The picked 
 force of Argives and Spartans went into bat 
 tie, and so fierce was the fight that only two 
 of the former and one of the latter were left 
 alive. The two Argives, believing themselves 
 victorious, bore the news to Argos, but the 
 Spartan remained on the field, stripped the 
 bodies of the dead, and claimed the victory.
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 529 
 
 Thereupon the armies of the two states 
 marc'hetl out aud fought a decisive battle, in 
 which the Argives were defeated. Othryades, 
 the Spartan who had survived from the pre- 
 vious conflict, slew liimsclf in despair because 
 he was left alive. Cyuuria remained to 
 Sparta, and Argos no longer dared to oppose 
 any inijipdiiiient to the will of the confjueror. 
 
 Meanwhile, in' other parts of Greece, im- 
 portant political changes had taken place, by 
 which the form of the government in most of 
 the states had been altered to what is known 
 as a despotism. In all of the commonwealths 
 except Sparta the kingly office had been 
 abolished. Indeed, in such small states the 
 institution of royalty could not flourish, for 
 the king was seen and known as a man rather 
 than as a ruler. At his death his son some- 
 times succeeded to his power, but was fre- 
 quently limited to a term of years. The next 
 step was the choice of some nobleman or 
 chief, who, with the title of Archon, exercised 
 the same authority hitherto possessed by 
 the king; but the officer so chosen was not 
 recognized as having a dignity much above 
 that of his fellow nobles. So the government 
 virtually rested, after the abolition of royalty, 
 in the hands of the few, and was designated 
 as an olujnrvhij, distinguished on the one side 
 from kingly prerogative, aud on the other 
 from democracy. 
 
 Such was the general political condition at 
 the middle of the seventh century B. C, 
 when a new factor appeared in Greek politics. 
 This was the despot. He generally came in 
 the character of some leading citizen, who by 
 espousing the cause of the jjcople gained suf- 
 ficient ])ower to overthrow the oligarchv and 
 make himself ruler of the city. He was gen- 
 erally designated by the Greeks themselves by 
 the name of Tyrant, but the Greek sense of 
 that word is so diftbreut from the English 
 equivalent as to make the word De»pot, or 
 Master, a better translation. As a rule the 
 despot arose from the ranks of the artisans, 
 but sometimes a noble would take advantage 
 of his position to become a popular leader. 
 The authorit)' of such a ruler when once 
 established was generally exercised in an ar- 
 bitrarv and tvrannical manner, and not infre- 
 
 quently the Greeks had cause to deplore the 
 revolution by which such a system of govern- 
 ment had been substituted for the oligarchy. 
 In such cases the hatred of the people for 
 their own tool who had now become their 
 master was intense, and this led to the next 
 step in the political evolution, namely the 
 substitution of democracy for the despotism. 
 
 It will readily ajjpear that Sjjarta, wherein 
 the old form of kingship had been retained 
 by the Lyeurgian statutes, was naturally thrown 
 in her sympathies on the side of the oligar- 
 chies of Greece, as against the despotisms and 
 the growing tendencies towards democracy. 
 The oligarchy stood next to royalty, and in 
 the light of this fact the conduct of the Spar- 
 tan government in its numerous interferences 
 in the affairs of other Greek states must be 
 interpreted. Such interference became a ne- 
 cessity of the situation, made so by the natu- 
 ral desire of the Spartans to maintain a pre- 
 pondera!ting influence throughout Greece. 
 
 Just west of the isthmus of Corinth was 
 the city of Sicyon. Like the other states, 
 Sicyonia had been under the oligarchical form 
 of government; but in B. C. 676, a popular 
 leader named Orthagoras arose, and a despot- 
 ism was established instead. The primitive 
 population of the country, who had never been 
 exterminated by the Dorian conquerors, sup- 
 ported Orthagoras, and he was thus enabled 
 to fix liis tyranny so firmly that the dynasty 
 lasted for a hundred years. The last of the 
 line was Clisthenes, who was famed in his 
 time for a victory won in a chariot race at 
 the Olympic games. He died in B. C. 560, 
 and leaving no son the despotism became 
 extinct. 
 
 A similar tyranny flourished in Corinth for 
 seventy-four years. It began its career with 
 the overthrow of the Baechiadiu in li. C. 655, 
 and was established by Cypselus. He was 
 himself descended from the nobles, but es- 
 poused the cause of the poinilar party. After 
 conducting the government well for thirty 
 years, he left it to his son Periander, who was 
 greatly detested for his cruelty and exactions. 
 Nevertheless, it was under his iron rule that 
 Corinth became one of the leading cities of 
 Greece — a place which she held for several
 
 530 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 centuries. The tyrant patronized art and 
 letters, and invited the most learned men of 
 his times to his court. After reigning for 
 forty years he was succeeded by a relative, 
 Psammetichus, who reigned four years, and 
 with him the dynasty perished. 
 
 The despotism in Megara was established 
 by Theagenes, in B. C. 630. He appeared in 
 the usual way as a leader of the people, over- 
 threw the oligarchy, and made himself master 
 of the state. After holding authority for 
 thirty years, he was driven from the govern- 
 
 tion to the close of the sixth century B. C. 
 Meanwhile a state had arisen in Central 
 Greece whose fame was destined to be ever- 
 lasting. 
 
 The story of the founding of Athens by 
 Cecrops has already been given. From that 
 time until the age of Solon, who gave to the 
 state its constitution, the history of Attica 
 contains only traditions. One of the principal 
 of these is the consolidation by Theseus of the 
 twelve districts into which Cecrops had di- 
 vided the peninsula. Another is that of the 
 
 DE.\TH OF CODRUS— Drawn by H. Vogel. 
 
 ment, but his party punished the offense by 
 despoiling the homes of the nobles. An edict 
 was passed by which all existing debts were 
 canceled, and the rich made to refund the 
 j iterest which they had received on loans. 
 These actions, however, so exasperated the 
 party of the nobles that the latter rallied a 
 strong force and the party of Theagenes was 
 suppressed. The oligarchy was reestablished, 
 and remained as the fixed form of government 
 for several generations. Such, then, was the 
 general course of events in Peloponnesus from 
 the establishment of the Lycurgian eonstitu- 
 
 abolition of royalty. In the time of the Do- 
 rian invasion of Attica the Delphic oracle 
 gave answer to the invaders that they would 
 be successful if the life of the Athenian king 
 was spared. The name of that ruler was 
 CoDRUS. Hearing the report of the oracle, he 
 disguised himself, went before the walls of 
 Athens, provoked a quarrel with the Dorian 
 soldiers, and permitted himself to be killed. 
 Learning what they had done the Dorians 
 broke up their camp and retired from Attica. 
 The Athenians, in joy for their deliverance, 
 declared that no one was worthv to succeed
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 631 
 
 Codrus in the government, and accordingly abol- 
 ished the office of royalty, siiijHtitutiiig there- 
 for the archonship. The right to l)e Arclion, 
 however, was for the time limited to the fam- 
 ily of Codriis. Eleven members of that family 
 succeeded one another in the goverumeut, 
 and then, in B. C. 752, the office was limited 
 to a period of ten years. Thirty-eight years 
 later the restriction to the family of Codrus 
 was removed and the archonship thrown open 
 to all the nobles. The next step in the road 
 to democracy was taken in B. C. 683, when 
 the office was limited to one year's duration, 
 and distributed to nine persons instead of one. 
 Of these nine, however, one continued to be 
 the chief archon and the rest associates. None 
 but the nobles were eligible to the archonship; 
 80 that the government of Athens was j)cace- 
 ably transferred fmni royalty to oligarchy in 
 the same manner as in the states of Pelopon- 
 nesus. As yet the people had no voice in 
 the direction of public affairs. 
 
 The cla-ss-distinctions of the Athenian pop- 
 ulace were arranged — so says tradition — by 
 Theseus. There were three castes: the Eupor 
 trida;, or nobles ; the Geomori, or husband- 
 men ; and the Demiurgi, or artisans. The 
 first exercised all the political and religious 
 rites of the people ; the husbandmen tilled 
 the soil ; the artisans plied their respective 
 crafls ; but neither wielded any considerable 
 influence in the affairs of state. 
 
 1' rom the institution of the annual archon- 
 ship, in B. C. 683, the more authentic history 
 of Athens begins. Of the nine archons who 
 were then appointed instead of the one who 
 had held authority p.aviously, one was the 
 President, called Archon Epomjmm ; for the 
 year took its name from him. He was the 
 representative of the Stnte, and decided all 
 matters of j)ublic importance. The second 
 archon was called Bii.^!l('u.<i ; and to him was 
 committed the oversight of Religion. The 
 third bore the title of Polemarch, and com- 
 manded the army. The remaining six were 
 called Thmmothekc, or legislators. The con- 
 stitution of the Court of Areopagus, or Sen- 
 ate of Athens, has already bee;> described. Such 
 was the character of Athenian political society 
 in the times preceding the legislation of Solon. 
 
 The government of the oligarchy was se- 
 vere and arbitrary. There were no written 
 laws, and the precedents of the state were 
 not well established. It was withal a govern- 
 ment of partiality, administered by the nobles 
 for the nobles. After about a half a century 
 the pul)lic discontent became so great that a 
 nobleman named Draco, of whose previous 
 history l)ut little is known, was appointed to 
 draft a code of written laws. The work was 
 undertaken in B. C. 624. The lawgiver 
 adopted the constitution of Athenian society 
 as it was, and gave his attention almost 
 wholly to the question of crime and its pun- 
 ishment. His laws were characterized by ex- 
 trelne severity. All crimes were punishable 
 with death ! The theory was that a petty 
 theft deserved death, and for murder no 
 greater penalty could be affixed. It was said 
 that his statutes were written in blood. Per- 
 haps, however, the code was as merciful as 
 the spirit of the age ; for the age cared noth- 
 ing for the sacredne.ss of human life. 
 
 The code of Draco was of little utUity. 
 Violence and discontent continued to prevail 
 to such an extent as to prevent the growth 
 and endanger the stability of the state. After 
 a few years of trouble a revolution was un- 
 dertaken by the malcontents headed by Cy- 
 lon, one of the Eupatridse. He was the son- 
 in-law of Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, 
 from whom he learned the lesson of despot- 
 ism as a cure for pul)lic troubles. Obtaining 
 fniin the Deli)hie oracle an answer which he 
 regarded as favorable, he seized the Acropolis 
 and undertook to maintain himself against the 
 authorities of the city, but he was soon over- 
 thrown and driven from the country. Many 
 of his adherents were hunted down and were 
 slain even at the very altars of the gods where 
 they had taken refuge. 
 
 This act of sacrilege, however — done as it 
 was by the orders of Megacles, one of the 
 archons — terrilied the people to such a degree 
 that the family to which Jlegacles belonged 
 was ])ut under the ban unci their trial de- 
 manded by the court, liut the ofleuding 
 nobles could not for the time be brought to 
 justice, and the confusion in the state grew 
 from bad to dangerous, until Solon persuaded
 
 532 
 
 UIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 the family of the AlcmEeonidse, to which Me- 
 gacles belonged, to submit their cause to trial. 
 The court adjudged them guilty, and they 
 were banished from Attica. StUl the Athe- 
 nians were terrified at the imagined anger of 
 the gods, and a plague in the city was attrib- ■ 
 uted to the vengeance of those whose altars 
 had been profaned by the shedding thereat 
 of human blood. Nor could the public mind 
 be quieted until, at the suggestion of the 
 Delphic oracle, the Cretan sage Epimenides 
 was brought to Athens to purify her from 
 pollution. 
 
 In this business, which resulted in produc- 
 ing comparative quiet, the guiding hand of 
 Solon again appeared. To him the people of 
 the city began to look as to one who by his 
 wisdom and prudence was able to save the 
 state from anarchy. This remarkable man 
 was born in the year B. C. 638. He was on 
 his father's side descended from Codrus, and 
 by his mother was related to Pisistratus. In 
 youth he learned a trade, and afterwards 
 traveled as a merchant in Greece and Asia. 
 He was a poet of no mean ability, and while 
 yet comparatively young was reckoned as one 
 of the Seven Wise Men of his country. Re- 
 turning from his travels, he became interested 
 in public affairs, and soon acquired a great 
 reputation for probity and learning. In B. C. 
 600 he rendered the state most valuable ser- 
 vice by commanding the Athenian expedition 
 for the recovery of Salamis, which had re- 
 volted to Megara. After a tedious struggle 
 the decision of the question was left to the 
 arbitration of Sparta. Solon went thither as 
 the ambassador of Athens, and managed the 
 cause so skillfully as to obtain a judgment in 
 favor of his country. Soon afterwards his 
 fame was further heightened by the influence 
 which he wielded over the Amphictyonic 
 Council in inducing that body to declare war 
 against the town of Cirrha, thus precipitating 
 the Sacred War. 
 
 At the age of Solon the Athenian common- 
 wealth embraced three classes of citizens. 
 These were first the Pedim, or wealthy class, 
 who, living mostly in the open country in 
 and about Athens, were designated as The 
 Plain; second, the Diacrii, or poor people 
 
 of the hilly districts, who were called The' 
 Mountain; third, the Parali, or mercantile 
 class, living mostly on the sea-coast, and 
 known as The Shore. These classes were 
 arrayed against each other politically, and a 
 reconciliation of their interests seemed impos- 
 sible. The poor were in great distress. The 
 rich had loaned them money, and had charged 
 exorbitant rates of interest. Both the prop- 
 erty and the person of the debtor were mort- 
 gaged to the rapacious creditor. Payment 
 was in most instances impossible. Many of 
 those who had been bankrupted had become 
 the slaves of those whom they owed. Others 
 had been actually sold to barbarians. The 
 materials of a disastrous insurrection were 
 ready to be fired by the first spark of agitation. 
 
 The oligarchs became alarmed, and ap- 
 pealed to Solon for aid. They knew that he 
 had the confidence of the Mountain and the 
 Shore, as well as their own. In B. C. 594 
 he was chosen archon, and was authorized to 
 exercise unlimited powers in remodeling the 
 constitution of the state. AU parties accepted 
 his appointment as an earnest of reform. 
 Such was the universality of his influence 
 that he might easily have usurped all the 
 functions of the government, overthrown the 
 oligarchy, and made himself master of Athens ; 
 but his virtue was equal to his abUity, and he 
 rebuked those who tempted him to such a 
 course. He entered upon his work without 
 the least bias of personal ambition. 
 
 As a preliminary measure he abolished all 
 the laws of Draco except that relating to 
 murder. He then divided the people into 
 classes, according to their property assessment. 
 This division was made the basis of the new 
 political system ; for a man's right to political 
 preferment rested henceforth on the amount 
 of property of which he was possessed. As a 
 measure of present relief, he canceled all 
 mortgages which had been given on the score 
 of interest. Debtors sold into slavery were 
 set free. The lands of the state were freed 
 from encumbrances. The power to mortgage 
 the person for debt was annulled. No geneial 
 abolition of debt was attempted ; but, as a 
 measure of relief, the standard of the coinage 
 was lowered about one-fourth, so that the new
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH ANB LAW. 
 
 533 
 
 silver raina contained but seventy-three parts 
 in a hundred of its I'ormer value. It was 
 found that Solon himself was a loser by this 
 measure ; for he hud loaned five talents, 
 which were paid back in units of the lower 
 standard. 
 
 In the {)roperty division of the citizens the 
 first class was made to consist of those whose 
 annual incomes were in excess of five hun- 
 dred measures of corn. These were called the 
 Pentacodomedimni. The second class embraced 
 
 other classes in numbers, being the common 
 people of Attica. 
 
 As to public honors, all the higher offices, 
 including the archonship, were reserved for 
 citizens of the first class. The inferior offices, 
 however, might be held by persons of the 
 second and third classes. Citizens of the 
 fourth rank might hold no public trust what/- 
 ever. But these discriminations were counter- 
 balanced by a just distribution of burdens. 
 An income-tax was levied on the first three 
 
 i^^^ 
 
 50LO.N Din ATING HIS LAWS. 
 Drawn by H. X'ogol. 
 
 all whose incomes ranged between three hun- 
 dred iiiid five hun<lri-d mciisures. They were 
 callod the Knights, from the fact that each in 
 this rank was considered able to furnish a 
 war-horse to the sUile. The third class was 
 made of tlioso whose annual revenues were 
 between two hundred aii<l three hundred 
 measure.- of corn. Tliose belon<ring to this 
 class were called ZeufiiUr, from the fact that 
 each was reckoned able to own a yoke of 
 oxen. The fourth rank eintiracod all wlio.<e 
 incomes amoimuMi m kss than two hundred 
 measures. The members of this class were 
 designated as TItetee, and were in excess of the 
 
 clas!5es, but the fourth class was exempt. 
 Citizens of the second and third ranks we'e 
 subject, as well as the first, to military service, 
 the second furui.<hiiig the cavalry and the 
 third the heavy-armed foot. The light-armed 
 troops Avere furnished by the fourth rank. 
 The disqualification of the comnicn people for 
 holding office was compensated by the right 
 of suffrage. The right to vote in the public 
 assembly was conceded to the Thctes, who, 
 being in the majority, migirt control the elec- 
 tion of the archons and other officers; and 
 since the archon, at the end of his year of 
 office, was subject to prosecution before the
 
 534 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 assembly foi his public acts, the check of the 
 Fourth Estate upon the administration of 
 afiairs was very salutary. 
 
 As a counterpoise to this enlargement of 
 the Assembly, Solon instituted a Senate, or 
 Council of Four Hundred, with whom all 
 matters of discussion in the popular body 
 must originate. The senators were elected by 
 the Assembly, and in turn presided over its 
 deliberations. Like the archons, they held 
 office for a year, and were amenable at the 
 end of the term for their conduct. The old 
 Court of Areopagus was retained by Solon, 
 but additional duties were imposed upon it. 
 Besides its ancient powers, it was given a gen- 
 eral supervision of the laws and the duty of 
 supervising the lives and occupations of the 
 people. 
 
 In the punishment of crime the legislation 
 of Solon ,was merciful. The thief must re- 
 turn double the value of the thing stolen. 
 Slander of either the living or the dead was 
 prohibited. Foreigners were invited to settle 
 in Attica. The father must teach his son 
 some useful traile or run the risk of being 
 left uncared for in his old age. He who took 
 a prize in the Olympic or Isthmian games 
 should be rewarded and honored. He who in 
 case of a civil sedition stood aloof and took 
 no sides was devoid of public spirit and should 
 be disfranchised. 
 
 When the Constitution was completed it 
 ■was inscribed in rollers and tablets and depos- 
 ited in the Acropolis. Solon acknowledged 
 that the work was imperfect, but held it to be 
 the best that the Athenians were able to bear. 
 When the task was completed, he bound the 
 Athenians by an oath to keep his statutes for 
 ten years, and then, to avoid the annoyance 
 of those who were sure to want alterations 
 and amendments, he went abroad as a trav- 
 eler. He visited Egypt and Cyprus, and in 
 the latter place was honored with the found- 
 ing of a new town named Soli, in his honor. 
 Afterwards he went to Sardis and made the 
 acquaintance of Croesus. It was on this occa- 
 sion that the celebrated interview occurred 
 which has been so much repeated for its lesson. 
 Croesus, desiring to make an impression on his 
 visitor, took him into his treasury and showed 
 
 him his riches. He then inquired of the im- 
 passive philosopher whom he considered the 
 happiest man he had ever seen. Solon after 
 some little reflection, named two obscure 
 Greeks whom the Lydian had never heard of. 
 Mortified at being unable to extort a compli- 
 ment, Croesus expressed his disgust, but Solon 
 explained that no man can well be accounted 
 happy until his life is ended, since the vicissi- 
 tudes of human affairs may soon bring even 
 the proudest to the level of the beggar. For 
 the time the lesson made no impression on the 
 proud monarch ; but in after years, when his 
 kingdom was overturned and himself, a prig- 
 oner, was about to be burned to death by the 
 orders of Cyrus the Great, Croesus in his an- 
 guish cried out the name of Solon. Cyrus 
 inquired upon what god the condemned was 
 calling, and was told the story of the philoso- 
 pher's interview and saying. The lesson was 
 so well suited to the Persian king that he or- 
 dered Croesus to be liberated and made him 
 his friend. — It is unfortunate that this story 
 is mythical rather than authentic. 
 
 After ten years Solon, in B. C. 562, re- 
 turned to Athens. He found a very un- 
 happy state of circumstances. The Shore, the 
 Mountain, and the Plain could not be recon- 
 ciled. At the head of the three parties stood 
 Megacles, one of the Alcmseonidse ; Pisistratus, 
 a cousin of Solon ; and Lycurgus, a wealthy 
 Athenian. The second of these partisan chiefs 
 had by far the greatest influence. He was 
 an able general, an accomplished orator, and 
 a demagogue. He espoused the cause of the 
 Mountain, not for the Mountain's sake, but 
 for his own ; for he was ambitious to become 
 master of Athens. His plans were already 
 well matured when Solon returned to Athens. 
 The latter attempted to dissuade Pisistratus 
 to desist from his ambitious schemes, but fail- 
 ing to influence him, he next addressed the 
 people of the city in poems, directed to the 
 political dangers which menaced the state. 
 These also were ineff'ectual. Meanwhile, a 
 crisis was precipitated by Pisistratus. Hav- 
 ing wounded himself and hacked his chariot 
 mules until they were bloody, he drove to 
 the market-square and showed himself bleed- 
 ing to the people, whom he told that the Plain
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 535 
 
 had attempted to kill him for defeudiiig pop- 
 ular liberty. A tumult followed. The strat- 
 agem was successful. The peoi)le ran to- 
 gether in an assembly, aud against the protest 
 of Solon, voted Pisistratus a body-guard of 
 fifty men. He gradunlly increased the num- 
 ber, and when suthciontly strong seized the 
 Acropolis and made himself master of the 
 city. It was expected that Solon would be 
 banished or put to death, but Pisistratus 
 
 tures to Pisistratus, to whom he proposed to 
 give his daughter in marriage. A scheme 
 was concocted for the return of the exiled 
 tyrant. It was arranged that a tall and beau- 
 tiful WDinun, named Phya, should go to him 
 aud accompany his return in the character of 
 Pallas Athene ! So the factitious goddess 
 mounted the chariot beside the despot and 
 rode into Athens, the awe-struck people 
 looking on in wonder at the prodigy, and 
 
 iJl:'Ji-rs SHOWING SOLON IlL- TKKA-UUES. 
 Drawn by H. Leutemann. 
 
 treated him with kindness, and even solicited 
 his a.lvi"f in matters of administration. But 
 the old sage did not long survive. He died 
 in B. C 558, and his ashes were, according 
 to his will, sowTj in the island of Salamis, which 
 he had won iu his ymith for Athens. 
 
 After the usur|i;itioii of Pisistratus the 
 other leaders, Lycur^rus and Megacles, were 
 for a time driven from the city. Soon, how- 
 ever, they combined against him, and he in 
 turn was driven into exile. Rut the Shore 
 and the Plain could not long agree. The 
 
 leaders quarreled, and Megacles made over- 
 N. — Vol. I — ,^3 
 
 quietly permitting Pisistratus a second time 
 to usurp the ])owers of the state. 
 
 The tyrant nuirried the daughter of Jlega- 
 cles, but soon treated her with contempt. He, 
 ofTended at this, abandoned Pisistratus, and 
 again made common cause with Lycurgus. 
 After a brief struggle the despot was again 
 driven off. His exile in Eubwa lasted for ten 
 years, but at the end of that time he crossed 
 over into Attica, collected his partisans at 
 ^raratlioii, defeate<l the forces of his rivals, 
 j anil a tliird time made hini.*elf supreme in the 
 1 city. The ]iardon which he offered to those
 
 536 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 ■who had opposed him was generally accepted, 
 and those who did not accept were exiled. 
 
 The government of Pisistratus during the 
 Third Tyranny was firm and severe. He 
 maintained his authority by means of a band 
 of Thracian mercenaries. The children of 
 those who were suspected of plotting against 
 him were seized and sent to Naxos. But in 
 the matter of exactions his rule was milder 
 than that of the oligarchy. He kept the stat- 
 tutes of Solon without alteration, and was 
 himself obedient to the law. He won the 
 applause of the Fourth Estate by throwing 
 open his gardens to the poor of the city. He 
 adorned Athens with public buildings. He 
 encouraged art and literature. He established 
 the first pulilie library in Greece, and laid aU 
 the world under obligation by the collection 
 of the Homeric poems. For thirty-three 
 years he kept Athens in a state of tranquillity 
 which she had never known before. Dying, 
 he bequeathed the government to his two 
 Bons, Hippias and Hipparchus, and they, in 
 B. C. 527, began an administration of the 
 same character as that of their father. Hip- 
 parchus was tlie more noted of the two. He 
 promoted literature by maintaining at his 
 court the poets Anacreon and Simonides. To 
 his time belongs the setting up of the Hermce, 
 or small statues of Hermes, which were placed 
 along the streets and in other places to denote 
 boundaries, and by the inscriptions which 
 they bore to remind the people of moral obli- 
 gations. 
 
 Matters were going well in the government 
 until a private feud led to , '. assassination 
 ot Hipparchus. A certain Harmodius, hav- 
 ing given offense to the two rulers, Hippias 
 sought revenge by a public insult to his sister. 
 Harmodius and his friend Aristogiton deter- 
 mined to appease their anger by killing both 
 of the governors. At the festival of the 
 Panathensea they stood with daggers hid in 
 their myrtle leaves waiting their opportunity. 
 But Hippias was seen conversing with one 
 who was in the secret, and the conspirators 
 believed themselves betrayed. They, how- 
 ever, made a rush on Hipparchus and cut him 
 down ; but Hippias escaped. He immediately 
 arrested those who were found to be in the 
 
 conspiracy, and they were either executed or 
 banished. This was but the beginning of a 
 career of cruelty. Many citizens were con- 
 demned on mere suspicion. The taxes were 
 increased, and the whole body of the people 
 grievously oppressed. There were loud mut- 
 terings of discontent, and the exiled family 
 of the Alcmteonidse made an eilbrt, though 
 without success, to overthrow the government 
 of Hippias. Finally, however, through the 
 influence of the Delphic oracle, the Spartans, 
 though hitherto friendly to the family of 
 Pisistratus, were induced to interfere against 
 the Athenian tyrant. Their first attempt 
 ended in failure, but in a second invasion of 
 Attica, Hippias was defeated and obliged to 
 go into exile. He fled to Sigeum, on the 
 coast ef Asia Minor, and became a fruitful 
 source of disturbance in the relations between 
 the Greeks and the Persians. The expulsion 
 of the tyrant was regarded by his countrymen 
 as a deliverance from thralldom and oppression. 
 
 At this time Clkthenes, the son of ^lega- 
 cies, appeared in the theater of Athenian poli- 
 tics. The Spartans, after expelling Hippias, 
 had left the people to their own ways. It was 
 Clisthenes who had by his strategy won over 
 the oracle to declare against the family of 
 Pisistratus. To him Athens now looked for 
 further assistance. He came as the leader of 
 the popular partj, and was opposed by Isag- 
 ORAs, who was backed by the nobles. Ac- 
 cording to the statutes of Solon the First 
 Estate had a monopoly of the highest offices, 
 and this fact gave the advantage to Isagoras. 
 But Clisthenes laid the axe at the root of the 
 tree by proposing a change in the constitu- 
 tion, by which the Thii'd Estate should be 
 admitted to a share in the government. It 
 was the beginning of the Athenian democracy. 
 
 As a measure precedent to the contemplated 
 change, the four classes, or castes, into which 
 the Athenians had been divided were abol- 
 ished, and the whole body of the populace 
 distributed into ten new tribes. Until this 
 time great numbers of residents in Attica had 
 not had the rights of citizenship, from the 
 fact that they had never been classified with 
 either of the four estates. The Clisthenian 
 plan proposed that all should be included in
 
 GREECE.— GROWTH AND LAW. 
 
 537 
 
 the redistribution of the population. By this 
 plan the aggregate citizenship of the state was 
 vastly increased in numbers, and the increase 
 nearly all went to the credit of the democracy. 
 The new distribution was not based upon 
 class-distinctions, but on territory, the only 
 true ba^is of political division. The territory 
 of each tribe was called a deme, and every 
 person living within the district was obliged 
 to enroll himself as a citizen. Each deme 
 managed its local aflairs in its own way. 
 
 transfer the government from archons, or 
 governors, to the people, and to substitute for 
 the close and arbitrary methods of the oligarchy 
 the open discussions of a public assembly, 
 thus preparing the way for the age of Pericles. 
 The military arrangement was based upon 
 the tribal distrilmtiun. Each tribe elected its 
 own general, so that an Athenian army was 
 generally comniiinded by ten officers of equal 
 rank. The old rank of poleniarch, however 
 was retained from the times of the archonship 
 
 CLISTHENES IN THE OLYMPIC GAMKb. 
 
 and had its own magistrate, called the 
 Demarchus. 
 
 Another change introduced by Clisthenes 
 was the enlargement of the senate to five 
 hundred members, or fifty from each tribe. 
 The powers of the body were also multiplied, 
 80 that a gowl share of the administration of 
 the state was included in its functions. It 
 sat the year around, and was presided over 
 by the senators in turn. The Ecclesia, or 
 Assembly, met forty times a year, and was 
 also presided ever by certain senators detailed 
 for that duty- The genoral eflect of the 
 whole movement directed bv Clisthenes was to 
 
 to the date of the Persian wars. It will 
 readily be seen that the efficiency of an 
 Athenian army would depend rather upon 
 valor and discipline than upon generalship, 
 for no generalship could well be developed 
 under a system which required each command- 
 ing, officer to be general for a day and to give 
 place to another on the morrow. 
 
 The condition of affairs in Athens was now 
 such as to afford unusual opportunities for the 
 ambitious citizen to become first a demagogue 
 and then a despot. As a counterpoise against 
 this danger, Clisthenes introduced the Ogtra- 
 cism. The plan was, in brief, to banish by a
 
 53» 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 popular vote for a jjeriod of ten years any 
 one who might be considered dangerous to the 
 state. The method was this. If the Senate 
 and Ecclesia should first decide that the state 
 was menaced by a citizen, the question was 
 submitted to the people. Each citizen who 
 iesired to vote wrote the name of the person 
 whom he wished to have banished on anostracon, 
 or oyster-shell, and dropped it into the urn. 
 If, when the shells were counted, it was found 
 that six thousand votes had been cast against 
 any person, the measure was carried as to him. 
 No special charge need be preferred against 
 the person considered dangerous. He was 
 allowed no opportunity' of trial or defense. 
 The only cheering symptom of his case was 
 that he might return without serious dispar- 
 agement at the end of his term of condemna- 
 tion, or might be recalled at any time by the 
 same power which had condemned him to 
 banishment. None the less, the abuses of 
 such an arbitrary and extraordinary system 
 were fewer than might have been expected. 
 As a matter of fact, it was not easy to get six 
 thousand free citizens to vote for the exile of 
 another free citizen unless they thought that 
 there were good grounds to suspect his pa- 
 triotism. 
 
 The constitution proposed by Clisthenes 
 greatly heightened his reputation with his 
 countrymen. His rival, Isagoras, was driven 
 to the unwise extreme of inviting foreign in- 
 fluence to counteract what he himself could 
 not successfully oppose. So he sent w<ird to 
 the Spartan king Cleomenes that one of the 
 Bccursed family of the Alcmseonidte was mas- 
 ter of Athens, and iuroklng his aid to secure 
 the expulsion of Clisthenes. The Spartan 
 accepted the invitation and marched a force 
 into Attica. But Clisthenes, seeing himself 
 the cause of trouble to his country, retired 
 from Athens before the arrival of Cleomenes. 
 The latter, however, attempted to undo the 
 new constitution. He reduced the Senate to 
 three hundred men, and then expelled seven 
 hundred families of those who were the prin- 
 cipal supporters of the recent statutes. These 
 proceedings so angered the people that they 
 took up arms, drove Cleomenes and Isagoras 
 into the citadel, and compelled them to sur- 
 
 render. Clisthenes came back on the rising 
 tide, and the Spartan king was allowed to re- 
 tire in disgrace. Isagoras went into exile, 
 but many of his leading adherents in Athens 
 were put to death. The reaction was so 
 strong as to secure the complete establishment 
 of the new constitution as the fundamental 
 law of the state. 
 
 It was not to be expected that Sparta would 
 tamely bear the recent humiliation of her king 
 by the Athenian democrats. Clisthenes clearly 
 foresaw that Cleomenes would renew the con- 
 flict at the earliest practicable moment. He 
 accordingly determined to strengthen himself 
 by a foreign alliance. Messengers were sent 
 to Tissaphernes, satrap of Lydia, requesting 
 his support for Athens in the expected struggle 
 w'ith the Spartans. The message was kindly 
 received by the Persian governor, who re- 
 turned answer that if the Athenians would 
 send earth and water as tokens of submission 
 to the Great King he would defend them 
 against their enemies. The messengers ac- 
 cepted the terms, but on their return to 
 Athens the conditions were repudiated with 
 proper disgust. 
 
 Meanwhile, Cleomenes called together hia 
 allies from Peloponnesus, and marched a large 
 force into Attica to Eulusis. The Spartan 
 kept to himself as long as possible the des- 
 tination of the expedition, and when he was 
 finally obliged to divulge his purpose the 
 Corinthians refused to proceed. His colleague 
 Demaratus also opposed the further prosecution 
 of the campaign. So the whole movement 
 fell to pieces. Unfortunately for themselves, 
 the Thebans and Chalcidians of Euboea had 
 been induced by Cleomenes to join in the 
 movement against Athens. That city now 
 found herself free to punish the defection of 
 those from whom she had a right to expect 
 friendship and had received enmity. She ac- 
 cordingly sent a force against Thebes and in- 
 flicted upon her a severe defeat. Thence 
 marching into Euboea, the Chalcidians were 
 still more severely dealt with. Their estates 
 were confiscated and divided among four 
 thousand of the Athenian poor. 
 
 These marked successes of Athens so fired 
 the jealous^' of the Spartans that they deter-
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 539 
 
 mined to make a thinl cHbrt to undo the 
 democratic institutions of their rival. The 
 tyrant Hippias was sent for from Sigeum, 
 and coming to Sj)arta represented to her 
 assembled allies the great benefits from his 
 restoration to authority. But the Corinthians 
 refused, as before, to have any thing to do 
 with the enterprise. They denounced the 
 system of despotism which Sparta would 
 establish in Athens as a wicked and bloody 
 thing, and the other allies were scarcely less 
 outspoken in their denunciations. Further 
 interference with Athenian affairs had to be 
 abandoned, and Hippias returned to his exile, 
 first at Sigeum and afterwards at the court of 
 Darius. Athens thus relieved of her perils, 
 pursued her own course under the auspices of 
 democracy, and was not long in taking the 
 foremost rank among the cities of Greece. 
 
 Up to this point in their history a general 
 view of the progress of the Greek states 
 
 would show them pursuing independent ca- 
 reers and tending to antagonisms rather than 
 to unity among themselves. The final causes 
 of this condition have already been referred 
 to as existing in the peculiar country which 
 the Greek tribes settled and the spirit of free- 
 dom and individuality peculiar to the race. 
 As long as these primary forces of develop- 
 ment were left free to work out their own 
 results the Grecian commonwealths preferred 
 a certain local completeness to an_y possible 
 union of the Hellenes in one nation. It was 
 only when this excessive individuality was 
 overcome by the presence of a common dan- 
 ger that cooperation was rendered possible 
 and unity considered a good. The time came, 
 however, when such a danger appeared im- 
 minent and overwhelming, and it will be the 
 purpose of the following chapter to recount 
 the heroism of the Greeks in the shadow of 
 the peril. 
 
 Chaf>ter xltv.— the Persian Wars. 
 
 r will be remembered that 
 the ambition of Darius 
 the Great led him into 
 an expedition against the 
 Scythians inhabiting the 
 great plain between the 
 Don and the Danube. 
 The circumsUiuces of that campaign have 
 already been narrated in the History of the 
 Persian Empire.' In the conduct of the in- 
 viision tlio king was in many things depend- 
 ent upon the Greeks of Asia Minor, especially 
 those living on the shores of the Hellespont. 
 The course taken by the expedition was deter- 
 mined by the advice of oue of the Grecian 
 generals, and the bridge of boats by which 
 Darius crossed into Europe was built by 
 Greek carpenters, and it was at the sugges- 
 tion of the same friends that the bridge was 
 left standing to insure an easy return if tlie 
 Persians should meet with disaster. It will 
 also be recalled that while Darius was prose- 
 ' See Book Sixth, p. 3fiO. 
 
 cuting the campaign a body of Scythians 
 came suddenly to the Hellespont, reporting 
 that the Persians were defeated, and urging 
 the guards of the bridge to burn it down, 
 make common cause with themselves, and 
 overwhelm the invaders. This advice was 
 seconded by Miltiades, an Athenian, now 
 despot of the Thracian Chersonesus, and many 
 of the Ionian Greeks favored the same policy ; 
 but Histiseus of Miletus supported the king, 
 reminding the Ionian governors that if their 
 master was destroyed they would perish with 
 him. This view prevailed. So Darius on 
 his return found a safe exit from the perils 
 that were gathering around him. 
 
 Megabazus was left with an army of 
 eighty thousand men to finish tlie work on the 
 Hellespont. He quickly reduced the rem- 
 nant of the Greek cities which had not 
 yielded to Persia, and then, in B. C. 510, 
 carried his conquest through Thrace to the 
 borders of Macedonia. From this point he 
 sent an embassy to Amyntas, the king, de-
 
 540 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 uranding earth and water, and these were im- 
 mediately sent. This proceeding extended 
 the limits of Ijhe Empire to Thessaly, so that 
 any further enlargement in that direction 
 would involve a direct conflict with the Eu- 
 ropean Greeks. Meanwhile, however, His- 
 tiseus fell under the suspicion of Megabazus, 
 who induced Darius to summon him to Susa. 
 Once there, he was detained under the pre- 
 text that the Persian king could not spare the 
 society of so refined a gentleman. The Greek 
 was soothed by permission to appoint his son- 
 in-law, Aristagoras, as ruler of Miletus in his 
 absence. 
 
 There now followed a few years of calm 
 until a mere spark, struck from the rocks of 
 Naxos, fired a universal conflagration. This 
 island, in B. C. 502, was the scene of a pop- 
 ular insurrection by which the oligarchical 
 party was overthrown and exiled. The lead- 
 ers went to Miletus and applied to Aristago- 
 ras for help. The latter readily consented, 
 but feeling himself unable to take up the 
 enterprise alone, he sent to Artaphernes, the 
 Persian satrap of Lydia, to furnish the means 
 of restoring the oligarchs, assuring him that 
 by good management the limits of the Em- 
 pire might thus be stretched across the Cyc- 
 lades and made to include even the large 
 island of Eubcea, lying in sight of the main- 
 land of Greece. 
 
 The very flattering overture was eagerly 
 caught by the Persian. A fleet of two hun- 
 dred ships was equipped and the command 
 given to Aristagoras. A large land force, 
 commanded by ]\Iegabates, was put on board 
 with the exiled oligarchs, and the expedition 
 weighed anchor for Naxos. At Chios the 
 fleet made a brief pause, and here the com- 
 manders quarreled. Megabates was so en- 
 raged at the conduct of Aristagoras that he 
 sent a message to the Naxians and warned 
 them of their danger. The latter immedi- 
 ately put their city in a state of defense; 
 and after a four months' siege, the forces of 
 Aristagoras were obliged to withdraw in dis- 
 grace. The commander, on reaching Jliletus, 
 found himself in a condition so critical that 
 he meditated an abandonment of the Persian 
 cause and a revolt of the Greek cities as the 
 
 best means of saving himself from ruin. At 
 this juncture a message came from Histiseus 
 urging the very course which Aristagoras was 
 on the eve of adopting. So the latter at once 
 called together the magistrates of the city, 
 explained his purposes, resigned his authority, 
 and suggested that the other Greek cities 
 should be at once advised to throw ofi" their 
 despots and the Persian yoke with them. 
 This popular impulse rolled like a wave down 
 the coast of Asia Minor. Every city became 
 inflamed with the hope of freedom, and in 
 B. C 501 a general declaration of indepen- 
 dence of Persia was adopted. 
 
 The Asiatic Greeks were wise enough to 
 know that they had undertaken a contract 
 which must be rendered valid by an indorse- 
 ment of blood. Aristagoras at once repaired 
 to European Greece to solicit alliances. Go- 
 ing first to Sparta, he laid the great cause 
 before Cleomenes, but the latter could not be 
 induced either by patriotic considerations or 
 by bribes to undertake the cause of the re- 
 volted cities. In Athens, however, Aristago- 
 ras met with a different reception. Here he 
 found an abundance of sympathy, and the 
 assembly promptly voted an armament of 
 twenty ships to aid the cause of the lonians.' 
 The city of Eretria furnished five ships, and 
 the fleet repaired to Asia Minor. In the follow- 
 ing spring Aristagoras, thus reeuforced, began 
 a march into the interior of Lydia. Sardis 
 was taken and burned by a handful of 
 Greeks, mostly Athenians; but to maintain 
 themselves in so distant a part was impossible. 
 A hasty retreat from the scene of their au- 
 dacity was all that remained for them to do. 
 They were followed by the avenging Persians, 
 and before they could reach the cities on the 
 coast were severely punished for their daring 
 deed of invasion. 
 
 AVhen the news was carried to Darius in 
 his palace at Susa, he gave way to rage. He 
 called for his bow and shot an arrow high in 
 air, and called on the gods to give him 
 vengeance. He had never heard of the Athe- 
 nians and made inquiry who they were. He 
 
 ' This is the act which is declared by Herodo- 
 tus to have heeii the " beginning of niischief be- 
 tween the Greeks and the barbarians."
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 541 
 
 commanded an attendant to call out to him 
 three times a day, "Lord, remember the 
 Athenians!" 
 
 It soon became apparent that the Asiatic 
 •Greek towns could not maintain themselves 
 n the unequal struggle. The Phoenicians 
 '"urnished the Persians with fleets. The revolt 
 in Cyprus was soon suppressed. The Ionian 
 ckies fell one after another. Aristagoras 
 abandoned the cause and was killed in Thrace. 
 In the meantime the crafty HistiKus per- 
 suaded Darius to send him into Ionia to help 
 the Persian generals. Artaphernes, however, 
 -.vas not deceived, and openly accused the 
 Greek of having made a shoe for Aristagoras 
 to wear. Histiieus, however, escaped to the 
 island of Chios and offered his services to 
 the Greeks; but all were suspicious of him. 
 Finding himself an object of universal distrust 
 he turned pirate, and sailed with eight Les- 
 bian galleys towards Byzantium. He preyed 
 on whatever he could find on land and sea 
 until finally he was overtaken on the coast of 
 Mysia. Being carried to Sardis, Artaphernes 
 had him crucified and his head .sent to Darius. 
 The Great King seeing the pallid visage of 
 the man who had once saved his life, showed 
 his own humanity by having the bloody trophy 
 honorably buried. 
 
 Several of the Greek cities still held out 
 against the Persians. Chief of these was 
 Miletus, which was besieged by a large army, 
 as well as on the side of the jEgean by a 
 Phoenician fleet. The Greeks knowing them- 
 selves to be strongest as sailors gathered their 
 forces from the various towns and embarked 
 them on ships. Their armament numbered 
 three hundred and fifty-three ve.s.sels while 
 that of the Persians counted six hundred sail. 
 But the latter were wary of their antagonists 
 and stood off" from battle. The Greek fleet 
 lay by the shore at Sade, near Miletus. The 
 exiled despots, now on board of tlie Persian 
 ships, knowing the rivalries and di.ssensions 
 existing among the Greeks, became the secret 
 agents of overtures made to them for peace 
 on terms advantageous to all who would sail 
 away and return to their allegiance. At first 
 these overtures were refused by all; but when 
 the Saniians sjiw the jealousies and conten- 
 
 tions which prevailed to the extent of destroy- 
 ing all discipline, they renewed the negotia- 
 tions and agreed to withdraw in case of a 
 battle. 
 
 The Persian fleet now no longer forbore 
 to attack, and when the fight began the Sa- 
 miaus, according to promise, sailed out of line 
 and bore away. They were followed first by 
 the Lesbians and then by others until the 
 hundred brave ships of Chios were left to 
 contend alone. These were soon overpowered 
 and destroyed. Miletus was soon afterwards 
 taken, and resistance to Persiau authority was 
 at an end. Those who had been engaged in the 
 revolt were treated with the utmost severity. 
 Some were put to death, some sold into sla.- 
 very, and some deported into foreign parts. 
 The cities declined in wealth and population. 
 A new survey of the country was made and 
 a tribute assessed upon each of the districts 
 for the benefit of the Persian treasury. 
 
 Shortly after the suppression of the Ionian 
 revolt, the Persian king sent his son-in-law, 
 Mardonius, to succeed Artaphernes as satrap 
 of Lydia. His government included the 
 provinces recently in insurrection. To him 
 Darius gave a large armament, with instruc- 
 tions to seize and take to Susa those Athe- 
 nians and Eretrians who had assisted in the 
 Ionian rebellion. Mardonius, in B. C. 492, 
 set out on this mission. He had a strong land 
 force and a large fleet. He proceeded down 
 the coast of Thrace and Macedonia, and 
 ordered his ships to join him below Mount 
 Athos. But while doubling this dangerous 
 promontory a storm arose, which destroyed 
 three hundred vessels and twenty thousand 
 men. Soon afterwards Mardonius was him- 
 self defeated by the Brygians, a race of white 
 Thracians, who slaughtered a large part of 
 his army. He was glad to make his way back 
 into Asia, covered with disgrace. 
 
 Darius now determined to undertake the 
 conquest of Greece in person. In order to 
 ascertain the temper of the Hellenic states he 
 sent heralds to each, demanding earth and 
 water. All complied except Sparta and 
 Athens. The authorities of the former city 
 threw the messenger of the Great King into 
 a well, and the Athenians cast the herald into
 
 542 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 a pit and bade him take his earth aud water 
 from there. At this time Athens was at war 
 with ^gina. The jEginetans were of those 
 who sent tokens of submission to Darius. 
 The Athenians now called upon Sparta as the 
 leading Grecian state to punish the people of 
 ^gina for deserting the cause of the country. 
 Cleomenes, the Spartan king, readily took up 
 the cause, and, proceeding against the ^gine- 
 tans, seized ten of the leaders and gave them 
 to the Athenians as hostages. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the spring of B. C. 490, 
 the preparations of the Persians being com- 
 plete, Darius began his invasion of European 
 Greece. A vast army was assembled in 
 Cilicia. The fleet which was to accompany 
 the expedition numbered six hundred galleys, 
 besides the transports. The command was 
 given to the Median Datis and Artaphernes, 
 a son of the former satrap of Lydia of that 
 name. Their instructions were to conquer all the 
 Greek states that had not already made their 
 submission, and to take special vengeance on 
 Athens and Eretria by burning them to the 
 ground and selling the inhabitants into slav- 
 ery. Manacles were prepared and sent to the 
 commanders, with which the Greeks were to 
 be bound and led into captivity. The dreams 
 of the Persian were not troubled by any 
 specter prophesying failure. 
 
 The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes, 
 departing from the coast of Asia Minor, pro- 
 ceeded across the .iEgean by way of the 
 Cyclades. Naxos was taken and its principal 
 city reduced to ashes. All the other islands 
 submitted, nor did the Persians meet any op- 
 position until they came to Euboea. Eretria 
 bravely defended herself for six days, and 
 was then taken through the treachery of two 
 citizens, who opened the gates. The city was 
 burnt, aud the principal inhabitants put into 
 chains, according to the command of the king. 
 It only reroained for Datis to cross the strait 
 and do l-kewise to Athens and her imperti- 
 nent democracy. 
 
 Here was the rub. For the Athenians had 
 prepared for the crisis such means of resist- 
 ance as seemed most likely to stay the deluge. 
 According to the custom, ten generals had 
 been chosen to command the army. Of these 
 
 the men of greatest ability were Miltiades, 
 Themistocles, and Aristides. The first was 
 the same previously mentioned as that despot 
 of the Thracian Chersonesus, who advised the 
 destruction of the bridge of the Hellespont in 
 order to secure the destruction of Darius. In 
 the struggle of the Persians and the Ionian 
 cities Miltiades had taken the side of his 
 countrymen, and had captured Lemnos and 
 Imbros from the enemy. After the revolt of 
 the Greek cities had been suppressed he fled 
 to Athens for safety. 
 
 As soon as the Athenians heard of the de- 
 struction of Eretria they sent a courier to 
 Sparta imploring assistance.^ The Spartans 
 returned a favorable answer, but the moon 
 was now near her full, and they could lend 
 no aid until after the change ! Such wa» 
 their custom. The Athenians took their 
 station at Marathon and awaited the onset. 
 Five of the generals desired to delay until 
 after the arrival of the Spartans, but the 
 other five wished to fight at once while the 
 spirit of the people was up to the point of 
 battle. Finally the polemarch, Callimachus, 
 who, retained by the old statutes of the oli- 
 garchy, now constituted the eleventh officer, 
 gave his vote for an immediate engagement, 
 and it was agreed bj' all that Miltiades should 
 have supreme command until the issue of the 
 conflict should be determined. 
 
 At this critical moment a thousand Boeo- 
 tians from the little town of Plataa arrived 
 as a voluntary reenforcement of their country- 
 men. Miltiades could now muster ten thou- 
 sand men of heavy armor, besides a few light- 
 armed troops, who were not of much moment 
 in battle. The Persian army numbered one 
 hundred and ten thousand. 
 
 The plain of Marathon lies on the coast, 
 at the distance of twenty-two miles from 
 Athens. It is a tract semicircular in shape, 
 defined at each extreme by a promontory 
 reaching into the sea. Between these two 
 head-lands the plain stretches along the shore, 
 a distance of six miles. Its greatest breadth 
 
 'The messenger who carried the petition of 
 Athens to Sparta on this occasion was Phidippides. 
 He is said to have run the whole distance of » 
 hundred and fifty miles in forty-eight hours !
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 543 
 
 from the sea to the raountaius is, near the 
 center, about two miles. The Persians were 
 arranged along the shore, and the Greeks 
 stood on the opposite side of the plain about 
 the middle, backed by the hills. Seeing the 
 impossibility of giving strength to so long a 
 line with so small a force, Miltiades msissed 
 
 a run. They traversed the mile of interven- 
 ing .space and fell like two thunder-clouds on 
 the astonished foe. The battle raged furiously. 
 Both wings of the Greeks drove the enemy 
 before them, but the center, being weak, was 
 in turn broken through by the Persians. As 
 soon, however, as Miltiades perceived himself 
 
 BATTLE OF MAKATIION. 
 
 his troops in the two wings. He gave com- 
 mand of the right to C'allimachus, and placed 
 the contingent of Plataaus on the left. Thus 
 at last the Hellenes stood face to face with 
 the Medes and Persians, long regarded as the 
 Invincible soldiery of the East. 
 
 Miltiades, anxious for battle, gave the or- 
 der for the onset. The Greeks advanced on 
 
 victorious on the flanks, he recalled his wings 
 and fell upon the Persian center. Here were 
 the best troops of Datis's army. It was 
 already late in the afternoon. The sun look- 
 ing over the hills of Greece flashed his full 
 beams in the face of her foes. After a sharp 
 resistance they broke and fled under such on' 
 sets as they had never felt before. They were
 
 544 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 pursued to the beach, where their ships saved 
 them from annihilatiou. As it was, six 
 thousand four hundred of their soldiers lay 
 dead on the field. The Athenians attempted 
 to fire the fleet, but only succeeded in de- 
 stroying seven vessels. The rest made their 
 escape, carrying the Persians with them. The 
 Athenian loss was one hundred and ninety-two 
 men, but among these was the brave pole- 
 march Callimachus, who here gave his life for 
 the freedom of his country.' 
 
 Just at the close of the battle a bright but 
 traitorous shield was seen raised aloft on a 
 distant mountain in the direction of Athens. 
 It was a signal for the Persian fleet to sail 
 thitherward and take the city before the 
 soldiers of Miltiades could return to her de- 
 fense. It was noticed, moreover, by the 
 Greeks that the vanishing armament departed 
 in the direction of Cape Sunium. Accord- 
 ingly, Miltiades marched with all haste to- 
 wards the city. His conjectures were correct; 
 for just as he arrived the Persian fleet hove 
 in sight. But when the army of Datis, about 
 to debark, saw before them the same dusty 
 heroes from whom they had so recently fled 
 at Marathon, they could not be induced to 
 land. They turned their prows instead to the 
 shores of Asia Minor, and the ^gean soon 
 rolled between Athens and her peril. 
 
 Marathon was to the Greek what Bunker 
 Hill is to the American. After the battle the 
 Athenians gave themselves up to raptures. 
 The day became historic. Poetry brought her 
 magic song and imagination her legends to 
 add to and hallow the remembrance of a deed 
 so great. It was said that Theseus reappeared 
 in the battle. At night ever afterwards, the 
 
 ' It is not wonderful that the genius of Byron, 
 on viewing Marathon, brolie forth in an unusual 
 strain : 
 
 "The battle-field where Persia's victim horde 
 First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword. 
 
 As on the morn to distant glory dear, 
 When Mar.^thon became a magic word. 
 
 Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear 
 
 The camp, the host, tlie fight, the conqueror's 
 career — 
 
 The flying Mede, his shaitless, broken bow; 
 
 The fiery Greelc, his red pursuing spear ; 
 Mountains above, earth's, ocean's plain below. 
 
 Death in the front, destruction in the rear!" 
 
 old heroes of Athens marshaled their hosts in 
 the clouds, and the noise of invisible warriors 
 shouting to the charge, the uproar of chariots 
 aud horses, and the moaus of dying spirits, 
 could be heard above that haunted, glorious 
 field. 
 
 Miltiades became the hero of the day. No 
 mark of honor or gratitude was omitted. 
 Besides the great tumulus or mound which 
 public patriotism and aflectiou reared over the 
 one hundred and ninety-two immortals who fell 
 at Marathon, a separate monument was erected 
 on the field to the memory of Miltiades. His 
 influence became unbounded ; but he seems to 
 have belonged, after all, to that type of heroes 
 who are able to bear adversity better than 
 success. The memory of an old resentment 
 rose within him, and forgetting his great- 
 ness, he asked the Athenians to give him an 
 armament of seventy sail without explaining 
 his intentions. When the fleet was voted, he 
 sailed away to the island of Paros and at- 
 tacked the capital city; for against a leading 
 citizen of that place he harbored a grudge of 
 many- years. But the Pariaus defended them- 
 selves with such vigor that Miltiades was 
 about to despair of success when a priestess in 
 the temijle of Demeter promised him success 
 if he would visit the temple by night. In 
 attempting to do so he wounded himself on 
 the wall, and was barely able to reach his 
 ship. In this miserable condition he was 
 obliged to return to Athens. He could give 
 no honorable account of himself or of the use 
 which he had made of his country's fleet. 
 Charges were preferred against him, and he 
 was brought in with his gangrened wound 
 and laid before the judges. It was asked that 
 he be condemned to death, but such a sen- 
 tence could not be obtained against the hero 
 of Marathon. He was severely punished by a 
 fine of fifty talents, but before the sum could 
 be raised he died of his injury. 
 
 The next important event in the career of 
 Athens was her war with ^gina. For a long 
 time there had been between the city and this 
 island a feeling of suppressed hostility. In 
 B. C. 506 the jEginetans had given aid to 
 the Thebaus in a strife with the Athenians, and 
 had even invaded the territory of Attica with-
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 545 
 
 out a ileclaration of war. These acts ware 
 laid to heart by the city ; aud when ^gina 
 made haste to abandon the Greek cause by 
 sending eartli aud water to the Persian king, 
 the feeling of resentment against her was 
 greatly increased. It will be recalled that 
 Cleomenes, one of the Spartan kings, had, on 
 account of this act of the ^Eginetans, and at 
 the instigation of Athens, gone to the island 
 and inflicted a severe punishment. After the 
 battle of Marathon the authorities of ^'Egina 
 demanded back the hostages which they had 
 been compelled to give to the Athenians, and 
 the refusal of the latter to do so led to a dec- 
 laration of war. Hostilities were vigorously 
 waged on both sides, but the conflict had not 
 long continued until Athens discovered the 
 great disadvantage at which she was placed 
 by having no navy. It was clearly impossi- 
 ble to carry on a successful war at sea, or 
 with a con-ntry lying in or l)eyond the sea, 
 without the employment of a fleet. The little 
 island of JEgina was able, in the jiresent con- 
 dition of affairs, to look across the Saronic 
 gulf and laugh at Attica. Moreover, it was 
 seen by the wise, and especiallv by Tfiemisto- 
 CLES, who had now become the political leader 
 of the Athenians, that it was only a question 
 of time when the Persian king would renew, 
 on a still more Tormidable scale, the attempt 
 against Grecian freedom. The prudent states- 
 men of the city discerned in this remote dan- 
 ger far greater ground of apprehension than in 
 the petty imbroglio with the .ffiginetans. 
 
 So Thoinistodes introduced in the assembly 
 that imi)ortaut mea.sure by which the whole 
 current of Athenian history was changed — the 
 proposition to build a large fleet for the pro- 
 tection of the state. It wa-s fortunate that 
 the treasury of Athens was now in a condition 
 to warrant the proposed action. The silver 
 mines of Laurium had recently yielded so 
 largely that a surplus was at the disposal of 
 the city, and a propMsitimi was actually i)end- 
 ing at the time to distriiiute the .same among 
 the citizens. Themistocles took advantage of 
 all these facts in the advocacy of his measure, 
 and had the good fortune to secure it.s pa.ssage. 
 It was ordered that a fleet of two hundred 
 vessels be at once built ami ('qui|)poil at pub- 
 
 lic expense, and to this was added another 
 clause that hereafter twenty ships should be 
 annually added to the navy. 
 
 Thus was Greece made ready for the com- 
 ing storm. For Darius was nur.sing his 
 wrath for a final explosion. In the interval 
 between the battles of Marathon and Sala- 
 mis — a j)eriod of ten years — the public affairs 
 of Athens were dii-ected by Themistocles and 
 Aristides, two of the greatest Greeks. The 
 first owed his preeminence to talent and pol- 
 icy ; the second, to integrity. In the adapta- 
 tion of means to ends and in that far-sighted 
 discernment by which the plans of men and 
 states are penetrated and laid bare, the palm 
 must be awarded to Themistocles; but in 
 soundness of moral perception and uudevi- 
 ating conformity to the right as the best 
 means of reaching- the desired object, Aristi- 
 des stan<ls first among the Greeks, if not 
 among all the statesmen of antiquity. He 
 was named the Just, and posterity has not 
 challenged the title. 
 
 Such was the then condition of Athenian 
 society that these two eminent men were 
 brought into constant antagonism. Themis- 
 tocles was the progressive aud Aristides the 
 conservative leader. They broke heavy lances 
 over the question of building the fleet. Aris- 
 tides held that to do so was to change the 
 habits of the people to the injury of the state. 
 He urged that the heavy armed soldiers were 
 a better protection in Greece than any number 
 of ships, and that out of Greece the Athenians 
 had no business to be engaged in war. But 
 the logic of events was against him. Not 
 only did the arguments of Themistocles pre- 
 vail with the assembly and senate, but the 
 public voice was so strongly against Aristides 
 that the ostracism was turned to his downfall 
 and he was sent into exile. This act of the 
 Athenians left Themistocles without a rival, 
 and in this attitude of leader he stood in the 
 hour of the mo.st tremendous crisis that Greece 
 had over witnessed. 
 
 For Darius had not forgotten Athens. 
 How he spent years in ]>r(<paring the ava- 
 lanche which was to fall upon and overwhelm 
 the impudent cities of European Greece; how 
 the Great King, when his preparations were
 
 546 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY. — THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 well-nigh completed, was surprised and de- 
 tained by a revolt in Egypt, and how ere this 
 was suppressed he suddenly died — has been 
 narrated in the preceding pages.' And how 
 Xerxes, inheriting his father's hatred of the 
 Greeks, coming to the throne in the full flush 
 of early manhood, and receiving the vast 
 array of men and ships already marshaled 
 and equipped by Darius, determined to pros- 
 ecute the great scheme of Grecian subjection, 
 has been recounted in the same connection. 
 
 To make sure of an easy and expeditious 
 advance Xerxes sent forward his builders to 
 construct a bridge of boats across the Helles- 
 pont, and his diggers to cut off the neck of 
 Mount Athos. By the one structure he would 
 make his way with dignity from Asia into 
 Europe, and by the other work would secure 
 a safe passage for his fleet from the Strymonic 
 into the Singitic gulf The constr-\ction of 
 the great bridge and the dramavJc passage of 
 the Hellespont by the countless hosts of the 
 Persians have been heretofore described in 
 the History of Persia, and need not be here 
 recounted. 
 
 After he had traversed for some distance 
 the coast line of Thrace the king paused in 
 the plain of Doriscus to number his forces. 
 The enumeration and method of making it have 
 already been given in Book Sixth, to which 
 the reader is referred once for all for an ac- 
 count of the Persian progress from Sardis to 
 Thermopyloe.^ 
 
 The fleet kept in close relation with the 
 land force as far as the canal which had been 
 cut by the king's command, but after making 
 the passage was ordered to double the two re- 
 maining promontories of Sithonia and Pallene 
 and rejoin the army at the city of Therma, 
 now Thessalonica, on the coast of Macedonia. 
 After passing Olympus, Xerxes entered a 
 country not hitherto subdued to his authority, 
 and from this point the invasion proper began. 
 The Greeks, meanwhile, were on the alert 
 to repel as well as they might the terrible host 
 which was rolling down upon them. A con- 
 gress of the states was called to meet at Cor- 
 inth, with a view to uniting the whole race in 
 an effort to save their native land from de- 
 'See Book Sixth, p. 362. ^Ibid. pp. 363, 364. 
 
 struction ; but the meeting was unsuccessful. 
 To most of the cities it seemed preposterous 
 to attempt to resist the Persians. Many sent 
 earth and water. Only a few would attend 
 the congress. Some of these opposed defens- 
 ive measures and withdrew. The whole 
 brunt of protecting the Hellenic world against 
 the barbarians fell on Sparta and Athens. In 
 all Central Greece only the Athenians and 
 Phocians and the people of the two small 
 towns of Platsea and Thespia in Boeotia stood 
 firm for the defense of native laud. Such 
 states as Thebes, with its grudge against 
 Athens, and Argolis, with its deep-seated an- 
 tipathy to Sparta, witnessed the approach of 
 Xerxes with indifference, if not with pleasure. 
 Neither the distant states nor the colonies 
 sent any aid to those who had determined for 
 the sake of Greece to throw themselves across 
 the path of the invader. - 
 
 The Athenians in this emergency behaved 
 with great magnanimity. They effected a recon- 
 ciliation with the people of ^Egina, and thus 
 gained the cooperation of then- fleet. They 
 conceded to the Spartans the supreme com- 
 mand in the approaching conflict. Themisto- 
 cles, both in the congress and the field, waived 
 his claims in favor of his allies. The two 
 states bound themselves in a solemn covenant 
 to resist to the death, and it was agreed that 
 in case of success one-tenth of the property 
 of every Greek city that had refused to sup- 
 port the national cause should be consecrated 
 to the Delphian Apollo. 
 
 All preparations being completed, it was 
 determined to meet the enemy in the pass of 
 Thermopyl^. Where Mount (Eta comes 
 down to the sea, pressing for the distance of 
 a mile the morass along the margin of the 
 Malian Giilf, and barely leaving space at 
 the entrance and exit for the passage of a 
 wagon road, lay the defile through which the 
 Persian host must pour into Central Greece. 
 The place was defensible in the highest de- 
 gree. The narrow strait of Eubcea, Ipug be- 
 tween the island of that name and the main- 
 land, could easily be blockaded by an inferior 
 fleet, and the enemy be thus prevented from 
 carrying troops to the southern extremity of 
 the pass. It was thiis provided by nature
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARti. 
 
 547 
 
 that a small but resolute band of men might 
 be able to stiiml for an indefinite time in the 
 face of an overwhelming foe. 
 
 The fleet of the allies, under conimiuid of 
 the Spartan Eukyhiades, now s<ailed to tlie 
 north of Euboea and took its station off Cape 
 Artemesium. At the same time a small body 
 of troops was sent to occupy the pass of 
 Thermopylaj. It was the eve of the celebra- 
 tion of the Olympic games, and the people of 
 Sparta, with that strange nonchalance for 
 which the race is noted, preferred to attend 
 to the festival first and the Persians after- 
 wards. It was believed that the handful of 
 men already advanced to Thermopyke could 
 hold the .pass untU, the games being over, the 
 main body .should arrive for their support. 
 
 The advance which w'as thus sent forward 
 to keep Asia at bay for a week consisted of 
 three hundred Spartans, three thousand heavy- 
 armed troops from the other states of Pelo- 
 ponnesus, seven hundred Thespians, four hun- 
 dred Thebans, one thousand Phocians, and 
 about the same number of Locrians. With 
 this force of nearly seven thousand men, Leon- 
 IDA.S, the young king of Sparta, who had been 
 placed in coninmn<l with the simple order to 
 defend Tliermopyloe against the Persians, took 
 possession o! the pass and awaited the onset. 
 Having Jiscertained from the Phocians tiiat 
 there was a route over the nmuntains by which 
 it was practicable for the enemy to make his 
 way into Central Greece, he placed the Pho- 
 cian contingent on the heights with orders to 
 thwart any such movement should it be begun. 
 
 W ilh the a])])roach of the Persians there 
 was mucli trcpiilatioM among the Peloponnesian 
 troops, and many desired to retreat to the 
 isthmus of Corinth, and there make a stand 
 Bt the doorway of Southern Greece; but tlie 
 influence of Leonidas prevailed over sucii un- 
 patriotic fears, and the l)atth; began at tlie 
 upper end of the pass. Here, when the Per- 
 .tiaus came in sight, they beheld a few Spar- 
 tans running and leaping as if in sport, while 
 others were combing their long hair as though 
 pre])aring for a festival. Demaratus, the ex- 
 iled Spiirtun king, who accompanied Xerxes 
 on the expedition, explained to the monarch 
 tliat this conduct oti the part of liis country- 
 
 men meant that they w^ere devoting themselves 
 to death, and that nothing might be expected 
 excejit resistance as long as one man was left 
 alive. 
 
 Not able to ap])reciate such .strange conduct, 
 Xerxes tarried four days, believing that the 
 absurd project of defense would be abandoned 
 and that the Spartans \vould disperse. At the 
 end of that time he sent a demand to Leonidas 
 to give up his arms. The true Laconic reply 
 was, "Come and take them." When the 
 Spartan was told that the Persians were so 
 numerous that a discharge of their darts 
 would cloud the sky, he answered, "That is 
 good ; we shall fight in the shade ! " 
 
 On the fifth day a band of Medes was sent 
 forward to clear the pass. They were killed. 
 Others were sent forward, and were killed. 
 Xerxes leaped up in rage and agony from the 
 seat which had been prepared for him from 
 which to witness the battle. The Immortals 
 were ordered to the charge, and were cut to 
 pieces. On the second day the scene was re- 
 newed. Heap after heap of Persian slain 
 was piled at the upper entrance to the 
 pass. The darts of the barbarians fell harm- 
 less on the bronze shields of the Spartans. 
 The rage of the baffled king knew no bounds, 
 but just as he was about to despair of forcing 
 his way through, the secret mountain-path was 
 revealed to him by a traitorous Malian, and 
 he at once ordered his generals to begin an 
 advance by that route. A large detachment, 
 led by the informant, set out at nightfall. 
 The Phocians who had been ajipointed to 
 guard the path were alarmed at the unex- 
 pected approach and retired to the heights. 
 The passage of the Persians to the rear of 
 Leonidas was thus unoppo.sed. 
 
 The Spartan called a council of war, and 
 tliere was much division of opinion. The 
 greater nundjer favored a retreat while it was 
 yet possible. The |irivilege of taking this 
 step was freely conceiled by Leonidas, but as 
 for him and his Sj)artans there was but one 
 courte to pursue. The laws and customs of 
 their country did not permit them to abandon 
 a post which iiad been committed to theii 
 charge. The order of the king was specific 
 lie was to defend the pass. That he would Jo
 
 b-iS 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE AXCIEXT WORLD. 
 
 Death was nothing. The seven hundred 
 Thespians resolved to share the fate of such a 
 leader and his men. The four hundred The- 
 bans who had been obliged to join the expe- 
 dition rather as hostages than as soldiers were 
 detained to face an unwilling death. The 
 remainder retired from the pass and escaped. 
 As soon as Xerxes supposed that the de- 
 tachment sent over the mountains had reached 
 the southern entrance to the pass, he ordered 
 a renewal of the attack. Leonidas and his 
 comrades now advanced into the open space 
 and fought like lions. Every man became a 
 hero, and before each one was a heap of Per- 
 sian dead. By and by, as the Persian hosts 
 were thrust forward by those in the rear, the 
 heroic ranks began to thin. Their lances 
 were broken, and they were obliged to take 
 their swords. They were beaten back inch 
 by inch. Every man kept his face to the 
 foe. They retired within the pass and gained 
 possession of a hillock, where they huddled to 
 die together. The Thebaus begged for quar- 
 ter, and explained that they fought against 
 their will. They were spared. Around the 
 remnant on all sides the Persians closed rank 
 on rank. It was the ever-narrowing circle of 
 doom. Javelins were showered in their faces 
 by thousands. Man by man they sank and 
 perished. Not one remained alive from the 
 glorious sacrifice. Persia had another taste 
 of Hellas. 
 
 On the hillock where the heroes died *a 
 marble lion was set up in honor of Leonidas — 
 fit emblem of his valor. The inscription said : 
 " Four thousand Poloponnesians here fought 
 with three millions of the foe." Another 
 couplet, intended for the Spartans, ran thus: 
 
 " Go, tell the Spartans, thou that passest by. 
 That here obedient to their laws we lie." 
 
 In the meantime, the Greek fleet under 
 Eurybiades had had a terrible battle with the 
 Persian armament at Artemesium. Before 
 th2 engagement, however, a great storm driv- 
 ing shoreward had struck the enemy's fleet 
 while anchored at Aphetse and wrecked no 
 fewer than four hundred ships. Still, they 
 were so much superior to the Greeks in niim- 
 bers — the latter having but two hundred and 
 
 seventy-one vessels — that it was with difficulty 
 that Eurybiades and Themistocles induceo 
 their captains to hazard battle. As a pre- 
 cautionary measure they withheld the attack 
 until nearly nightfall, so that in case of dis- 
 aster they might have the advantage of dark- 
 ness. But the onset of the Greek ships was 
 successful, and when night fell the advantage 
 lay with the allied fleet. Nevertheless, so 
 great was the apprehension of the sailors that 
 the use of Euboean gold in the hands of The- 
 mistocles was that night necessarj' to keep 
 the armament steady for the work of the 
 morrow. 
 
 During the night, however, another violent 
 storm arose and wrought such fearful havoc 
 with the Persian fleet — at the same time in- 
 juring the Greeks but little on account of 
 their sheltered position — that in the morning 
 the enemy declined battle. In the course of 
 the day a squadron of fifty-three additional 
 ships from Athens arrived as a reenforcement, 
 and the spirits of the Greeks, fired by good 
 omens and encouraged by home support, rose 
 to a pitch of enthusiasm flaming for the 
 fight. On the following day the Persian fleet 
 formed a semicircle and bore down for battle. 
 The Greeks, in order not to be surrounded, 
 supported themselves by the shore. Through 
 the whole day the conflict raged furiously. 
 The Persians did ncrt surrender the mastery 
 of the world without a struggle worthy of a 
 better cause. Their overwhelming force of 
 ships and sailors gave them the advantage 
 even against the superior valor of the Greeks. 
 At nigthfall the Persians had lost most ships, 
 but the allied fleet had suffered so greatly 
 that it was deemed prudent not to continue 
 the fight. At this juncture, moreover, new& 
 arrived of the fall of Leonidas, and it was at 
 once resolved to withdraw from the Euboean 
 coast for the defense of Attica. So, during 
 the night after the battle, the fleet fell back 
 through the strait, doubled Cape Sunium, and 
 anchored at Salamis. 
 
 Notwithstanding the enormous losses which 
 had been inflicted on the Persians, they were 
 steadily bearing down for the accomplishment 
 of their object. Attica lay open to invasion 
 Tlie fatal folly of the Spartans iu neglectir.tt
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARH. 
 
 -49 
 
 to send their whole force to the north to stay 
 the Persian advance at Thermopyhe was now 
 bearing its disastrous fruit in the exposure of 
 Soutliern as well as Central Greece. Several 
 cities hitherto wavering now went over openly 
 to the enemy. Xerxes was only six days' 
 march from Athens. Theniistocles urged the 
 people to gather together their efiects and 
 abandon the city. The advice was accepted 
 with reluctance; but the Delphic oracle 
 added its voice to the persuasion of the 
 Athenian leaders. The Sacred Serpent kept 
 
 money. The Areopagus voted funds to re- 
 pair the fleet and to support the emigrant 
 population. 
 
 Ou his way down from Thessaly Xerxes 
 ravaged the country. Phocis was severely 
 punished for her refusal to submit. Her de- 
 serted towns were destroyed and her people 
 driven to the hills. The patriotic cities of 
 Thespite and Platiea were plundered and 
 burned. At Delphi occurred an extraordi- 
 nary episode. Apollo, by his oracle, forbade 
 the removal of the treasures of his temple. 
 
 DISCOMFITURE OF THE PERSIANS AT DELPHI. 
 
 in the temple of Athene Polia-s, on the Acrop- 
 olis, left the altar and escaped. So the terri- 
 fied people were induced to follow. Some 
 went to .,Egina, others to Tra?zen, many to 
 Salamis. 
 
 The Delphic oracle had said that a " wooden 
 wall" should protect the Athenians. Albeit, 
 a wooden wall might mean the fleet. So 
 the oracle was interpreted by Theniistocles. 
 Others said it meant the walls of Athens. 
 Not all of the po'iplo would leave their homes. 
 For once dissension ceased. On the proposi- 
 tion of Theniistocles all sentences of banish- 
 ment were revoked. Tlic ridi irave their 
 
 On came the Persians to lay sacrilegious hands 
 on the accumulated gifts of centuries of de- 
 votion. They began defiling through one of 
 the gorges at the foot of Mount Parnassus, 
 making their way towards the temple. Of a 
 sudden there were peals of thunder overhead. 
 Great crags were loosened from their places 
 and rolled down upon the terrified ranks of 
 the barbarians. The gods had espoused the 
 cause of the Greeks. Spectral warriors of 
 gigantic stature were seen hovering with re- 
 vengeful look in the rear of the terror-stricken 
 host as it turned to fly from its profane pur- 
 pose of phindcr.
 
 650 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 In Athens a few desperate persons seized 
 the Acropolis and determined to defend it. 
 When Xerxes reached the city he found the 
 stronghold surrounded by wooden walls, but 
 these he soon fired with burning arrows. The 
 hill was presently carried and its defenders 
 slaughtered. The temple and other buildings 
 situated there were sacked and burned. The 
 city was pillaged and given to the flames. 
 The Persian had remembered Athens ; but it 
 was noticed that in the space of two days the 
 sacred olive-tree on the Acropolis suddenly 
 thrust forth a green shoot a cubit in length. 
 Athene saw her city in ashes, but spoke by 
 the olive branch the promise that she should 
 arise from her despair and ruin. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Persian fleet, re-collecting 
 its energies after the dubious victory of Arte- 
 mesium, sailed into the bay. of Phalerum. 
 There were still more , than a thousand ships 
 spared from the vengeance of the sea and the 
 prowess of the Greeks. In opposition to this 
 immense squadron the allies could number 
 but three hundred and sixty-six vessels, of 
 which two hundred were Athenian galleys, 
 and the rest from the confederate states. As 
 soon as Xerxes reached the coast he inspected 
 his fleet and held a council of war. It was 
 determined to make an immediate attack 
 upon the Greek armament and at the same 
 time to send forward the laud forces towards 
 Peloponnesus. This decision was reached 
 with great unanimity by the Persian com- 
 manders, only Queen Artemesia, of Halicar- 
 nassus, opposing the views of the majority. 
 
 On the other side there were dissensions 
 among the Greeks. The Peloponnesian com- 
 manders were eager to abandon Salamis and 
 sail southward for the protection of their own 
 coasts; but Themistocles with great vehe- 
 mence urged the necessity of fighting where 
 they were. He showed the great importance 
 of giving battle in the narrow strait where 
 the superior numbers of the Persians would 
 give them but little advantage. Nevertheless, 
 the opposite opinion prevailed and it was 
 voted to retreat. 
 
 After the council Themistocles repaired to 
 the ship of Eurybiades, and succeeded in 
 winnmg him over to the idea of present 
 
 battle. The commanders were again called 
 together, and after some discussion were or- 
 dered by Eurybiades to prepare for action. 
 Later in the night, however, news arrived 
 from Sparta representing the distress of the 
 people on account of the absence of the fleet, 
 and begging for its return. The council was 
 a third time convened, but Themistocles had 
 now determined to accomplish by a stratagem 
 what he could not eflect by argument. He 
 despatched a trusted messenger to Xerxes, 
 and informed him that the Greek fleet was 
 about to sail, and advising the Persian to 
 divide his squadron, send one-half around the 
 island to the other extremity of the strait and 
 shut up the Greeks in their present predica- 
 ment. This advice was acted on by Xerxes ; 
 and before the adjournment of the council 
 Aristides, returning from his banishment, 
 reached Salamis, came into the assembly, and 
 informed the body that the Persian fleet now 
 occupied both ends of the strait, and that 
 they must fight or perish. The scheme of 
 Themistocles had succeeded. 
 
 With the morning Xerxes had a throne 
 erected on Mount ^galeos, opposite the bay' 
 of Salamis, and from this perch he would 
 view the battle. Necessity had now brought 
 the Greeks to their work, and with ardor they 
 prepared for battle. Themistocles was in his 
 glory. The Greek seamen were early at their 
 posts; nor were the Persians, now under the 
 eye of their king, slow in preparing for battle. 
 At the sound of the trumpet the allied fleet 
 moved forward to the attack. Just about to 
 engage the foe, however, they were seized 
 with alarm and fell back to the beach. But 
 then appeared above the ships a female 
 figure, perhaps the august Athene herself, 
 and waved them to the attack. The Athenian 
 vessels thereupon bravely made the onset, 
 followed by the rest, nor was there any fur- 
 ther wavering. All day long the fight con- 
 tinued. The Persian fleet became more and 
 more confused in the narrow waters, which 
 afibrded no room for evolutions. The shipa 
 were crowded upon each other and became 
 helpless. The attacks of the Greeks grew 
 constantly more audacious. The fate of their 
 country now depended on the blows which
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 561 
 
 they dealt upon the barbarians. Every ship 
 that went to the bottom brought a revival of 
 hope, a promise of freedom. As the sun sank 
 low, victory declared for the Greeks. Two 
 hundred of the Persian ships had been de- 
 stroyed. JIany more were captured. The 
 whole bay was covered with the wreck of 
 Asia. As the issue declared itself Xerxes, in 
 the extremity of terror and despair, rose and 
 fled. The residue of the fleet was scattered 
 to the winds. 
 
 The episode of the battle of Salamis oc- 
 
 landed on the island were attacked by a body 
 of heavy-armed soldiers led by ArLstides, and 
 were destroyed to a man. The victory was 
 complete, and the sun set on one of the most 
 glorious days in Grecian history.' 
 
 Xerxes, becoming concerned for his per- 
 sonal safety, quitted the country with all 
 haste. There was no need for such a flight; 
 for his army was but little reduced in num- 
 bers, and of his fleet there still remained a 
 siiuadron much larger than that of the Greeks; 
 but the king had enough of that peculiar 
 
 liATTI.K OK .-^AI.AMIS. 
 
 cured when Artemcsia, queen of Caria, who 
 had tried to dissuade the king from risking 
 all in the straits of Sal.imis, performed prodi- 
 gies of valor in the fight. " My men are 
 women to-day, and my women men," said 
 Xerxes, as he beheld her bravery. Finally, 
 turning to fly, she struck a galley commanded 
 by one of her own countrymen, an<l sent both 
 it and the crew to the bottom. The Greek 
 ■commanders, seeing the deed and believing it 
 to have been purposely done, allowed the 
 •queen to escape without pursuit. In the 
 
 meantime the Persian troops that had been 
 N— Vol. I— s.t 
 
 glory which came of battles with the Greeks, 
 and was eager to leave the land which his 
 father had been so anxious to remember. 
 Pressing forward as rapidly as he could 
 through Boeotia and Thessaly, he came, after 
 a march of forty-five days, to the Hellespont. 
 
 ' Lord Byron's praphic verso on the battle of 
 Saluniis sliould not I)e omitted : 
 
 "A king s.ite on the rocky brow 
 
 Which looks o'er sea-horn .Salamis; 
 And ships by thousands lay below. 
 
 And men in nations; all were his! 
 He counted them at break of day — 
 
 .And when tlie sun set where were they?
 
 652 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The guard which had accompanied him were 
 reduced by famine and disease. Here the 
 fleet had been ordered to congregate after the 
 defeat at Salamis. The king found his ships, 
 but the great bridge had been destroyed by 
 the storms. He and his forces were carried to 
 the opposite side, and were safe in Asia. 
 And in the company there were no Athenians 
 wearing fetters ! 
 
 As soon as the Greek commanders at Sala- 
 mis saw themselves victorious they began a 
 pursuit of the Persian fleet. This they kept 
 up as far as the island of Andros. The peo- 
 ple of many of the Cyclades had sided with 
 the Persians in the recent struggle, and were 
 now made to feel severely the folly of such a 
 course ; for Themistocles punished them with 
 little mercy for their defection from the na- 
 tional cause. From Andros onward the Persian 
 armament pursued its course without molesta- 
 tion to the Hellespont, where it received the 
 king and a remnant of his forces, and carried 
 them across to Asia. 
 
 Xerxes did not regard his flight from 
 Greece as an abandonment of the purposes 
 for which the expedition was undertaken. 
 Before determining his own course after the 
 battle of Salamis, he held a conference with 
 Mardonius, to whom he intrusted the com- 
 pletion of the conquest of Greece. For this 
 purpose three hundred thousand men were 
 left under his command. Mardonius flattered 
 his master with the assurance that the reverses 
 which he had suffered were but temporary 
 checks to the general progress of subjugation, 
 that one great oliject of the invasion — the de- 
 struction of Athens — had been accomplished, 
 that in the following spring he himself would 
 complete the work, and that Xerxes might 
 now retire from the country without dishonor. 
 This specious theory of the results of the in- 
 vasion had a soothing effect on the king, who 
 gladly left his son-in-law behind to finish or 
 be finished, and himself speedily returned to 
 the ease of his own capital. His throne in 
 the palace of Susa was an easier seat than 
 that which he had filled for a day on the 
 cliffy above Salamis! 
 
 "UTiile the battle of Salamis was fighting, 
 another conflict was raging between the 
 
 Greeks of Sicily and the Carthaginians, who 
 had invaded the island. The people of Sicily 
 were like the Greeks of Hellas, divided into 
 two parties. One of these favored the pre- 
 dominance of Carthaginian influence in the 
 island, while the other upheld the national 
 spirit, favoring independence. A certain 
 Terillus, governor of Himera, had been ex- 
 pelled by Theron, the despot of Agrigentum. 
 The deposed ruler and his adherents invited* 
 in the Carthaginians, who, in B. C. 480, 
 came three hundred thousand strong under 
 the lead of Hamilcar, and proceeded to be- 
 siege Himera. But Gelon, the governor of 
 Syracuse, came to the rescue of the city with 
 an army of fifty -five thousand troops, and 
 with this force — comparatively small as it 
 was — attacked and routed the Carthaginians 
 with a loss, if we may trust Diodorus, of one- 
 half of their army, Hamilcar being among- 
 the slain. The Carthaginian fleet was then 
 set on fire and consumed. The victory of 
 the Sicilian Greeks was, if possible, more com- 
 plete than that which their countrymen were- 
 at that hour winning in the bay of Salamis. 
 
 AVith the opening of spring the remnant 
 of the Persian fleet in the ^gean, numbering- 
 four hundred vessels, gathered at the island 
 of Samos. At this time the Grecian squadron 
 of one hundred and ten ships lay at .lEgina ; 
 but, notwithstanding the great disparity in 
 the numerical strength of the two armaments, 
 the Persians made no sign of a disposition to- 
 venture a battle. It was their business rather 
 to keep a watch on the Ionian cities, which, 
 were again showing signs of insurrection. 
 
 Jleanwhile, jSIardonius began his campaign 
 for the completion of the conquest of the 
 Greek states. His first measures were diplo- 
 matic. He consulted the oracles of Boeotia 
 and Phocis, and promulgated the idea of a 
 Perso-Athenian alliance against the Spartans. 
 Alexander, the then king of Macedonia, was 
 sent to the authorities of Athens with flatter- 
 ing overtures. Their city should be restored. 
 Their territory should be extended. The king 
 of Persia would become their friend. Sparta 
 should be humiliated. The first place should 
 be given to Athens. But the seductions of 
 the foe were all in vain. Alexander was dis»
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 553 
 
 missed with words to the effect that his per- 
 sonal safety would better be consulted before 
 he became the bearer of another such a mes- 
 sage to the Athenians. Sparta, however, was 
 anxious, and sent envoys to counteract the 
 dangerous temptations held out by the Per- 
 sians. To these messengers Athens replied that 
 all that was expected of Sparta was that she 
 should send an army into Attica to help pro- 
 tect the northern frontier against the coming 
 attack of Mardonius. The envoys promised, 
 then went home, and then, with their usual 
 perfidy, pleaded adverse omens as a reason for 
 non-fulfillment. 
 
 In May of B. C. 479 Mardonius again 
 advanced into Attica and occupied Athens. 
 The people of the city retired as before to 
 Salamis. From hence they sent a hurried 
 embassy to Sparta, imploring aid against the 
 common foe and intimating (what they 
 never intended) that circumstances might 
 compel them to accept the overtures of the 
 Persians. No answer was returned for the 
 space of ten days, and the Athenians were on 
 the edge of despair, when the aged Chileos in 
 the Spartan council reminded them that if an 
 alliance should be effected between the Athe- 
 nians and the Persians, the ships of the former 
 might easily bring the whole army of the lat- 
 ter into the heart of Peloponnesus. The 
 Spartans were thrown into the utmost alarm 
 by the suggestion, and a force of ten thousand 
 men, besides a still larger body of Perioeci 
 and Helots, was at once dispatched into Cen- 
 tral Greece. The command of this army was 
 given to Pausanias, the Spartan regent for 
 the son of Leonidas. 
 
 Mardonius, seeing that diplomacy was use- 
 less, destroyed what remained of Athens, and 
 retiring into Bceotia took his station near the 
 little town of Plat.ea. Here he laid off a 
 camp a mile and a-quarter square, and forti- 
 fied it with barricades. The Spartans, ad- 
 vancing by way of the isthmus, were reen- 
 forced by eight thousand Athenians, three 
 thousand Megarians, and six hundred Plata;- 
 ans. Tlie total force gathered for the battle 
 numbered thirty-eight thousand seven hun- 
 dred heavy-armed soldiers, seventy thousand 
 Helots and other troops of light armor, and 
 
 I one thousand eight hundred Thespians — 
 amounting to about one hundred aud ten 
 thouisand men. 
 
 Crossing the range of Cithseron, the Greeks 
 came in sight of their foe drawn up in order 
 of battle. Having no cavalry, Pausanias 
 occupied the rougher grounds and aimed to 
 draw the Persian from the position which 
 gave freedom to his horse. Mardonius or- 
 dered a charge against his antagonist, and the 
 same was bravely made. The Greeks suffered 
 not a little from the onset, but were success- 
 ful in killing Masistius, the commander of the 
 cavalry. They threw his body into a cart and 
 exhibited it along the lines. When the Persians 
 fell back from the onset, Pausanias descended 
 from the heights for a general battle on the 
 grounds chosen by the Persians. The right 
 wing, being the post of honor, was held by 
 the Spartans, and the left by the Athenians. 
 The little river Asopus lay between the two 
 armies. Mardonius, with the best of the 
 Medes and Persians, took his position in the 
 left wing, so as to face Pausanias and his 
 Lacedaemonians, the Persian right, numbering 
 fifty thousand men, being allotted to the 
 Greek allies of the enemy. Then there was 
 a pause. Destiny from one side of the river 
 glared in the face of Fate on the other. 
 
 Both armies were reluctant to begin the 
 contest. For eight days each maintained its po- 
 sition, fearing the awful hazard of the onset. 
 Finally, Mardonius succeeded in cutting off 
 the supply train of the Greeks, and captured 
 five hundred of their beasts of burden in de- 
 files of the Cithseron. He was then advised 
 to follow up this policy, and at the same time 
 to try the effect of bribes upon the leaders ef 
 the Greeks. But Mardonius rejected the ad- 
 vice and gave the orders for a general attack. 
 
 On the following night an incident oc- 
 curred highly illustrative of the spirit and 
 disposition of the age and people. Alexander 
 of Macedon stole out of the Persian camp in 
 the darkness, rode to the Greek outposts, 
 called for Aristides, and informed him of the 
 impending attack. As an excuse for his 
 treachery, he added: "I am myself a Greek 
 by descent, and with sorrow would I «ea 
 Hellas enslaved by these Persians."
 
 554 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Aristides at once informed the generals of 
 the Greeks of what might be expected on the 
 morrow, and preparations were made accord- 
 ingly for the coming battle. Still, with the 
 morning dawn, each army hesitated to make 
 the onset. Finally the Persian cavalry began 
 the fight, and succeeded in cutting off the 
 Greeks from the fountain of Gargaphia, 
 which supplied the camp with water. This 
 was the only important movement of the day. 
 
 With the coming of night Pausanias gave 
 orders for the Greeks to fall back a mile and a 
 
 soon as the front line of the Persians had ix 
 coiled from the shock, Pausanias gave the or- 
 der to charge. The fighting became at once 
 general and desperate. The Persians exhib- 
 ited unusual valor. They flung themselves 
 with reckless courage upon the spears of the 
 Spartans, only to be transfixed by the thou- 
 sand. The invincible Lacedseraonian phalanx 
 moved forward like an avalanche in its work 
 of destruction. It seemed a huge beast forti- 
 fied on every side with bristling quills, urging 
 its way now to the right and now to the left, 
 
 SPARTANS AT PLAT.5;A. 
 
 half to a position which he considered more 
 favorable for the battle. This change of po- 
 sition, however, was not accomplished without 
 «onsiderable confusion an;' dispute among the 
 officers of the allied army. On seeing the 
 Spartans in full retreat — a sight not often 
 witnessed by a Persian general — Mardonius 
 at once gave orders for pursuit. The Persians 
 dashed across the Asopus, ascended the hill 
 recently occupied by the Greeks, and fell 
 upon the Lacedjemonians, hastily but steadily 
 deployed into line of battle. The onset made 
 but little impression on the Greeks, and as 
 
 trampling in the bloody dust the mangled 
 bodies of the barbarians. Mardonius at- 
 tempted in vain to stay the battle. At 
 the head of his body-guard of a thousand 
 men, he fought with conspicuous bravery 
 until he was pierced with a Grecian dart and 
 fell dead from his charger. It was the signal 
 of the rout. 
 
 The Persians, immemorially accustomed 
 to attribute victory and defeat to their 
 leader, broke and fled beyond the Asopus. 
 So rapidly had the work of destruction been 
 accomplished by the allied army that a divi-
 
 GREECE.— THE PERSIAN WARS. 
 
 555 
 
 won of forty thousand Persians, commanded 
 by Artabazus, did not reach the field until 
 after the rout. More panic struck, however, 
 than his fellow-generals who had participated 
 in the battle, he broke away without deliver- 
 ing a blow, and fled in the direction of the 
 Hellespont. The allied Greeks, flushed with 
 victory, pursued the main body of the Per- 
 sians to their fortified camp beyond the Aso- 
 pus, stormed the barricades, and slaughtered 
 the disorganized barbarian host till the whole 
 area ran with blood. Rarely in the annals 
 of war had such a scene of carnage been wit- 
 nessed as the infuriated Greeks enacted in 
 this final arena of the great invasion. Such 
 was the fearful destruction that of the three 
 hundred thousand soldiers in the army of 
 Mardonius, only three thousand or four thou- 
 sand escaped with their lives. The sword of 
 Hellas had pierced the heart of Asiatic 
 pomp and the huge carcass of despotism was 
 stretched upon the plain of Platrea, never to 
 rise again. 
 
 Ten days were consumed in dividing the 
 spoils of the battle. The body of Mardonius 
 was decently buried by Pausanias. The 
 sword and silver-footed throne of the Persian 
 commander and the breast-plate of Masistius 
 were carried in triumph by the Athenians to 
 Athens and deposited among the trophies of 
 the Acropolis. Immense was the booty gath- 
 ered from the field and camp. Every thing 
 with which oriental lu.vury and magnificence 
 could decorate an army was strewn for miles 
 in the dust. Of this one jjortion was set aside 
 for the Delphic oracle ; another share went to 
 the temple of the Olympian Zeus ; and still 
 another to the Isthmian Poseidon. Pausaniixs 
 himself was largely rewarded from the wreck 
 of Asia, and the remaining enormous aggre- 
 gate of booty Wius divided among the allied 
 forces in proportion to their numbers. 
 
 Of all the Greek cities that had espoused 
 the cause of the Persians, the most conspicu- 
 ous in her treason to the national cause was 
 Thebes. In the recent battle the Theban 
 contingent had been posted by Mardonius op- 
 posite the Athenians, and had fought with 
 desperate valor. To punish them and their 
 city seemed to the allies to be the first duty 
 
 incumbent after the destruction of the Persian 
 army. Accordingly the Spartans proceeded 
 to ravage the Theban territory and besiege 
 the cit}'. A demand was made upon the 
 authorities that those leaders who had led the 
 people into the unnatural alliance with the 
 Persians should be given up for punishment. 
 When this was refused on the part of the 
 city, the leaders made a voluntary surrender 
 of themselves, expecting that a large ransom 
 would procure their relief. It was a fatal 
 mistake. For no sooner were they in the 
 power of Pausanias than they were sent to 
 Corinth and executed without trial. 
 
 On the same day of the battle of Platsea, 
 which completed the wreck of the Persian 
 army, the final destruction of the great fleet 
 was accomplished on the coast of Asia Minor. 
 After transferring across the Hellespont that 
 remnant of the Persian army which accom- 
 panied Xerxes on his homeward flight, what 
 remained of the Persian squadron from the 
 havoc of Artemesium and Salamis dropped 
 down the coast and anchored at the headland 
 of Mycale, near the city of Miletus. Thither 
 they were pursued b/ the Spartan leader 
 Leotychides; but before his arrival, the Per- 
 sians, rather than hazard another sea-fight 
 with the victorious Greeks, drew their remain- 
 ing ships ashore, surrounded them with a ram- 
 part, and placed for their defense an army of 
 sixty thousand Persians under command of 
 Tigranes. 
 
 The Greeks followed, came to anchor, made 
 a landing, and immediately joined battle. No 
 sooner were the first defenses of the Persians 
 carried by the impetuosity of the attack 
 than they turned and fled. They were hotly 
 pursued into the principal fortification, which 
 was soon carried by the assailants, though not 
 without some desperate fighting. As soon, 
 however, as the Spartan reserve came up 
 and the Ionian Greeks in the army of Ti- 
 granes mutinied in the ranks, the victory was 
 completed. Tigranes and Mardontes, the 
 other Persian general, were both killed; the 
 fleet was burned to ashes, and as the coast 
 wind scattered them along the shore and bay, 
 the last fragments of the greatest expedition 
 known in the annals of the ancient world
 
 556 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 were tossed into dust aud oblivion. The 
 dreams of him who three times daily at his 
 own command was reminded to remember the 
 Athenians, and the proud visions of his son, 
 cherished from the palace of Susa to the 
 
 Hellespont, aud from the Hellespont to Thes- 
 saly, had been so completely dissipated that 
 no ambitious imagination of Oriental king or 
 general ever durst again evoke them from 
 the shadows. 
 
 Cha-pxer xIvV.— The Athenian ascendency. 
 
 general of the Greeks 
 ever showed himself less 
 able than Pausanias to 
 liear success with equa- 
 nimity. After the battle 
 of riatsea, he began at 
 once to display his vanity, 
 his insolence, his disloyalty. He hired Si- 
 monides, the poet, to attribute the victory 
 solely to himself; aud a like piece of vain- 
 glory was manifested iu au inscription which 
 he caused to be placed on a tripod at the 
 shrine of Delphi. Still he remained in com- 
 mand of the Spartan army, and conducted a 
 successful eanipaigu against Byzantium. At 
 the capture of this place, several members of 
 the royal household fell into bis power. This 
 fact furnished him with an opportunity to 
 open negotiations with the Persian court, in- 
 volving his own perfidy and treason. He 
 sent privately to Xerxes the members of his 
 family, and at the same time gave it out to 
 his own countrymen that his high-born Persian 
 captives had escaped. Along with this princely 
 present to the Great King, he sent to him a 
 letter to the following effect : — 
 
 "Pausiinias, tlie ."Spartan commander, wish- 
 ing to oblige thee, sends back these prisoners 
 of war. I am minded, if it please thee, to 
 marry thy daughter and to bring Sparta and 
 the rest of Greece under thy dominion. This 
 I hold myself able to do with the help of thy 
 counsels. If, therefore, the project at all 
 pleases thee, send down some trustworthy man 
 to the coast through whom we may carry on 
 Dur future correspondence." 
 
 This letter, being so full of perfidy, was 
 of precisely the kind to delight a Persian 
 monarch — particularly Xerxes. He imme- 
 
 diately responded in a manner highly flatter- 
 ing to Pausanias. The princess was promised 
 to him in marriage ; lavish supplies of money 
 were sent forward, and he was urged to prose- 
 cute his plans as rapidly as possible, with the 
 assurance that the king of Persia would not 
 be slow in supplying all his needs. It was in 
 the nature of Pausanias to discount his pros- 
 pects. He began to realize on the possible 
 by assuming the dress and manners of a Per- 
 sian prince. His command of the fleet was 
 in that style of elaborate flummery peculiar 
 to eastern oflicers. This thing was from the 
 first exceedingly distasteful to the captains 
 and seamen of the allied fleet. The news 
 reached Sparta, and that sedate commonwealth, 
 shocked at the .shameless disloyalty of her 
 oflicer, immediately dispatched Dorcis to sujJer- 
 sede him. But before the arrival of the latter, 
 the captains of the fleet, disgusted with the 
 conduct of Pausanias, had themselves trans- 
 ferred the command from him to the Athe- 
 nians. 
 
 Such, however, was the strict subordination 
 of the Spartans to authority that the larger 
 part of their squadron accompanied the dis- 
 graced Pausanias on his return home. This 
 left Dorcis with so few ships at his disposal 
 that he could not resist the transfer of the 
 command to the fleet of Athens, which ever 
 since the battle of Salamis had given to that 
 city a preponderating reputation and influence 
 in the affairs of Greece. This circumstance 
 became the central fact in the Athenian Su- 
 premacy. The Ionian cities of Asia Minor 
 and most of the adjacent islands, inhabited as 
 they were by people of the same race with 
 the Athenians, were well pleased with this in- 
 crease of power on the part of their kinsmen
 
 GREECE.— THE ATHENIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 
 557 
 
 in Jiuropean Greece, for tliey saw in this fact 
 the possible — even the probable — deliverance 
 of themselves from the thralldom of Persia. 
 The leadership of Athens was therefore gladly 
 recognized by all the loniaus, and the senti- 
 ment spread until the islands of Rhodes, Cos, 
 Lesbos, and Teuydos, together with the Greek 
 towns on the Chalcidician peninsula, joined 
 in the league, by which was formed, under 
 the patronage of Athens and through the in- 
 fluence of Aristides, the Confederacy of 
 Delos. It was agreed that hei-eafter, iu the 
 interests of Greece, deputies from all the 
 states represented in the league should an- 
 nually assemble at the tenii)le of Apollo and 
 Artemis, in the island of Delos, to discuss 
 questions pertaining to the welfare of the con- 
 federation and the honor of the Greek name. 
 As soon as the league was formed the com- 
 mand of the allied ieet was transferred from 
 Aristides to Cimon. He immediately set out 
 on an expedition against the town of Eion, 
 on the river Strymon. This place was deliv- 
 ered from Persian rule, and in B. C. 470, the 
 island of Scyros was reduced by the fleet and 
 colonized with Athenians. This rapid growth 
 of the power of Athens was hailed by most 
 of the states of Greece as a reward fairly 
 earned by her heroic conduct iu the Persiau 
 wars. But to Sparta tliis splendid rise of her 
 rival from the ashes of despair was gall and 
 wormwood. She looked with a lack-luster 
 and jealous eye on the doings of the Coufed- 
 eracy of Delos and the extension of Athenian 
 reputation. Nor were the agencies by which 
 Athens at home, among the extinct cinders 
 of her recent overthrow, had again become 
 80 suddenly the pride of Central Greece, more 
 pleasing to the narrow-minded Lacedcemonians 
 who were more stung with the arrows of jeal- 
 ousy than by the darts of the enemy. For 
 this sudden development of reviving energy 
 was traceable most of all to the superhuman 
 energies of two Athenian statesmen, Themis- 
 tocles and Aristiiles. To the latter, as already 
 said, was due the formation of the Confeder- 
 acy of Delos, and to the I'driiier the growth 
 and extension of tiif nuuitiiin' power of the 
 state. 
 
 Meanwhile, the city so recently consume<l 
 
 by Persiau wrath was rapidly rebuilding. 
 The houseless fugitives came back from Troe- 
 zen, iEgina, and Salamis. The streets were 
 widened and extended. Ambition rose with 
 the occasion. Beauty was consulted ; and 
 also safety. For it was determined to sur- 
 round Athens with walls and fortifications 
 against which the waves of barbarism would 
 hereafter beat iu vain. These measures, so 
 natural and uecessary, greatly excited the 
 jealousy of the ^ginetans, and knowing the 
 disposition of Sparta, they sent to her an em- 
 bassy earnestly advising the Lacedremonians 
 to interfere and prevent the completion of 
 the works by which Athens would be ren- 
 dered independent alike of foreign and do- 
 mestic animosity. The Spartans would gladly 
 ■ have undertaken this work, but the crafty 
 Tliemistocles outwitted them iu negotiation 
 until what time the fortifications were so well 
 advanced as no longer to require concealment 
 or apology. Themistocles, thus freed from inter- 
 state difficulties, devoted himself assiduously 
 to the increase of the navy and development of 
 Athenian commerce. The harbor of Piraeus 
 was improved and surrounded with an im- 
 pregnable wall sixty feet in height. Every 
 exposed part of the peninsula was rendered 
 defensible, and Athens felt secure behind her 
 ramparts. 
 
 In this period of rapid recovery political 
 rancor iu a great measure subsided. Themia- 
 tocles and Aristides made common cause in 
 rehal)ilitatiug the state. The latter had so 
 for modified his opinions as to accept the 
 democratic tendencies of his countrymen as 
 natural and right. He himself Isrought for- 
 ward and secured the passage of a law by 
 which all restrictions were removed from the 
 Thetes or Fourth Estate, and themselves made 
 eligible to the highest oflices in the gift of 
 the state. 
 
 Thus at last the archonshij) and also mem- 
 bership iu the court of Areopagus were 
 opened to the humblest citizen of the com- 
 monwealth. Under the impulse of these pro- 
 gressive measures every enterprise of the 
 Athenians sprang forward with unwonted " 
 rapidity and success. The only drawback 
 upon the prosperity of the city and state was
 
 558 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 the spirit of party and the untrustworthiness elective officer. He put on pomp. He 
 of political leadersliip. These danjrers were 
 
 ^hiiiTiriiMT'" 
 
 boasted of what he had done for the state. 
 
 rnPTiEraiiri"! 
 
 epecially manifested in the case of Themisto- 
 cles. Coming to consider himself infallible, 
 he assumed a carriage unbecoming in an 
 
 He acquired luxurious habits ; and these had 
 to be supported by peculation and corruption 
 in office. When sent out with a squadron to
 
 GREECE.— THE ATHENIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 
 559 
 
 restore order among the Cyclades by putting 
 down certain irresponsible governors who had 
 usurped authority during the Persian wars, 
 he compounded with several of the petty 
 despots for money. 
 
 Meanwhile Cimon and Alcmseon had be- 
 come the leaders of what remained of the old 
 aristocratic party in Athens. They made no 
 concealment of their preference for the con- 
 stitution of Sparta over the too democratic 
 institutions of their own city. In this fact 
 was laid the foundation of a Lacedremonv'n 
 faction in the heart of Athens ; and it was 
 not long in making itself felt, to the injury of 
 the state. It will be remembered that Pau- 
 eanias had been deposed from the command 
 of the allied fleet at Byzantium on account 
 of his too manifest intrigues with the Per- 
 sians. The party of Cimon was now insti- 
 gated from Sparta to prefer the same charge 
 against Themistoclcs, and he was accordingly 
 accused of being in collusion with the court 
 of Susa. This charge, however, could not be 
 sustained, but the manners and conduct of 
 their leader had become so distasteful to tlu 
 Athenians that in a short time an appeal was 
 made to the ostracism and Themistocles was 
 banished. 
 
 He went first to Argos, where he re- 
 mained five years. Before the expiration of 
 that time, however, proofs were discovered of 
 his being implicated with Pausanias in a trea- 
 sonable correspondence with Persia. The 
 Spartan leader after his downfall had returned 
 to the service as a private, had then lived in 
 Asia Minor, had time and again been sus- 
 pected of disloyalty, had been recalled to 
 Sparta, but not brought to trial on account of 
 the trepidation of the Ephors in the presence 
 of the criminal. By and by Pausanias dis- 
 patched a slave to bear a letter to Asia; but 
 the slave remembering that his fellows who 
 had previously gone on such missions had 
 never returned, broke the seal and read how 
 he himself was to be killed as .soon as the 
 letter was delivered. He went in terror and 
 gave the missive to the Ephors. The latter 
 thus obtained convinciiiLr proofs of the guilt of 
 Pausanias, and were about to arrest him when 
 he fled to the temple of Poseidon. Not daring 
 
 to drag him from the altar they ordered mason» 
 to build up the doors, and in this work the mother 
 came and laid the first stone. When the 
 wall was built solid the roof was removed 
 and Pausanias was left to starve to death. 
 
 When in the agonies of death, however, his 
 body was carried out lest it should pollute the 
 altar. His correspondence was rifled and 
 letters were found showing that Themistocles 
 was also in the conspiracy to deliver Greece 
 to Persia. Sparta thereupon renewed her 
 demand that the great Athenian should be 
 brought to trial. When about to be arrested, 
 however, Themistocles fled, first to the court 
 of Admetus, king of the Molossians, thence 
 to Asia Minor, and thence to Artaxerxes at 
 Susa. Here he became a resident, in close 
 confidence of the Persian king. By him, 
 after a year, the Greek was sent to Magnesia 
 and given tlie revenues of that city for sup- 
 port — this with the understanding that the 
 plans now matured for delivering his country 
 to Artaxerxes should be carried out. But in 
 a short time Themistocles died, nor was the 
 suspicion wanting that he killed himself in a 
 fit of despair. Thus in utter disgrace per- 
 ished the heroes of Plataa and Salamis. 
 
 Aristides held out faithful to the end. He 
 died four years after the banishment of The- 
 mistocles, and such was his poverty that he 
 was buried at the public expense. Neverthe- 
 less he kept until the hour of his death his 
 hold upon the public confidence, and he was 
 at that time archon eponymos of the city. 
 His sterling virtues had served a better pur- 
 pose in the great issue of life than the bril- 
 liant talents of Themistocles or the military 
 genius of Miltiades. His reputation remained 
 untarnished to the last, and the historians of 
 his country have transmitted his spotless fame 
 to an admiring posterity. 
 
 By the death of the great leader, Cemon 
 was left in the lead of Athenian politics. 
 Although his antecedents placed him in the 
 ranks of the old oligarchical jiai'ty, his man- 
 ners, talents, and address rendered him popu- 
 lar with the masses. He was a citizen of un- 
 doubted patriotism, and exiieiided a good part 
 of his revenue in adorning the city. His own 
 house was a public resort, in which every
 
 560 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 thing was open and free, even to people of 
 the poorest class. He was, however, a soldier 
 rather than a statesman, and possessed but 
 little taste for literature and art. 
 
 During his leadership occurred the revolt 
 of Naxos against the Coufederacy of Delos. 
 In B. C. 466, this island renounced the com- 
 pact and took up arms, but the insurrection 
 was quickly suppressed by Cimon, and the Nax- 
 ians were obliged to resume their tributary re- 
 lations to Athens. Soon afterwards the allied 
 squadron sailed to the coast of Asia iNIiuor, 
 and gained at the mouth of the river Eury- 
 medon a great victory ov the fleet and 
 army of the Persians. Tl- s by means of 
 their naval superiority did ae Athenians es- 
 tablish on a still firmer foi ndation their su- 
 premacv over the members of t^ie confederacy'. 
 
 In the next year after the reduction of 
 Naxos, the government of Athens, then pursu- 
 ing a policy of colonization, was opposed in 
 making a settlement by the people of Thasos, 
 and this island was subjected to a blockade 
 and siege. Before the same was concluded, 
 the Thasians sent to Sparta and requested 
 that state to make a diversion in their favor 
 by an invasion of Attica. This proposition, 
 base as it was, was about to be accepted by 
 the Lacedaemonians when they were prevented 
 by a series of calamities which brought the 
 state to the lowest ebb of fortune. First 
 came a violent earthquake, which laid the 
 city in ruins and killed twenty thousand of 
 the inhabitants. Hard after this followed a 
 revolt of the Helots, who, believing that Po- 
 seidon had shaken down the stronghold of 
 their oppressors, rose with what weajions they 
 could gather and began to kill and burn. 
 They were joined by the Jlessenians, who, 
 through generations of hatred, awaited an 
 opportunity to be revenged. A\Tien the mot- 
 ley crew of insurrectionists were beaten back 
 from Laconia, thev shut themselves up in the 
 old fortress of Ithome and were besieged. 
 
 The Spartans, having little skill in taking 
 fortified towns, sent for the Athenians to help 
 Ihem, although at this very time they were 
 engaged with the Thasians in a perfidious 
 scheme to invade Attica. Athens responded 
 » the call, ?.nd sent down a large force to 
 
 aid in the reduction of Ithome ; but the Spar- 
 tans, unable to conceal their spleen, soon dis- 
 missed them with contempt and carried on 
 the siege alone. The troops had been sent 
 into Messenia through the influence of Cimon, 
 an avowed friend of the Spartans, and their 
 dismissal was so flagrant an insult as to break 
 down Cicion's party and put the conduct of 
 afiiiii-s into the hands of the democrats. The 
 latter were now under the leadership of a 
 young man, who, as a politician and states- 
 p'au, was destined soon to surpass all his pred- 
 jessors — Pericles, the orator and scholar. 
 
 In the Athenian government, as it was 
 now constituted, the venerable court of Areop- 
 agus was the last hold of the old oligarchical 
 party. Its right to exercise general super- 
 vision over the citizens as it respected their 
 manners and vocations was so exceedWgly un- 
 democratic as to be borne with extreme 
 impatience by the progressive ele uent in 
 Athenian politics. Even Aristides, strongly 
 conservative as he was, had consented, in 
 obedience to the popular demand, that the 
 membership of the court should no longer be 
 limited to the Eupatridse, or First Estate ; 
 but this concession was not enough, and 
 Pericles succeeded in striking at the founda- 
 tions of privilege by making the members of 
 the court to be chosen by lot. Other innova- 
 tions followed, until not only this august 
 body of ancient Greece, but also the Senate 
 of Five Hundred, was reduced to a mere 
 specter of its former self. Finally, the tables 
 of the laws of Solon were brought down from 
 the Acropolis and deposited in the market- 
 place, as if to .say that henceforth the powers 
 of the Athenian commonwealth were to be 
 exerci.sed directly by the people. 
 
 These measures — amounting to a revolu- 
 tion — were not accomplished but with an 
 excess of party strife. Ephialtes, the friend 
 of Pericles, by whose eff'orts the Solonian 
 tablets had been brought down to the market- 
 square, was assassinated. Cimon was ostra- 
 cized for ten years. The oligarchical party 
 went down in ruins, and the leadership of 
 Pericles was firmly established. 
 
 The new statesmen belonged to the school 
 of Themistocles. His policy looked to the
 
 GREECE.— THE ATHENIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 
 561 
 
 extension of ti i influence of Greece in Eu- 
 rope. Sparta and Spartan institutions he 
 held in undisguised contempt. To weaken by 
 every possible means the influence of the 
 Lacedremonians was one of his leading polit- 
 ical principles. Without hesitation he allied 
 himself freely with Argos and Megara, the 
 traditional enemies of Sparta. By these overt 
 acts the jealousy of Sparta was heated into 
 animosity soon to Inirst into the flames of war. 
 
 In the mean time the allied fleet, under the 
 lead of the Athenians, was successfully ex- 
 tending the dominion of Greece on the sea. 
 While cruising on the coast of Cyprus and 
 Phoenicia, the squadron was, in B. C. 460, 
 called upon by the revolt of Inarus to inter- 
 fere in the afiairs of Egyjit. The Greek 
 sailed up the Nile, and bore an active part in 
 the overthrow of Persian authority. For four 
 or five years they conducted a siege of the so- 
 called White Fortress, in which the Persians 
 had shut themselves up. With the coming of 
 Megabyzus and his army, the Athenians were 
 in turn besieged in the island of Prosopitis, 
 and were finally obliged to surrender. Con- 
 trary to the stipulated terms, the greater 
 number of the captives were put to death, 
 Inarus himself being crucified. The fleet was 
 mostly destroyed, and fifty additional ships 
 which arrivetl just after the surrender were 
 also captured and burnt. 
 
 During the occurrence of these events, the 
 inhal)itants of ^Tlgina, unable longer to re- 
 strain their jealousy, induced the Corinthians 
 and Epidaurians to join them, and gave battle 
 to an Athenian scpiadron near their own 
 island. It was the first act of actual hostility 
 between the Dorian and Ionian races in Eu- 
 ropean Greece. The Athenians were com- 
 pletely victorious, capturing seventy ships 
 from the .^ginetans, landing a large force on 
 the shore, and laying siege to their principal 
 city. Sparta meanwhile was unable to inter- 
 fere on behalf of her friends; for the Helots 
 were still in insurrection, and gave the Lace- 
 daemonians full occupation in their own coun- 
 try. So alarming, however, was the growth 
 of Athens, that even before the siege of 
 Ithome had been brought to a successful issue 
 the Spartan government ordered an army of 
 
 one thousand five hundred heavy-armed sol- 
 diers and ten thousand allies to march into 
 Doris, for the ostensible purpose of aiding that 
 state against the Phociaus, but with the real 
 object of checking the progress of Athens in 
 Central Greece. The true purpose, however, 
 was soon discovered, for the Sj^artaus, after 
 having settled to their satisfaction the affairs 
 of Doris and Bceotia, took up a menacing 
 position at Tanagra, on the very borders of 
 Attica. This was more than the Athenians 
 could tamely bear. They marched out with 
 such forces as they could rally for the occa- 
 sion, and fought a bloody battle with the 
 Spartans, in which, though the results were 
 indecisive, the latter had the advantage. They 
 next crossed over into Attica, and then pro- 
 ceeded homewards, ravaging as they went. 
 
 The general effect of this digressiou was 
 favorable to Athens. Party strife was hushed 
 in the presence of the common danger. Ci- 
 mon himself ou the eve of the recent battle 
 left the place of his banishment, repaired to 
 the Athenian army, and asked permission to 
 fight in the ranks with his countrymen. 
 When this was refused, he set up his armor 
 on the battlefield and exhorted his friends 
 to rally to it and strike home for Athens. 
 Such was the effect of this patriotic conduct 
 that a measure, recalling him from exile, 
 was at once proposed by Pericles and passed 
 by the assembly. 
 
 The concord which was thus introduced into 
 the stormy arena of Athenian politics was so 
 marked that the city bounded forward on a 
 new career of prosperity. Within two months 
 after the battle of Tanagra, the Athenians 
 again marched into Bceotia and met the army 
 of that state on the bloody field of CEno- 
 PHYTA. Here under the command of ]\Iyron- 
 ides, they gained a complete and over- 
 wlii'lmiiig victory. Thebes, the capital, and 
 all the other Boeotian towns were taken by the 
 Athenians. The oligarchical government, re- 
 cently established by the influence of the 
 Spartans, was overthrown, and democracies 
 instituted in their stead. The Athenian army 
 then marched through Phocis and Locris, 
 compelling them also to conform to the new 
 democratic refine, which was thus extended
 
 562 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 from the gulf of Corinth to the pass of 
 Thermopylae. 
 
 In the mean time Pericles had undertaken 
 and completed those celebrated works known 
 as the Long Walls, by which the two sea- 
 ports of Athens— Phalerum and Pirseus — were 
 joined with the city. One of these walls 
 was four miles and the other four and a-half 
 miles in length. They were built so thick 
 and high as to be impregnable to any ordi- 
 nary assault, and furnished an abundant pro- 
 tection to the commercial and foreign inter- 
 ests of Athens. The ascendency thus gained 
 by the city was so undisputed that, for a 
 number of years, not even the Spartans dared 
 to break the peace which the Athenians had 
 
 enforced in Cen- 
 tral Greece. A 
 five years' truce 
 was conclnded be- 
 tween them, dur- 
 ing which time 
 Cimon, in the 
 prosecution of his 
 cherished ambi- 
 tion against the 
 Persians, con- 
 ducted an expe- 
 dition to Cyprus 
 and laid siege to 
 the town of Cit- 
 ium. While this 
 was in progress 
 the great general 
 died and was suc- 
 ceeded by Anaxicrates, who abandoned the 
 siege, but soon afterward gained a decisive 
 victory over the combined fleets of Phoeni- 
 cians and Cilicians. 
 
 In a short time after these events a general 
 peace was made between the Persians and 
 the Greeks. It was agreed, half informally 
 aud half by actual stipulations, that the Per- 
 sian king would no longer tax or disturb, in 
 any wav, the Greek colonies on the coast of 
 Asia Minor; nor would he send any vessel 
 Oi war to the west of a line drawn from the 
 Thracian Bosphorus to Phasclis, in Lyeia. As 
 for the Athenians, they should refrain from 
 all turther aggression, and concede to the 
 
 PERICLES. 
 
 London, British Museum. 
 
 Persians the undisturbed possession of Cyprus 
 and Egypt. 
 
 By this time the sway of Athens had be- 
 come so complete, not only in European 
 Greece, but among the Cyclades, that the 
 Confederacy of Delos was virtually extin- 
 guished by her authority. Even the treasury 
 of the league had been quietly transferred 
 by the Atlieuians from Delos to their own 
 city. In Central Greece the states of Mega- 
 ris, Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris, and in Pelo- 
 ponnesus Trcezenia and Achaia had been 
 almost completely subordinated to Athenian 
 domination. It was virtually a Greek empire 
 under the leadership of Athens. The city 
 was now at the acme of her influence and 
 splendor. For a few years, at the middle of 
 the fifth century B. C, it may fairly be al- 
 lowed that, for intellectual greatness, archi- 
 tectural achievement, and aitistic fame Athens 
 far surpassed any city of the ancient, and per- 
 haj)s of the modern, world. It was, however, 
 politically speaking, a short-li-^ed glory. The 
 nature of the bonds which united Athens to 
 the dependent states were such as at any mo- 
 ment to be snapped asunder. 
 
 In B. C. 447, Boeotia threw off the Athe- 
 nian yoke and made herself independent. In 
 a futile attempt to suppress the insurrection, 
 Tolmides, with one thousand heavy-armed 
 soldiers — a force entirely inadequate to such 
 an enterprise — was dbastrously defeated and 
 himself slain. Then followed in quick suc- 
 cession similar revolts in Phocis, Locris, Eu- 
 boea, and Megaris. Then came the Spartans, 
 headed by the king, Pleistoanax, and entered 
 the Attic territory. Nor is it certain that 
 Athens herself would not then have fallen 
 into the power of the Lacediemonians but for 
 the means employed by Pericles, who is said 
 to have bribed the invaders to withdraw from 
 the country. To compensate for these losses, 
 the Athenian leader had nothing to boast ex- 
 cept the reconquest of Euboea. Such had 
 been the collapse of Athenian pretensions 
 that, in B. C. 445, Pericles was glad to enter 
 into a truce of thuty years with Sparta, by the 
 terms of which the Athenians agreed to aban- 
 don all conquests except in the Gulf of Corinth, 
 and to leave the other states to their freedom.
 
 GREECE.— THE ATHENIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 
 565 
 
 These disasters of Athens, bringing with 
 them a decline in the influence of Pericles, 
 gave opportunity in the city for the revival 
 of the party of the oligarchy. This was ef- 
 fected under the leadership of TrrucYDiDES, a 
 man of distinguished abilities, but not of such 
 commanding genius as to be a fit oj)poueut 
 for Pericles. It was the circumstances rather 
 than the preeminent talents of the leader that 
 made him the competitor of the great demo- 
 crat. Nor were the methods which he and 
 his adherents adopted better calculated to win 
 the favor of the 
 Athenian populace. 
 After beating in vain 
 for a season against 
 the democratic ma- 
 jority, Thucydides 
 was relieved of the 
 cares of party leader- 
 ship by being ostra- 
 cized. His party was 
 broken up by hi- 
 downfall, ami Peri- 
 cles, during the rest 
 of his life, remainoil 
 the undisputed leader 
 of Athenian politics. 
 
 With the over- 
 throw of the party 
 of the aristocracy, 
 Athens, as a city, 
 was raised to the 
 highest pitch of 
 glory. A\niatever art 
 
 and letters and refinement could do to gild 
 the splendid capital was liestowed without 
 Btint. Now it was that the Acropolls was 
 crowned with the magnificent Parthenon, de- 
 signed by Callicrates and Ictinus and adorned 
 by Phidias. On the summit was reared the 
 ivory statue of Athene I'romachos, forty -seven 
 feet in height, looking serenely towards the 
 sea. Now, at the foot of the hill, was built 
 the great Odecm for the musical and dramati- 
 cal entertainment of the people. Now, on 
 the western side of the Acropolis, were con- 
 Btructtd the PROPVLiEA, or entrances to the 
 temple, second only in magnificence to the 
 Parthenon itself. Nor were the useful works 
 
 of the city neglected. A third wall was ex- 
 tended to the Pirasus. The harbors and docks 
 of Attica were improved and beautified, and 
 the public markets greatly enlarged. The 
 expense of these works is said to have ex- 
 ceeded $3,500,000. It was at this time that 
 the dominion of Greek thought — of philoso- 
 phy, of oratory, of art — was established on a 
 basis which has not been materially shaken by 
 the revolutions of twenty-two centuries, and 
 which seems destined to be everlasting. 
 
 A second part of the policy of Pericles 
 
 THE ACROPOLIS, RESTORED. 
 
 was the extension of the Athenian race by 
 colonization. It was not the theory of Athens 
 that companies of stragglers and vagabonds 
 should repr&sent her on foreign coasts, but 
 rather that bands of reputable citizens, well 
 organized and well supplied, should go abroad 
 and establish Greek civilbation in its integ- 
 rity. At one time during the administration 
 of Pericles, a company of a thousand Athe- 
 nians settled in the Thracian Chersonesus; 
 another band of five hundred in Naxos, and 
 a third of two hundred and fifty in Andros. 
 A still larger colony was established at Thurii, 
 near the site of ancient Sybaris, in Southern 
 Italy. Among those who joined this com-
 
 566 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 pany were the orator Lysias and the historian 
 Herodotus. In B. C. 437, another settlement 
 of equal importance was made at Aniphipolis, 
 on the river Strymon, in JVIacedonia — a de- 
 pendency which afterwards played a conspicu- 
 ous part in Greek history. 
 
 A more liberal and less ambitious policy 
 on the part of Pericles might have postponed 
 or possibly averted the coming disasters of his 
 country. But, in his eagerness to make 
 Athens glorious, there was but little thought 
 given to justice and equity of administration. 
 Especially was this manifested in the exorbi- 
 tant tribute which was collected from the 
 Athenian dependencies. The members of the 
 Confederacy of Delos were taxed to the ex- 
 tent of six hundred talents annually, and this 
 too when the occasion for which the tribute 
 was originally levied had entirely passed 
 away. The peace with the Persians made 
 such an imposition no longer necessary as a 
 measure of defense; but the ambition of 
 Pericles still exacted it as a measure of luxury. 
 
 At this time the only members of the Con- 
 federacy which retained their freedom and 
 continued to consult with the Athenians on 
 
 terms of comparative equality, were Samoa, 
 Lesbos, and Chios. The first of these islands 
 became embroiled with the Milesians, and the 
 latter appeak 1 1 o Athens for a settlement of 
 the difficulty. The Samian government was 
 still under the control of an oligarchy, and 
 this furnished Pericles with a good excuse for 
 interference. In B. C. 440 an expedition 
 was sent to reduce the Samians by force. A 
 democracy was established in the island, and 
 many leading Samians were sent to Lemnoa 
 as hostages. This state of things, however, 
 was soon undone by a counter revolution 
 backed by the satrap of Sardis; but the Athe- 
 nians returned, put down the revolt, and re- 
 established their own style of government over 
 the Samians. The latter were obliged to pay 
 the expenses of the war, amounting to a 
 thousand talents, and to give hostages for the 
 maintenance of the peace. 
 
 Such was the condition of afiairs in B. C. 
 435, when a petty quarrel between Corinth 
 and her dependency Corcyra applied the spark 
 to the long smouldering animosities and jeal- 
 ousies of the Greeks, and set their country in. 
 the flames of civil war. 
 
 Chaf^ter xlvi.— the peloponnesiaim wars. 
 
 ARLY in her history the 
 city of Corinth had es- 
 tablished, on the island 
 of that name, the colony 
 "f Corcyra. Afterwards 
 Corcyra sent out a colony 
 and founded Epidamnus 
 on the coast of Eplrus. The latter, however, 
 as well as the former, regarded Corinth as her 
 mother city. The Epidamnians, like the 
 other Greek states, expelled the oligarchical 
 party, and the latter brought in the Illyrians 
 to restore them. The authorities appealed to 
 Corcyra for aid, which was refused ; for the 
 Corcyraeans sympathized with the oligarchs. 
 The Epidamnians then applied to Corinth. 
 The latter sent out an expedition, and the 
 democracy in E}>idamnus was sustained. But 
 
 the authorities of Corcyra resented the inter- 
 ference, sent a squadron, blockaded the town, 
 and restored the oligarchs. The Corcyrseans 
 then tried to persuade the Corinthians to refer 
 the matter to arbitration, but the latter sent 
 a still larger fleet to the western coast, and 
 this was defeated and destroyed by the Cor- 
 cyrsean squadron at Actium. This left th» 
 Epidamnians at the mercy of the oligarchical 
 party. 
 
 The Corinthians immediately went to work 
 rebuilding their fleet. Within two years they^ 
 had gathered with their own exertions and 
 from their allies a squadron of one hundred 
 and fifty ships. The Corcyrseans, seeing these 
 preparations and remembering that Corinth 
 was a member of the Lacedaemonian league, 
 applied to Athens for support. The Athenian.
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 567 
 
 assembly, after hearing the ambassadors, re- 
 solved upon a defensive alliance with Coreyra, 
 and agreed to defend the island in case of in- 
 vasion. To this end a fleet of ten sail, under 
 command of Laceda^mouius, was sent to the 
 Corcyrteans. In the mean time the Corinthian 
 fleet arrired, and a hard battle was fought, in 
 which the Corcyra'ans were defeated. But, 
 as the Corinthians were preparing to jiress 
 their advantage on the morrow, a new contin- 
 gent of twenty vessels hove in sight from 
 Athens. The Corinthian captain, believing 
 this to be but a detachment of a larger fleet, 
 at once stood away and sailed for home. 
 
 In this condition of attiiirs Perdiceas, king 
 of Macedonia, appeared on the scene. Hav- 
 ing certain grievances against the Atlienians, 
 he sought revenge by instigating the inhabi- 
 tants of Potidsea, a dependency of Athens 
 occupying the neck of the peninsula of Pal- 
 lene, to revolt against the mother city. At 
 the same time he urged the Spartans, as the 
 head of the Laced.-emonian league, to make 
 an invasion of Attica. Hereupon the Ephors 
 called a meeting of the Peloponnesian states. 
 The dissatisfied delegates addressed the as- 
 sembly, and all were loud in their denuncia- 
 tions of the Athenians. An agent of Athens 
 then resident in Sparta spoke in favor of his 
 country, but the adverse opinion prevailed, 
 and near the close of B. C. 432 war was re- 
 solved upon by the Peloponnesian league 
 against the Athenians. 
 
 Sparta did not, however, proceed to imme- 
 diate hostility. AVith her usual cunning she 
 undertook, first of all, to secure the over- 
 throw of Pericles. The opponents of this 
 statesman were instigated to attack him. He 
 was charged with peculations. His friend, the 
 philosopher Anaxagoras, was persecuted for 
 opinion's sake. He was not orthodox on the 
 subject of the gods. With him was involved 
 AsPASiA, that paragon of beauty and genius, 
 who for years had shared the counsols and 
 affections of Pericles. The philo.'iophe'- fled, 
 but Aspasia was tried. The haughty Pericles, 
 who for a generation had stood unmoved in 
 every storm, wept as he pleaded her cause 
 before the court. She was acquitted ; but 
 the enemies of the statesman next turned 
 
 upon Phidias, and he was prosecuted on the 
 charge of having appropriated the gold which 
 had been voted for the Acropolitan statue of 
 Athene. The great sculptor died in prison 
 before the day of trial. 
 
 None the less, the party of Pericles stood 
 firm, and he retained his grip on the rudder 
 of the state. The Spartans continued to prod 
 him with demands, and finally sent an ulti- 
 matum to the eflfect that if the Athenians 
 would avoid war they should at once liberate 
 all of their dejiendent states. The assembly 
 replied that Athens did not desire war, that 
 she would give satisfaction for her .seeming 
 violation of the Thirty Years' truce, but as 
 for the rest she would resist force with force. 
 
 Actual hostilities were begun by the The- 
 bans who, in the interest of the Peloponne- 
 sian league, fell upon Platrea by night. The 
 band, however, that thus unexpectedly to the 
 Platffians gained possession of their city was 
 soon overwhelmed, and before daybreak all 
 but one hundred and eighty were killed and 
 the rest made prisoners. When the main 
 army of Thebes came up it was induced to 
 retire with the promise that the prisoners 
 should be given up, but the Plata?ans took 
 advantage of the lull, gathered in their 
 friends and proj)erty from the surrounding 
 districts, and then killed the prisoners to the 
 last man. This perfidious and desperate deed, 
 though done against a band of guerrillas, set 
 the states on fire. Pas.sion spread like a con- 
 flagration. The pent-up jealousy of forty cit- 
 ies, each with its long-smothered grievance, 
 burst forth against the Athenian common- 
 wealth as the common cause of all the ills 
 that Greek flesh had inherited. Delos was 
 rocked with an earthquake. Crazy sooth- 
 sayers harangued crowds of the superstitious. 
 The oracles lifted up their ambiguous voice 
 and uttered two-tongued promises and impreca- 
 tions. The blood was hot. Neutrality was 
 hardly thought of. Every Peloponnesian 
 state, except Argos and Achaia, ranged itself 
 with Sparta ; and in Central Greece Megaris. 
 Bfeotia, Phocis, and East Locris, besides thfe 
 tribes of Leucadia and Anactoria, all gath- 
 ered under the Lacedaemonian banners. One 
 might think, from the sudden aud iiuiversal
 
 568 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 explosion of animosity, that the Greek race 
 had become more wearied with hearing Athens 
 called the Great than the Athenians themselves 
 had been tired of hearing Aristides called the 
 Jitst: and in either case there was equal rea- 
 son — or the want of it. The continental 
 allies of Athens were Thessaly, Platsea, Acar- 
 oania, and a part of Messenia about Naupac- 
 tus. Her insular support embraced Chios, 
 Lesbos, Corcyra, Cephallenia, and Zacynthus. 
 In those resources which are said to constitute 
 the sinews of war the Athenians had great 
 strength. In the treasury of the Acropolis 
 was deposited a sum equal to seven millions 
 of dollars. The annual revenue of the state 
 was very great, and the riches of the various 
 temples and shrines — not, of course, to be 
 rashly touched by the hand of war — gave an- 
 other immense aggregate. The fleet consisted 
 of three hundred vessels ; the standing army 
 of thirty-one thousand eight hundred men. 
 The forces of the league were superior in foot 
 soldiers, being about sixty thousand strong, 
 but greatly inferior in the matter of a fleet. 
 This defect the Spartans hoped to supply by 
 the help of the Corinthians and the Dorian 
 colonies of Italy, or in case of need to call 
 upon their friends, the Persians. 
 
 The army of the confederation assembled 
 At the isthmus of Corinth undei .command of 
 Archidamus, the Spartan king. From this 
 point the expedition begap against Attica. 
 By midsummer of B. C 431 the march had 
 proceeded to the Thriasian plain, near Eleu- 
 sis. By the orders of Pericles the country 
 was abandoned. The population withdrew 
 within the walls of Athens, and the city was 
 filled to overflowing. Archidamus was disap- 
 pointed in his hope of bringing on a gen- 
 eral battle. The cooped-up people clamored 
 greatly at the policy adopted, and the Athe- 
 nian cavalry was sent out to harass the en- 
 «my. From the Thriasian plain the Spartans 
 next moved to Acharnie, and continued their 
 ravages. To appease the people as well as to 
 punish the enemv Pericles sent a fleet of one 
 hundred and fifty ships to fall upon the coast 
 of Peloponnesus. The Corinthian settlement 
 of SoUium, the town of Astacus, and the island 
 of Cephallonia which, until now, had held a 
 
 dubious attitude in the conquest, were taken 
 by the squadron. The Locrian towns of 
 Throuium and Alope were also captured by 
 another detachment of the Athenian fleet, 
 and the an ti- Athenian party in ^gina waa 
 suppressed and di'iven out of the island. The 
 eflect of these bold diversions was such that 
 late in the simimer Archidamus evacuated 
 the country, and his army was presently dis- 
 banded. As soon as this movement wa^ 
 known in Athens, Pericles marched out with 
 thirteen thousand heavy armed soldiers, in- 
 vaded Megaris, and ravaged the country as 
 furiously as the Lacedsemonians had wasted 
 Attica. 
 
 It was now evident that the war was des- 
 tined to be of long duration. The Athenians 
 accordingly made every preparation to main- 
 tain their cause. In accordance with a reso- 
 lution of the assembly, one thousand talenta 
 were sacredly set apart for the service of the 
 city in case she should be attacked by sea ; 
 and it was further resolved that each year a 
 hundred galleys should be retained for th# 
 protection of the city. 
 
 In the beginning of the second campaign, 
 B. C. 430, Archidamus again invaded Attica. 
 At this juncture a foe appeared within the 
 walls of Athens far more more dreadful than 
 the enemy without. A dreadful pestilence 
 attacked the people, with which they began 
 to sicken and die by hundreds. It was a 
 form of pestilence hitherto unknown in the 
 city. The Greek physicians could in no wise 
 stay its progress. Terror seized the public 
 mind. Some ascribed the plague to the 
 wrath of Apollo. Others said that the Spar- 
 tans had poisoned the wells. The supersti- 
 tious mountebank, who in every age of the 
 world has afflicted human society with his 
 pestilential presence, came out from his place 
 and abetted the disease by playing upon the 
 fears of the people. The malady attacked 
 the mind as well as the body. A gloomy and 
 despondent spirit foreran the approach of the 
 pestilence. Athens was a universal funeral. 
 Hundreds lay unburied. The air reeked with 
 the stench of corpses. One fourth of the 
 population died. The Lacedcemonian without 
 and Death within stretched a pall over At-
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPOXXESIAN WARS. 
 
 569 
 
 tica. The mutteriugs of tlespair joined their 
 volume with tlie howl of tliscontcut, and a 
 spirit less resolute than Pericles would have 
 succumbed to the clamor. But he stood like 
 a statue. To distract the public mind from 
 its grief, and to empty the stricken city of a 
 part of its population, he fitted up a squadron 
 at Pirajus, took command himself, sailed to 
 Peloponnesus, and began to mete to the towns 
 of the league the same vengeance which tliey 
 had measured to him. But, notwithstanding 
 his herculean efforts, sedition broke out in 
 the city. Cleon, his political adversaiy, took 
 advantage of his absence, and preferred 
 against him the cliarge of peculation. Peri- 
 cles was condemned to pay a fine ; and for 
 awhile it seemed that, at last, the influence 
 of the great leader over the minds of his 
 countrymen was broken. 
 
 But public opinion soon reacted ; he was 
 again cho.sen general of the army, and (piickly 
 regained his ascendency. The drama of his 
 life, however, was now neariug llie final scene. 
 The members of his family were struck down 
 by the plague. He himself survived an attack 
 of the epidemic ; but a low fever supervened, 
 the forces of nature failed, and Pericles lay 
 dying. In the last hours he said to those 
 wiu) were recalling the exploits of his brilliant 
 career: "What you praise in me is partly 
 the result of good fortune, or is, at all events, 
 common to me with many other commanders. 
 What I chiefly pride myself upon, you have 
 not noticed: on my account no Athenian 
 ever wore mourning." 
 
 Meanwhile the Lacedsemonians continued 
 to ravage Attica. In a campaign of forty 
 days' duration they carried their devastations 
 into all parts of the peninsida. During the 
 year also the allied fleet seized the island of 
 Zacynthus, but was not able to retain it. The 
 fisheries and > nicrce of the Athenians suf- 
 fered not a little from the attacks of Spartan 
 and Corinthian buccaneers, whose ])lan of 
 battle was to fight, filch, and flee. 'I'lie pris- 
 oners taken by tliese pirates were generally 
 put to death without mercy. It was not long, 
 however, until the Athenians found opportu- 
 nity to apply the lei tallmm. A comjiany of 
 
 bpartan envoys, on their way to the court of 
 N. — Vol. I — ys, 
 
 Persia, paused en route to seduce Sitalces, king 
 of Thrace, from his allegiance to the Athe- 
 nians. But the seduction extended only so 
 far as this — that they were themselves arrested 
 and sent to the authorities of Athens, by 
 whom they were killed as so many dogs. 
 Among those who thus perished was Aristeus, 
 one of the ablest generals of the league. 
 
 In the mean time the siege of Potidsea was 
 at last brought to a successful issue. The 
 resistance had been long and obstinate. The 
 Potidseans defended their town with desperate 
 valor, and when at last reduced by famine to 
 the verge of despair, they ate the bodies of 
 their dead sooner than surrender. Only when 
 honorable terms were offered did they finally 
 succumb to necessity and capitulate to the 
 besiegers. The town was then destroyed and 
 the territory occupied by a colony sent out 
 from Athens. 
 
 The third year of the war opened with the 
 siege of Platasa by the Spartans. The latter 
 had now grown weary of ravaging Attica, 
 and determined to strike a decisive blow by 
 overwhelming the city by whose act the con- 
 flict had been kindled. On their approach 
 the Platseans sent out an embassy solemnly 
 protesting against the invasion on the grounds 
 of the oath of Pausanias, who, after the over- 
 throw of the Persians, had publicly vowed to 
 Zeus Eleutherius that henceforth the freedom 
 and independence of Plata3a would ever be 
 regarded and upheld by the Spartans. But 
 the oath of the dead was not likely to prevail 
 with a race whose notion of faith was to break 
 it whenever it promised advantage to do so. 
 
 Tlie Platseans were summoned to surrender. 
 When this was refused Archidamus proposed 
 that the inhabitants of the city should go 
 whithersoever tliev pleased, that the LacedsB- 
 monians would till the country until the war 
 was ended and then restore it to the original 
 owners. But on referring the question to the 
 Athenians the latter advised tlie Plataians to 
 hold out against the invaders, and the pro- 
 posal was accordingly declined. 
 
 The siege at once began. The town con- 
 tained less than six hundred people, and yet 
 this handful defied the army of the league 
 and determined to defend themselves to the
 
 570 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 last. Archidamus begau to build a mound 
 outside of the wall, from the summit of which 
 his soldiers might surmount the barricade. 
 But the Platseans built a second wall inside 
 of the first, and at the same time undermined 
 the mound which was thrown up outside. 
 After three mouths of vain endeavor the 
 Lacedremonians were obliged to adopt the 
 policy of a mere blockade, which should of 
 necessity reduce the garrison by starvation. 
 For two years the Platfeans held out, and 
 then when their provisions were nearly ex- 
 hausted, two hundred and twelve of their 
 number, choosing a dark December night, 
 Bcaled the ramparts which the Spartans had 
 built around the town, and escaped. The 
 remainder still defended themselves, but were 
 at last compelled by sheer famine to capitu- 
 late. There remained of the garrison two 
 hundred Platseaiis and twenty-five Athenians. 
 
 As soon as all were surrendered they were 
 brought to trial. Each one was led before 
 the Spartan judges and asked the question 
 whether during the present war he had ren- 
 dered any assistance to the Lacedmmmiim'is or 
 their allies f The question was, of course, not 
 even a decent mockery, and was necessarily 
 answered in the negative. Thereupon with- 
 out further ceremony every man of the num- 
 ber was led off and executed. The town of 
 Platrea was leveled to the earth and the ter- 
 ritory given to the Thebans. 
 
 During this third year of the war, Sitalces, 
 king of Thrace, acting on the suggestion of 
 the Athenians, invaded the dominions of 
 Perdiccas of Macedon; but the expedition 
 was undertaken at so late a season that its 
 serious consequence was to drive the Macedo- 
 nians to take refuge in their towns until the 
 Tracians were withdrawn. About the same 
 time, the Spartans, using Corinth as a base 
 of operations, prepared a fleet of forty-seven 
 vessels, and proceeded to make an expedition 
 against Acarnania. At this time a small 
 Athenian squadron of twenty sail, under 
 command of Phormio, lay at Naupactus. 
 Notwithstanding the disparity of the fleets, 
 the Athenian captain attacked the Peloponne- 
 eian armament, and gained a decisive victory. 
 The Lacedsemonians, enraged at this result, 
 
 prepared a new fleet of seventy-seven vessels 
 and again started to cross the gulf; but 
 nothing daunted, Phormio a second time gave 
 battle, and if not positively victorious, so 
 crippled the enemy's squadron that the expe- 
 dition had to be abandoned. As a slight 
 compensation for these disasters, the Spartans 
 succeeded in surprising Salamis by night and 
 ravaging a good part of the island before the 
 Athenians could rally and drive them off". 
 
 From this time forth for several seasons 
 the annual invasion of Attica occurred, with 
 its monotonous repetition of pillage and de- 
 struction. 
 
 What with these perpetual devastations, 
 pnd what with the wasting plague, Athens was 
 becoming exhausted; but her spirit rose with 
 the occasion. New levies were made for the 
 fleet from the upper classes of society. An 
 income tax was laid upon the people, by 
 which two hundred talents were to be annu- 
 ally added to the treasury. The Lacedtemo- 
 nians were surprised by the appearance of 
 two new squadrons at a time when they were 
 imagining the maritime strength of the Athe- 
 nians to be nearly extinct. It was fortunate 
 for the latter that they were thus able to re- 
 cuperate, for the fourth year of the war 
 brought them a serious trial in the revolt of 
 Mitylene. An armament was, however, im- 
 mediately sent against the rebellious island, 
 and the ^lityleneans were subjected to a rigor- 
 ous blockade. Assistance w'as promised by 
 the Spartan government, and a squadron was 
 sent out under Alcidas, but before he arrived 
 off" Lesbos the Athenians had compelled the 
 place to capitulate. 
 
 During the debates in the Athenian as- 
 sembly as to what disposition should be made 
 of the prisoners, the demagogue Cleon, already 
 mentioned as a would-be rival of Pericles, 
 appeared as a leader. He had been a leather- 
 seller,' and had every quality of mind and 
 character requisite in a rabble-rouser. In the 
 present instance he proposed in the very face 
 of the terms granted by Paches, the Athe- 
 nian commander before Mitylene, that not 
 only the prisoners now in the power of the 
 authorities, but also the whole adult male 
 
 ' See the satire of Aris'ophanes, mpra, p. 4tf-».
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 571 
 
 population of the captured city, shmdd be put 
 to death ! Aud tlie resolution was carried. A 
 trireme was immediately dispatched to Lesbos 
 to order the execution of the edict. The mad 
 democratic mob that had ordered this butchery 
 then slept and woke up sober. The atrocity 
 of the thing staggered the city, and on the 
 morrow a new meeting was called to recon- 
 sider. After an acrimonious debate, a revo- 
 cation of the previous order was carried by a 
 bare majority. A second trireme, now twenty- 
 four hours behind the other, was at once sent 
 away to stay the execution of the Mityle- 
 neans. The galley reached Lesbos just in 
 time. The former order was already in the 
 hands of Paches, and he was preparing to 
 carry it into effect when the panting oarsmen 
 of the second boat reached the shore. The 
 merciful edict of the assembly, however, ex- 
 tended only to the citizens of Mitylene, and 
 not to the prisoners who had been taken in 
 tlie siege and sent to Athens. These, to the 
 number of more than a thousand, were led 
 out and put to death. 
 
 The Mitylenean atrocity was excused by 
 the Athenians on the ground that it was a 
 measure of just retaliation for the massacre of 
 the Platieans by the Lacedsemouians. It was 
 not long till another scene of still more fearful 
 cruelty was enacted in Corcyra. For some 
 time there had been in that island a bitter 
 struggle between the oligarchical faction sup- 
 ported by Sparta and the democratical party 
 backed by Athens. After much mutual vio- 
 lence and several counter revolutions, the oli- 
 garchs were, by the arrival of an Athenian 
 fleet, completely overthrown. The popular 
 vengeance broke forth furiou.sly against them. 
 They were pursued into their hiding places. 
 They were dragged from the temple-altars and 
 butchered without a sign of mercy or com- 
 punction. For seven days the horrible 
 massacre continued, and then ceased only 
 because there were no more to murder. 
 
 In the next epoch of the war the plague 
 reiippcarcd in Athens, and Peloponnesus was 
 again shaken by an earthquake. The Athe- 
 nians, attributing their woes to the anger of 
 Apollo, ordered a purification of the island of 
 Delos, provided that ro more births or deaths 
 
 should occur in that sacred seat, and insti- 
 tuted a festival in honor of the olfended god. 
 In the seventh year's invasion of Attica by 
 the Spartan general Agis, the devastation wa? 
 suddenly brought to an end by the news that 
 the Athenians, under the lead of Demosthenes, 
 had succeeded in establishing a military sta- 
 tion at Pylus, in Messenia, thus menacing tho 
 peace of all Western Peloponnesus. Agis 
 was recalled and ordered to dislodge Demos- 
 thenes from his foothold in Messenia. The 
 latter, with a small force of about one thou- 
 sand men, built fortifications and awaited the 
 onset. A Spartan fleet, commanded by Brasi- 
 das, arrived in the bay and made an unsuc- 
 cessful attack upon the Athenians. Then 
 came a squadron from Athens, and the Spar- 
 tans were driven away with a loss of five 
 ships. They, however, continued to occupy 
 the densely wooded island of Sphacteria, which 
 lay across the entrance to the bay of Pylus. 
 
 This place was now closely blockaded by the 
 Athenian squadron, and it presently became 
 apparent that the Peloponnesian army was re- 
 duced to great straits. The Spartan Ephors, 
 after having themselves reconnoitered the 
 situation, decided that there was no hope but 
 to surrender. An embassy was accordingly 
 sent to Athens, and the assembly at last had 
 the inexpressible joy of seeing a company of 
 saturnine Spartan envoys humbly suing for 
 peace I Cleon w'as in his glory, and, taking 
 advantage of the occasion, insisted upon such 
 extravagant terms as eould not be granted 
 but by the ruin of the Lacedsemonians. The 
 views of the demagogue prevailed over pru- 
 dence, and the opportunity for a favorable 
 peace was thrown away. The envoys were 
 sent back to Pylus, and Demosthenes waa 
 ordered to press the siege of Sphacteria to a 
 successful issue. The armistice broke up in 
 mutual bad faith, and hostilities were at once 
 renewed. 
 
 The Spartans, now grown desperate, snc- 
 ceeded by one means and another in getting 
 a considerable quantity of provisions to the 
 island, and the siege was indefinitely prolonged. 
 AVhile the Athenians were expecting to hear 
 of the capture of the Spartan army, a demand 
 came for reenforcements. There was a reao
 
 572 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 tion in the assembly, and Cleou was about to 
 lose his grip; but he turned furiously upon 
 Kicias, one of the generals, and accused him 
 of being the cause of the delay and disap- 
 pointment. The braggart then went jn to 
 declare that if lie were strategits, h,e would 
 take Sphacteria in twenty days. Thereupon 
 Nicias moved that Cleon be given the com- 
 mand ! In spite of an attempted escape from 
 his own trap, the demagogue was obliged to 
 accept' what the assembly now thrust upon 
 him, and without one day's military experience 
 he departed with a small force to take com- 
 mand at Pylus! 
 
 On arriving at the scene Cleon found the 
 Athenians already prei)aring for an assault on 
 the island. By accident a fire was kindled in 
 the edge of the forest, which, blown into a con- 
 flagration by the wind, swept through the 
 island and destroyed the forest, which had 
 thus far been the main protection of the 
 Spartans. The latter were thus exposed to an 
 attack. The Athenians, led by Demosthenes 
 and Cleon, lauded in force, and a battle of 
 unusual severity was fought, in which the 
 Spartans were completely defeated. In answer 
 to a demand for surrender, the remnant threw 
 down their shields and held up their hands! 
 
 Such a scene had not before been witnessed 
 in Greece. It was the Spartan code to con- 
 quer or die ; but now two hundred and ninety- 
 two of the supposed invincibles, many of them 
 of the best families in Laconia, gave them" 
 selves into the power of an enemy. The 
 victory was complete. Pylus was strengthened. 
 The prisoners were taken to Athens; and 
 before the expiration of the twenty days 
 Cleon, by the strange favor of fortune, stood 
 in the assembly and presented his prisoners! 
 
 After the siege of Sphacteria, the Athenian 
 fleet, under Eurymedon and Sophocles, pro- 
 ceeded to Corcyra, and aided the people of 
 that island in reducing the last i>ost held by 
 the oligarchs, the fortress of Istone. This 
 place was surrendered on condition that the 
 prisoners should be spared until they should 
 be condemned after a formal trial before the 
 assembly ; but they were presently induced to 
 try to escape, for the express purpose that a 
 pretext might be found for their destruction, i 
 
 Eurymedon consented to this atrocious piece 
 of business, and all the prisoners were led out 
 two by two and put to death. 
 
 At this juncture the Athenians were un- 
 doubtedly in a position to have procured 
 terms of peace most advantageous to the 
 state ; but they gave themselves up to passion 
 and continued hostility. In the beginning of 
 the eighth year they reduced the important 
 island of Cythera, and once more ravaged the 
 coasts of Laconia. They then undertook a 
 campaign against the Megarians, and another 
 into Boeotia. In the first of these some ad- 
 vantages were gained, and the town of 
 Nissfea was taken and occupied by an Athe- 
 nian garrison. But the Boeotian expedition 
 ended in disaster. The state was invaded on 
 both sides simultaneously, by Demosthenes 
 and Hippocrates. The former found the 
 country preoccupied, and was obliged to re- 
 tire, and the latter, after having gained pos- 
 session of the temple of Apollo at Delium, 
 and garrisdiiod the town, was overtaken in 
 the plain f Oropus and completely routed. 
 Nothing but the ajiproach of night saved any 
 part of the Athenian army from the fury of 
 the heavy-armed soldiers of Boeotia. Delium 
 was retaken, and the campaign closed with 
 the complete recovery of the country from 
 Athenian influence. 
 
 In the mean time the long-cherished plan 
 of Sparta to overthrow the rule of her rival 
 in Thrace was successfully carried out by 
 Brasidas. With a force of one thousand 
 seven hundred picked troops he made his way 
 through Thessaly, and, forming a junction 
 with the forces of Perdiccas of Macedon, pro- 
 ceeded into Thrace. Here his conduct waa 
 such as to win over a large part of those who 
 adhered to the Athenian cause. The two 
 towns of Acanthus and Stagirus received him 
 gladly. He then urged his way to the im- 
 portant colony of Amphipolis, on the river 
 Strymon. Even this place was surrendered 
 without a siege, as were also most of the towns 
 in the Chalcidician peninsulas. 
 
 The effect was such that Athens was now, 
 in her turn, anxious for peace. In the ninth 
 year after the opening of hostilities (B. C 
 423), a truce was agreed to for twelve month.s.
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 573 
 
 ami both parties found time to breathe from 
 the long struggle in which they had been en- 
 gaged. In the beginning of the next year, 
 however, the war was renewed, and Clcon 
 made an effort to recover Thrace. With a 
 large army he went against Amphipolis, which 
 was defended by Brusidas. The latter, with 
 his large military experience, \va.s more than 
 a match for the loud democrat whom accident 
 had once led to victory. Brasidas soon lulled 
 his antagonist into fancied security, and then 
 sallied out and inflicted a terrible defeat. 
 Cleon was killed, together with half of the 
 Athenian soldiery. The rest were scattered 
 to the winds. Brasidas, however, was mor- 
 tally woi nded in the battle, and was carried 
 into the town to die. He was buried in the 
 agora, and was henceforth honored as CEckt, 
 or founder of Amphipolis. 
 
 The war had now degenerated into per- 
 sonal antagonisms and recriminations. By 
 the death of the two leaders, the one a 
 "king" of Sparta and the other the popular 
 despot of the Athenian assembly, the princi- 
 pal agents in perpetuating the strife were re- 
 moved. Nicias, who now assumed the leadership 
 in Athens, and Pleistoanax, the other Spartan 
 king, were both favorable to peace. In B. C. 
 421 negotiations were opened, and were soon 
 brought to a successful issue in a proclamation 
 of peace for fifty years. The leading j)rinci- 
 ple assumed in the j)acification was a mutual 
 restitution of prisoners and conquests. Upon 
 this, however, there were some restrictions. 
 Thebes was permitted to retain Platsea. 
 Athens kept Nissaia — the seaport of Me- 
 garis — Anactorium, and Sollium. Several 
 towns regained their independence. Others, 
 ■which were left tributary to the Athenians, 
 had their tax reduced to the scale cstid)lished 
 by Aristides. The allies of Athens were gen- 
 erally pleased with the settlement, but the 
 dependent states of the league against her 
 were filled with resentment towards Sparta, 
 for whom they had fought eleven years, and 
 by whom they were now abandoned. Boeotia, 
 Corinth, Elis, and ^[ogaris refu.«ed to sign the 
 treaty, and their attitude became so hostile 
 that Sparta made an alliance with Athens to 
 maintain the com|)act. — Thus did the Peace 
 
 OF Nicias at last afford to distracted Greece 
 an opportunity to recuperate her powers, so 
 terribly shattered by the shocks and ravages 
 of civil war. 
 
 Much difficulty was experienced in at- 
 tempting to secure compliance with the terms 
 of the treaty. The Spartans found it impos- 
 sible to surrender Amphipolis to the Athe- 
 nians, for the inhabitants refused to accede to 
 the transfer. Tlicreuj)on the authorities of 
 Athens declined to surrender the harbor of 
 Pylus. The disaffected Corinthians, now en- 
 tirely alienated from Sparta, projected the 
 scheme of a new Lacedsemoi lian confederacy, 
 with Argos at the head, in the midst of 
 these complications, Alcibiades appeared on 
 the stage of 
 Athenian poli- 
 tics. He soon 
 became one of 
 the most strik- 
 ing figures that 
 had risen in that 
 stormy arena. 
 Young and bril- 
 liant, of an il- 
 lustrious de- 
 scent, dashing 
 and courageous, 
 quick in concep- 
 tion and fertile 
 in expedients, 
 unsci-upulous and reckless, he possessed the 
 very (jualities which in success wovdd make, 
 and in disaster mar, an Athenian statesman. 
 His ambition was as boundless as his conduct 
 was notorious. Not even the austere genius 
 of his instructor, Socrates, could bring the 
 audacious and extravagant youth to any 
 thing like a decent di.scipline. 
 
 The first noted public appearance of this 
 distinguished youth was on the occasion of 
 the coming of the Lacedaemonian ambassadors 
 requesting the surrender of Pylus. He at first 
 violently opposed the petition, and even went 
 so far as to urge the sending of an embassy 
 to Argos to solicit that city to become a mem- 
 ber in a new Athenian league. In spite of 
 the earnest efforts of Nicias and of the pro- 
 tests of the Spartan ambassador, Alcibiades, 
 
 ALCIBIADES.— Visconti.
 
 574 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 by means of intrigue aud bluster, succeeded 
 in this work, and not only Argos, but also 
 Elis and ^Mautiuea, agreed to maintain an 
 alliance with Athens for a hundred years. 
 
 In the next year, B. C. 419, the Athenians 
 were again admitted to the Olympic games. 
 It was supposed that, just emerging from a 
 long and ruinous war, she would present but 
 a sorry figure at the great festival. What, 
 therefore, was the surprise of the assembled 
 states when Alcibiades himself entered for the 
 games seven four-horse chariots, and with 
 these gained both the first and the second 
 prize? Besides his display in the races, he 
 procured from his countrymen one of the 
 richest general exhibits ever presented on such 
 an occasion; aud at the conclusion of the 
 celebration all Greece rang with the praises 
 of the Athenians. 
 
 But Alcibiades was a politician as well as 
 a racer. He visited several Peloponnesian 
 towns, with the purpose of alienating them 
 more and more from the Spartan cause. 
 These proceedings continued until the Lace- 
 dsemonians were obliged to resist. They 
 marched into Argos and gained a position 
 from which they might soon have won a 
 marked success; but Agis, the commander, 
 permitted himself to be tricked into a truce 
 by the machinations of Alcibiades, who then 
 gathered a force of Argives and Athenians 
 and invaded Mantinea. Near the temple of 
 Hercules they were met by the Spartan army 
 under Agis, and were disastrously defeated. 
 It was estimated that one thousand one hun- 
 dred men of the allied forces perished in the 
 battle. This success induced the state of 
 Argolis to detach itself from Athens and return 
 to its old relations with the Lacedisemonians. 
 
 In the year B. C. 416, the Athenians suc- 
 ceeded in the capture of Melos and Thera, 
 the only islands in the JCgean not hitherto 
 brought under their dominion. In the con- 
 quest of the Melians — whose only offense con- 
 sisted in refusing to surrender to those who 
 had attacked them in a time of peace — the 
 Athenians crowned all their preceding atroc- 
 ities by putting the male citizens of the island 
 to death and selling the women and children 
 into slavery. 
 
 In the mean time, about B. C. 428, the 
 Dorian race in Sicily, under the leadership 
 of Syracuse, had become identified with the 
 Peloponnesian league, then at war with 
 Athens. War had been declared against the 
 towns of Leontini and Camarina, as well as 
 the Italian city of Rhegium. Hereupon the 
 Leontinians sent their orator, Gorgias, to 
 Athens to solicit aid. At that time the 
 Athenians voted aid to all the enemies of 
 Sparta ; so a fleet of twenty sail was sent to 
 help the anti-Lacedsemonian league in the 
 West. 
 
 In the following year another squadron 
 of forty galleys was sent to Sicily, and it now 
 became apparent that Athens instead of help- 
 ing others entertained the covert purpose of 
 helping herself to the possession of the whole 
 island. A reaction occurred among the Sicil- 
 ians, and the expedition was obliged to sail 
 home in disgrace. Three years later, however, 
 the Leontinians again asked for assistance, 
 but the Athenians were not then in a condi- 
 tion to give it ; but when, in B. C. 416, the 
 application was renewed from the town of 
 Egesta, then at war with Selinus, Alcibiades 
 e.spoused the project, and a resolution of sup- 
 port was about to be voted ; but the cautious 
 Nicias interposed and induced the assembly 
 first to send an embassy to Egesta to see 
 whether the game was worth the expenditure. 
 The Egestseans entertained the envoys. They 
 took them into the temple of Aphrodite and 
 displayed a vast heap of treasures which were 
 borroived for the occasion ! They gave a ban- 
 quet which nearly exhausted the resources of 
 the to'-n But the ambassadors were gener- 
 ously hoodwinked, and took home a glowing 
 account of the luxury of the western city! 
 So it was at once resolved to espouse the 
 cause of these wealthy petitioners, and a squad- 
 ron of a hundred ships — under the joint com- 
 mand of Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus — 
 was dispatched to Sicily. 
 
 No enterprise ever undertaken by the 
 Greeks was more enthusiastically prosecuted. 
 Crowds of volunteers came forward and 
 begged to be accepted for the expedition. 
 The three commanders vied with each other 
 in the equipment of their respective ships.
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 575 
 
 The Athenians gave themselves to the work 
 of preparation as if to a holiday. Finally, 
 when every thing was in readiness, and the 
 fleet was on the eve of departure, an event 
 occurred which not only dampened the public 
 ardor but stirred the superstitions, and fears 
 df the people to their profoundest depths. In 
 a single night the statues of the god Hermes, 
 which stood at the street corners and in all 
 the public places of the city, were mutilated 
 and knocked to pieces. No such a shocking 
 sacrilege had ever before been known in the 
 hbtory of the country. No reason could be 
 assigned for the act. The universality of the 
 destruction indicated that it had been accom- 
 plished by a band of conspirators acting se- 
 cretly in the dead of night. No one was 
 detected in the work. The people awoke in 
 the morning to find the .sacred busts in front 
 of their houses wantonly disfigured or broken 
 into a shapeless mass. The excitement and 
 indignation of the public knew no bounds. 
 A commission was at once appointed to 
 examine witnesses and discover the perpetra- 
 tors of the crime ; but tlie investigation was 
 without practical results. Suspicion fell 
 upon Alcibiades, but no i>roof was discovered 
 against him. The suspicion, however, held 
 fast, and when no evidence could be adduced 
 of his guilt in the mutilation of the Hermse, 
 Pythonicus, one of the leaders of the Assem- 
 bly, preferred against him the charge of hav- 
 ing profaned the Eleusinian mysteries by 
 giving a representation of tiiem in private. 
 In proof of this the testimony of a slave was 
 given ; but Alcibiades denied the charge and 
 demanded an investigation. The inquiry, 
 however, was, l)y the machinations of his ene- 
 mies, postponed until after the return of the 
 expedition. It was thus contrived that Alci- 
 biades should (kpart under a cloud. Mean- 
 while, the preparation of the fleet was com- 
 pleted, and Corcyra was named as the place 
 of rendezvous. The departure of the squad- 
 ron was such a scene as the Athenians ha<l 
 never witnessed. The force consisted of two 
 thousand two hundred and fifty heavy-armed 
 soldiers. At day-break these marched on 
 board of the gayly decorated vessels lying at 
 the wharves of Pirteus. Nearly the whole 
 
 population of the city lined the shores. A 
 blast of the trumpet proclaimed silence. Then 
 was heard the' voice of the herald lifted in 
 prayer to the country's gods. The war psean 
 of the Greek was chanted, and libations were 
 poured into the sea from goblets of gold and 
 silver. Then each galley, as if in a race, 
 started for the i-sland of jEgina. Thence the 
 squailrou sailed to Corcyra, where it was aug- 
 mented by the arrival of thirty-four galleys 
 and nearly six thousand troops scut by the 
 states in alliance with Athens. On arriving 
 at Southern Italy, the Greeks were coldly re- 
 ceived. Even at Rhegium permission to pur- 
 chase supplies was granted with reluctance. 
 In the mean time the news was borne to Syra- 
 cuse and preparations were immediately made 
 to defend the city. 
 
 While lying in the harbor of Rhegium, 
 the Greek commanders fell into serious dis- 
 putes about the purposes and plans of the 
 expedition. Nicias was in favor of limiting 
 the campaign to the reduction of Selinus ; 
 while Alcibiades and Lamachus proposed that 
 the capture of Syracuse should be included in 
 their conquest. Lamachus favored an imme- 
 diate attack upon the Sicilian capital while 
 it was yet unprepared for defense. Alcibiades, 
 however, preferred such a delay as would 
 enable him to procure assistance from the 
 Italian allies of Athens. This view prevailed. 
 For the present nothing was done except to 
 explore the harbor of Syracuse and to take 
 possession of Catana, which was henceforth 
 used as a base of sujjplies and operations for 
 the Greek squadron. 
 
 At this point news was received from 
 Athens indicating an extremely unfortunate 
 state of affairs in the city. Terror had seized 
 the public mind on account of the mutila- 
 tion of the Herm:e. The charge of having 
 committed that crime was again brought for- 
 ward against Alcibiades. Many persons were 
 arrested, among whom was an orator named 
 Andocides, wlio turned informer, and by 
 means of his own testimony and that of slaves 
 secured the conviction and execution of a 
 number of citizens. This had the effect to 
 quiet ])ublic excitement, but the persons put 
 to death were doubtless innocent of the crime.
 
 576 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The charge of having profaned the Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries was still unanswered, and a 
 vote was passed by the assembly demanding 
 the return of Alcibiades for trial. A galley 
 was dispatched to Sicily to bring him to 
 Athens ; but on his way home he eflected his 
 escape and sailed to Sparta. The Athenian 
 court regarding this flight as a confession of 
 guilt, condemned him to death, and ordered 
 the confiscation of his property. On hearing 
 of his sentence, Alcibiades remarked with non- 
 chalance, " I will show the Athenians that I 
 am still alive." 
 
 Meanwhile the operations in Sicily had 
 made no progress. The Syracusans were not 
 even annoyed at the presence of an enemy 
 . so little aggressive. Their horsemen rode 
 around the Athenian camp and insulted the 
 garrison. A rumor was now blown abroad 
 that the iuliabitants of Cataua were them- 
 selves on the eve of expelling the Athenians. 
 In order to assist this movement, the Syra- 
 cusan army drew out of the city and marched 
 to the aid of the Catanseans. Seizing the op- 
 portunity afforded by their absence, Nicias 
 succeeded in conveying his whole squadron 
 into the harbor, effected a landing near the 
 temple of the Olympian Zeus, and threw up 
 fortifications. Here he was presently attacked 
 by the Syracusan army returning from Ca- 
 tana, but the victory remained with the Athe- 
 nians, who presently withdrew into winter- 
 quarters at Naxos. From this point Nicias 
 sent messengers to Athens asking fresh sup- 
 plies of troops and means. A reenforcement 
 of cavalry was accordingly sent out, with 
 three hundred talents in money. 
 
 With the spring, the siege of Syracuse 
 began. The city lay upon a peninsula be- 
 tween the Great and Little harbors. On the 
 land side it was defended by a wall, and the 
 sea-front was protected by the nature of the 
 ground and by fortifications. In the northern 
 suburbs of the city, however, was a high 
 ground called Epipolse, and of this the Athe- 
 nians succeeded in gaining possession. An 
 attempt of the Svracusans to dislodge them 
 was repulsed. Here Nicias constructed a fort, 
 and the siege was pressed by both sea and 
 land. 
 
 In the mean time Lamachus had died, and 
 the whole command devolved upon Nicias, 
 who was inferior to his colleague in energy. 
 By this time the Syracusans became discour- 
 aged and made overtures of surrender: but 
 Nicias, over-confident of success, paid little 
 attention to the proposals and continued the 
 siege. At this juncture, however, Gylippus, 
 the Spartan general, arrived with a small 
 squadron in the bay of Tarentum. Thence 
 he proceeded to Himera, and, publishing to 
 the people that other forces from his country 
 would soon arrive, he gathered an army of 
 three thousand men and marched to the relief 
 of Syracuse. He succeeded in passing the 
 heights of Epipolse, and entered the city 
 without opposition. Having effected a junc- 
 tion with the Syracusans, he sent an audacious 
 message to Nicias, allowing him five days to- 
 gather his effects and leave Sicily. 
 
 It would have been well if Nicias had 
 taken the advice of his enemy, for the latter 
 very soon turned the tide of success against 
 the Athenians. The Syracusans in their turn 
 captured and fortified the heights of Epipolse. 
 Nor was it long — such was the activity of 
 Gylippus — until the Athenians were put into 
 the attitude of a besieged rather than a besieg- 
 ing army. Nicias fell sick and asked to be 
 recalled. Instead of complying with this re- 
 quest, however, the Athenians sent out addi- 
 tional troops under command of Demosthenes- 
 and Euryraedon. The Spartans also reen- 
 forced their Sicilian army, and the Syracusans 
 presently gave battle to the Athenian fleet. 
 
 The latter gained an indecisive victory, but 
 while the battle was in progress, Gylippus made 
 an assault upon some of the forts erected by 
 Nicias and captured them, with large quanti- 
 ties of pro-visions. In a short time the Syra- 
 cusans sailed boldly out into Great Harbor, 
 and again gave battle to the fleet. This time 
 the Athenian squadron was routed, and the 
 remnant of the ships was only saved from de- 
 struction by being drawn to the shore under 
 protection of the Athenian works. 
 
 At this juncture a. new fleet of seventy- 
 five vessels, carrying five thousand heavy- 
 armed troops, arrived from Athens. Demos- 
 thenes, the commander, immediately made an-
 
 GREECE.— TEE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 bl7
 
 578 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 attempt to take Epipolre, but was repulsed. 
 He then urged Nicias to withdraw from his 
 dangerous position in Great Harbor and retire 
 to Thajisus; but just as this movement was 
 about to begin an eclipse of the moon oc- 
 curred, and the seers declared that the fleet 
 must not leave its moorings for a lunar 
 month.' Their decision was complied with, 
 and the Syracusans, learning how matters 
 stood, determined to make a league with 
 superstition and destroy the foe before the 
 next full moon. They accordingly blocked 
 up the mouth of Great Harbor with a cordon 
 of galleys. So the Athenian squadron of one 
 hundred and ten triremes was cooped up, with 
 no opportunity of escape except by battle. 
 
 It was, however, resolved to break through 
 at all hazards. Accordingly, on an appointed 
 morning, the fleet of Nicias loosed its moor- 
 ings and proceeded to the attack. Nearly the 
 whole population of the city lined the shores 
 of the bay. The larger part of the Athenian 
 land-forces were put on board of the ships, and 
 the remainder looked on from the fortifica- 
 tions. The attack was directed first against 
 the line of galleys by which the mouth of the 
 harbor was blockaded. But the latter held 
 their position. Presently the whole armament 
 on both sides was engaged, and for some time 
 the battle hung dubiously between the com- 
 batants. Then the Athenians began to give 
 way. Nearly a half of their vessels were 
 destroyed, and the rest driven back to the 
 protection of the shore. The victory was in 
 every respect complete and overwhelming. 
 
 The Athenians were still about forty thou- 
 sand strong. As soon as the battle was de- 
 cided, they determined, if possible, to escape 
 from their perilous position. The only course 
 remaining was a retreat overland to the 
 shelter of some friendly town, where they 
 might defend themselves until succored by re- 
 inforcements. But instead of taking advan- 
 tage of the confusion of the first night after 
 his defeat, Nicias waited till the next; and 
 the Syracusans thus found time to gather and 
 fall upon the retreating column. In the at- 
 tempt to reach the coast, Demosthenes, who 
 commanded the rear division, was. cut off, and 
 
 ' This eclipse occurred August 27, B. C. 413. 
 
 after fighting until his I'orces were greatly re- 
 duced, was obliged to surrender. Finally, 
 Gylippus overtook Nicias, who, with the 
 army, now numbering no more than ten 
 thousand men, was sldl struggling to gain the 
 coast. Arriving at the river Erineus, they 
 attempted to cross, but the enemy crowded 
 them down the banks and into the stream. 
 All hope was abandoned. The army became 
 a disorganized mass and was forced to surren- 
 der at discretion. The remainder of the fleet 
 had been given up at the beginning of the 
 retreat. Not a vestige remained. No such 
 complete destruction of an army and squad- 
 ron had ever been known. The prisoners 
 were sent to work in the stone-quarries, where, 
 huddled together, driven to their tasks without 
 sufficient food, and exposed to the elements, 
 they soon began to die of exhaustion and 
 pestilence, until the survivors sickened and 
 fell over the bodies of the dead. All were 
 enslaved except the Athenians and the Sicilian 
 Greeks. Among these were many men of 
 culture and refinement; and a tradition recites 
 that not a few of these gained the esteem of 
 their masters by enacting for them the plays 
 of the Greek dramatists. Demosthenes and 
 Nicias were both condemned to death, the 
 only favor shown them being the concession 
 of suicide instead of a public execution. 
 
 Soon after the appalling disaster just re- 
 corded, the news was carried into Athens by 
 a barber of Piraeus. So incredible appeared 
 his story that the authorities put him to the 
 torture. Presently, however, straggling fugi- 
 tives began to arrive with confirmation of the 
 awful intelligence. The Athenians were first 
 furious and then gave themselves up to de- 
 spair. It was seen at a glance that no power 
 could much longer prevent the capture of 
 the city by the Lacedaemonians. Neverthe- 
 less the authorities began to bestir themselves 
 for the public defense. It was, however, the 
 misfortune of the city of Athens that military 
 success was constantly necessary to preserve 
 the loyalty of her dependent cities and islands. 
 Whenever the tide turned against her, these 
 dependencies would not only abandon her in- 
 terests, but enter into leagues for her de- 
 struction.
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 579
 
 580 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 In the present emergency the first to 
 revolt was the island of Chios. The insur- 
 rection was instigated by Alcibiades, who, 
 now residing at Sparta, lost no opportunity 
 to inflict on his country some humiliating 
 injury. He crossed over in person to the 
 island, and aided the insurgents in overthrow- 
 ing the party favorable to Athens. The 
 islands of Zeos and Lesbos and the city of 
 Miletus followed the example of Chios ; and 
 the Ionian cities on the coast of Asia Minor 
 were giveu up by a treaty with Tissaphernes 
 to their masters, the Persians. Samos, how- 
 ever, remained faithful to the Athenians. 
 The oligarchy in that island was suppressed, 
 and Samos became a kind of stronghold of 
 Athenian influence in the ^gean. 
 
 In the mean time, Athens began to recover 
 from her overthrow. The reserve of one 
 thousand talents which had lain undisturbed 
 in the Acropolis since the administration of 
 Pericles, was now voted by the assembly to 
 be used in the construction of a fleet. When 
 this was completed, an expedition was fitted 
 out against Chios, and that island was rapidly 
 overrun and restored to its former relations. 
 A victory was also gained over the Lacedise- 
 monian squadron at Miletus, but that city 
 still remained under the control of the Per- 
 sians. The Spartans soon prepared another 
 armament so powerful in numbers and eqiiija- 
 ment that its ability to overcome all opjjosi- 
 tion could not be reasonably questioned. 
 
 Alcibiades, in the mean time, from his long- 
 continued duplicity, had gained the distrust 
 and aversion of the Spartan government. 
 The Ephors first denounced him as a traitor 
 and then condemned him to death, but he 
 escaped the penalty by fleeing to the court of 
 Tissaphernes. He at once set about to per- 
 suade the satrap to adopt a new line of policy 
 with regard to the Greek states. The wily 
 Greek soon convinced him that the interest 
 of Persia required that the Grecian common- 
 wealths should be allowed to wear each other 
 out in mutual conflicts to the end that the 
 Grea'', King might absorb the fragments into 
 his empire. It was this influence aided by 
 bribery that prevented the activity of the 
 Spartan squadron. Persia was thus won over 
 
 to favor the Athenian cause. The real pur« 
 pose of Alcibiades was to get himself restored 
 to his country. He communicated with the 
 Athenian generals at Samos, and made it 
 appear that he was able to secure a Persian 
 alliance and would gladly do so on condition 
 of his own restoration, and the substitution 
 of an oligarchy for the democratic form of 
 government Ln Athens. A proposition to 
 this eflect was brought forward in the assem- 
 bly by Pisander. The democracy was furious 
 at the proposal ; but the necessity of the state 
 was so great that a vote was procured in favor 
 of the overthrow of the constitution of Clis- 
 thenes. Pisander was then disjoatched at the 
 head of an embassy to treat with Alcibiades 
 and Tissaphernes with respect to the proposed 
 alliance ; but when the ambassadors were re- 
 ceived by the satrap, Alcibiades, speaking on 
 his behalf and knowing his own inability to 
 perform what he had promised, made such 
 extravagant demands of his countrymen that 
 they were obliged to break up the conference. 
 In the mean time oligarchical clubs were 
 multiplied in Athens, and under their influ- 
 ence the democracy was subjected to a reign 
 of terror. Assassination became the order of 
 the day, and it was soon evident that the revo- 
 lution in the government would be accom- 
 plished. Pisander, on his return from Asia 
 proposed a committee of ten to draft a new 
 constitution. The instrument when produced 
 provided first for the overthrow of the exist- 
 ing magistrates; secondly, for the abolition of 
 all official salaries; thirdly, for the appoint- 
 ment of a council of Four Hundred, with 
 whom the princijml functions of governments 
 should be lodged; and fourthly, for the limi- 
 tation of the right of sufl!i'age to a body of 
 five thousand citizens. The revolution was 
 completed by force. The old senate was 
 ejected by the Four Hundred, who were in- 
 stalled in the ancient seats of authority. 
 Then followed proscriptions and confiscations. 
 The principal leaders of the democracy were 
 assassinated. The next movement was to 
 send an embassy to Sparta with overtures for 
 peace ; but Agis, the king, preferred to com- 
 pel a settlement on his own terms. He ac- 
 cordingty made an attempt to capture Athens,
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 581 
 
 out b'..iig foiled, he concluded to enter into 
 negotiations with the Athenians. 
 
 It was one of the peculiarities of this 
 stormy period in Greek history that the de- 
 mocracy, which had been overthrown in its 
 original stronghold, was still upheld in Samos. 
 The army now in that island, led by Tlirasy- 
 bulus and Thrasyllus, remained loyal to the 
 old institutions of Athens. It was through 
 the intiueuce of these leaders that Alcibiades, 
 who was now on the side of democracy, but 
 always on the side of liimself, was elected one 
 of the generals of the army. That distin- 
 gubhed patriot began at once to magnify his 
 office by passing to and fro in the assumed 
 character of an ambassador between Asia and 
 continental Greece. Tluis would he induce 
 the belief among his democratic countrymen 
 that he was busy with tlie construction of the 
 Perso-Athenian alliance. 
 
 As soon as the Four Hundred heard of 
 the condition of affairs in Samos they sent 
 thither an embassy to explain the change in 
 the government and to demand the accept- 
 ance of the same by the people. The envoys 
 were met with disdain both by the citizens 
 and soldiery. A proposition had already been 
 made in the army to proceed against Athens 
 and overthrow the usurpers, and but for the 
 influence of the more dispassionate there is no 
 doubt that such a movement would have been 
 undertaken. As It was the ambassadors were 
 dismissed with ill-disguised contempt. They 
 were told that the Four Hundred must sur- 
 render their places, and that the old Senate 
 must be restored as conditions precedent to 
 the maintenance of peace. . 
 
 Already in Athens there were symptoms 
 of an anti-oligarchic revolution. The extreme 
 leadei-s under the new rkjime had gone to the 
 length of proposing that a Spartan garrison 
 should be established in Piraeus. The Lacede- 
 monians, however, did not fall in with this 
 scheme, but sent a fleet to cruise in the neigh- 
 boring waters, until a more favorable season. 
 In the mean time the democracy gained con- 
 stantly, and in a short time an assembly was 
 held at Pincus by which the old forms of 
 government were again instituted. 
 
 About this time a revolt broke out in Euboea, 
 
 instigated by the Spartans and supported bj 
 their fleet. Athens was astounded to learn 
 that her greatest and nearest dependency had 
 renounced her friendship and assumed her 
 freedom. An Athenian fleet hastily sent to 
 the rescue was attacked and annihilated by 
 the Lacedicmonian scjuadron. Athens was 
 thus left naked to her enemies. The popular 
 voice clamored in the streets, and an assembly 
 was called in the Pnyx. A vote was j^assed 
 by which the Four Hundred were deposed 
 and the Senate reinstated in its ancient au- 
 thority. The old constitution was restored in 
 all of its features, except that the restriction 
 by which the right of suffrage was limited to 
 five thousand citizens was allowed to stand. 
 Those who had participated in the late oligar- 
 chy were permitted to leave Athens or to hide 
 themselves in obscurity. Only two of the 
 leaders, Antiphon and Archiptolemus, were 
 condemned and executed, and a few others 
 were punished by the confiscation of their 
 property, or the destruction of their houses. 
 In a short time the office of archon was re- 
 created, and this was followed by a vote 
 recalling Alcibiades and his friends from exile. 
 
 In the conduct of the war the next impor- 
 tant movement was a naval battle between 
 the Athenians and Lacedaemonians in the 
 strait between Sestos and Abydos. The 
 former were victorious, and set up a trophy 
 on the headland of Cynossema, from which 
 place the battle takes its name. The Spartan 
 squadron, now lying at Eubcea, hearing of the 
 disaster which had overtaken their friends, 
 sailed for the Hellespont, but while doubling 
 Mount Athos the fleet was caught in a storm 
 and totally wrecked. The remnant of the 
 other armament which had survived the battle 
 was presently overtaken by Alcibiades, and 
 only saved from total destruction by being 
 drawn ashore, when the vessels were defended 
 by the Persians. A short time afterwards, 
 however. Mi ndarus was enticed to sea, attacked 
 by the Athenian squadron, followed to the 
 shore, and slain. Every Spartan ship w^as 
 either taken or destroyed. The victory was 
 so decisive as to recover for the Athenians 
 the whole of the Propontis. 
 
 The Persians now actively aided the Lace-
 
 582 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 dseraouiaus, but the energy of the Athenian 
 fleets, now directed by Alcibiades, secured, in 
 the years B. C. 409 and 408, complete control 
 of the Hellespoatine countries. Until this 
 time the banished Alcibiades had not returned 
 to Attica. In the spring of B. C. 407 he 
 determined to avail himself of his recall and 
 make a public visit to Athens. - He accord- 
 ingly sailed for Piraeus, where he was met by 
 nearly the whole population of the city and 
 escorted in triumph to the scene of his earliest 
 career. Before the Senate and the Assembly 
 he protested his innocence of the charges pre- 
 ferred against him, and the sentences of con- 
 fiscation and banishment were unanimously 
 revoked. As for himself, he now through 
 policy gave great attention to the national 
 superstitions, and publicly conducted the pro- 
 cession in the celebration of the Eleusiuian 
 mysteries. In the following September he 
 put to sea, and was presently worsted by the 
 Lacedaemonian fleet in the battle of Notium. 
 His conduct, moreover, became as reckless 
 and dissolute as ever. The news of his pro- 
 ceedings was carried to Athens, and the good 
 democracy of that city voted him out of com- 
 mand and gave his place to Conon. 
 
 Meanwhile, Callicratidas succeeded L^-sander 
 in the conmiand of the Spartan squadron. 
 He was a man of great energy, and soon dif- 
 fused a new life in the moribund fi-ame of his 
 country. Shortly after assuming control of 
 the fleet he gained a victory over the Athe- 
 nians in the harbor of Mitylene, but Conon 
 maintained his position until reenforcements 
 arrived from Athens, and then took his sta- 
 tion near the islands of Arginusse, close to the 
 coast of Asia Minor. Here the Spartans gave 
 battle. The Athenian fleet numbered one 
 hundred and fifty vessels, and the Lacede- 
 monian one hundred and twenty. The con- 
 flict was long and desperate. After losing 
 seventy-seveu ships and their brave com- 
 mander, who was thrown overboard and 
 drowned, the Spartans were disastrously de- 
 feated. The battle was followed, however, by 
 an event which took away the spirit of the 
 victors. Twelve of the Athenian ships, which 
 were disabled during the fight, were through 
 eome carelessness left drifting helplessly with 
 
 their crews of wounded and dying men untii 
 a sudden storm, swooping down upon them, 
 sent the whole to the bottom of the sea. 
 
 The Athenians immediately summoned the 
 commanding generals — except Conon, who had 
 followed the remnant of the enemy's fleet to 
 Mitylene — to answer for this neglect. Passion 
 ran high, and in spite of the protest of Socrates 
 and a few other cool-headed patriots, the as- 
 sembly voted that the commanders should be 
 put to death. They were accordingly com- 
 pelled to drink the fatal hemlock. Among 
 those who thus perished was the young Peri- 
 cles, the promising son of the great statesman, 
 and Aspasia. 
 
 After the death of Callicratidas the com- 
 mand of the Spartan fleet was again conferred 
 on Lysander. He — after the year B. C. 405 
 had been mostly consumed in recuperating 
 the squadron, and in negotiations with Cyrus 
 the younger, now satrap of Asia Minor — laid 
 siege to the Hellespontiue town of Lampsacus. 
 Thither he was followed by Conon, but the 
 latter arrived too late to save the place from 
 capture. 
 
 The Athenian fleet in September of B. C. 
 40.5 took its station at ^gospotaju, or Goat 
 River, on the opposite side of the channel 
 from Lampsacus. The position was an ex- 
 posed one, but the Athenians were over-confi- 
 dent, and for several days in succession they 
 sailed into the open channel and offered bat- 
 tle to the Spartans. This, however, was de- 
 clined. Lysander kept his forces in hand and 
 waited his opportunity. Alcibiades, who now 
 lived in a castle in the neighborhood, and was 
 to all appearances out of politics, came down 
 to his countrymen, and besought them to find 
 a stronger position ; but his precautions were 
 treated with indifference. The Athenians 
 scattered themselves about their camp and 
 gave no further thought to the situation. On 
 the fifth day of these dilatory proceedings, 
 Lysander, having watched his opportunity, 
 swooped down upon the Athenians while a 
 large part of them were dispersed through the 
 country, and inflicted upon them the most 
 ruinous. defeat of the whole war. Of the one 
 hundred and eighty ships which composed the 
 squadron only eight or ten succeeded in
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 583 
 
 S3 
 
 r = 
 
 o > 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 > 
 
 H 
 B 
 p] 
 •y.
 
 681 
 
 UNIVERSAL IIJSTOEY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 escaping. The remainder were either captured 
 or destroyed. The prisoners, to the number 
 of three or four thousand, including the gen- 
 .ji-als — with the exception of Conon, who es- 
 caped and found a hiding-place in Cyprus — 
 Vere condemned and put to death! The 
 whole force was annihilated. 
 
 Athens was left without a shadow of de- 
 fense, except what measures she could extem- 
 porize, against the coming doom. When the 
 Paralus' arrived at Pirseus and the news was 
 known, there was universal despair. Xeno- 
 phon declares that on that night no man 
 slept. It was now a question of existejice with 
 her who had so long been mistress of the sea. 
 Two out of the three harbors of the city were 
 blocked up in the vain hope of defending the 
 third. Lysander was in no haste. The Athe- 
 nian supplies from the Euxine were wholly 
 cut off, and from afar Famine and Sparta 
 both lifted a sword against the doomed city. 
 
 Beginning his progress towards the capital, 
 Lysander compelled tlie garrisons of the 
 various towns en route to quit their places and 
 repair to Atheus. In every city the demo- 
 cratic form of government was overthrown, 
 and an oligarchy, consisting of ten members 
 with a Spartan Harmost at the head, appointed 
 in its stead. In their desperation, the people 
 of Athens gathered in an assembly and voted 
 a general amnesty. The prisons were opened, 
 and all except a few of the worst criminals 
 were liberated. Then the oligarchic and dem- 
 ocratic factions swore an oath of mutual for- 
 giveness, and agreed henceforth to labor only 
 for the common weal. 
 
 Finally, Lysander made his appearance. 
 With a fleet of one hundred and fifty galleys 
 he landed at ^gina, and then proceeded to 
 blockade Pii-seus. Salamis was ravaged by 
 the army, which marched without opposition 
 to the very gates of Athens. Inside the walls, 
 however, determination was mixed with de- 
 spair, and the first proposals made to them by 
 the Spartans were rejected. The people began 
 to die of hunger, and yet Archestratus was 
 imprisoned for proposing to accept the prof- 
 
 'Tlie Parahis was the commander's galley in 
 an Athenian fleet, corresponding to the flag-ship 
 «": a modern navy. 
 
 fered terms. After three mouths of dreadful 
 suflering, the spirit of the people was at last 
 completely broken, and Theramenes was sent 
 to Sparta to conclude with the Ephors the best 
 treaty which they would grant. 
 
 The states in alliance with the Lacedae- 
 monians, more particularly Corinth and 
 Thebes, insisted that the very name of Athens 
 should be blotted out, and the residue of her 
 population sold into slavery; Init the Spartans 
 themselves interfered to prevent so brutal a 
 proceeding. One of the Ephors even ven- 
 tured on a figure of speech, aud declared that 
 Sparta would never consent that one of the eyes 
 of Greece should be put out. Still the terms 
 were sufficiently severe and humiliating. The 
 Long Walls of Athens should be thrown down. 
 The fortifications of the Pirieus and Phalerum 
 should be razed. The territorial limits of the 
 Athenians should be contracted to Attica. 
 All foreign possessions should be given up. 
 All ships of war should be surrendered. All 
 exiles should be unconditionally restored. 
 The Athenians should become the allies of 
 the Spartans. These terms, hard as they 
 were, were immediately accepted by the as- 
 sembly, and it only remained for the Athe- 
 nians to comply with the conditions. 
 
 The winter had now worn away. In 
 JIarch of B. C 404, the city was formally 
 surrendered. It was the last act in a war 
 which, through every grade of ferocity, had 
 continued for twenty -seven years. Lysander 
 at once proceeded to exact the fulfillment of 
 the terms of the treaty. The dock-yards were 
 burned and the arsenals destroyed. All the 
 Athenian galleys except twelve were sent to 
 Sparta. Then came the demolition of the 
 fortifications. It was no light task, for the 
 works were of great solidity aud massiveness. 
 The overthrow of the Long Walls was a task 
 tedious and difficult. But the Spartans, in 
 mockery, converted the work into a festival! 
 Bands of flute-players and dancers wreathed 
 with flowers accompanied the workmen, and 
 as the heavy stones were pried from their 
 beds and cast down, shout after shout echoed 
 the downfall of Athenian glory. Nor did the 
 demolition cease until not one stone was left 
 upon another. She who, by the splendor of
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 585 
 
 her genius, had diffused a lustrous light into 
 the abodes of barbarism, was left naked to 
 her enemies — a jjitiable spectacle of wretched- 
 ness and despair. 
 
 As soon as the Spartans had completed 
 their work and the dismantled city was left 
 to herself, there was a revival of faction. 
 The oligarchic minority was reenforced by the 
 return of many exiles who owed their banish- 
 ment to democratic votes. Among these the 
 most prominent character was Critias, the 
 uncle of Plato. He, with Theramenes, hav- 
 ing organized clubs and perfected arrange- 
 ments for a revolution, invited Ly.«ander to 
 return from Samos, whither he had gone after 
 the capitulation of Athens, and aid by his 
 presence and influence in the contemplated 
 coup d' Hat by which an oligarchy was to be 
 established over the Athenians. A proj)osi- 
 tion was then made in the assembly that a 
 committee of thirty members be appointed to 
 revise the constitution and provide for the 
 future government of the city. Lyj*auder 
 himself addressed the assembly, and informed 
 them that their personal safety depended upon 
 an affirmative vote. Of course it was so re- 
 corded. Critias and Theramenes headed the 
 list of committeemen, who were henceforth 
 known as the Thirty Tyrants. 
 
 It will he remembered that Samos showed 
 herself te be the la.st stronghold of Greek 
 democracy. This island was accordingly in- 
 vaded by Lysandei:* after the conquest of 
 Attica had been completed, and, like the 
 mother state, was .soon driven to submission. 
 This was the completion of the work of the 
 Lacediemoniau fleet in the .JCgean. As soon 
 as terms of surrender had been accepted and 
 the government settled on a new basis satis- 
 factory to Lysander, he sailed for Sparta. No 
 other general of those hitherto sent out by the 
 Epliors had ever returned so completely vic- 
 torious. He brought home the spoils and 
 figure-heads of all the ships which he had 
 taken. The booty was enormous, and besides 
 what he had taken by force he turned over to 
 the treasury four hundred and seventy talents 
 which had been given him by the Persians 
 for the prosecution of the war. 
 
 In Athens the Thirtv proceeded to organ- 
 »<.— Vol. 1—36 
 
 ize a reign of terror. Butchery was the order 
 of the day. Sometimes there was a formal 
 condemnation of the accused; sometimes 
 there was none. The newly appointed sen- 
 ators—mere tools of the Tyrants^were re- 
 quired in voting to deposit their pebbles 
 openly on a table in front of their masters— 
 this on questions of life and death ! Bands 
 of assassins were hired to complete the work 
 of exterminating the democracy. At the last 
 a proscnj)tion list was made out, and the ad- 
 herents of the Thirty were permitted to in- 
 sert therein what names soever they pleased. 
 
 The object became plunder rather than po- 
 litical vengeance. No such scenes had ever 
 before been witnessed in Athens. Neither 
 rank nor virtue was .spared. The orator Ly- 
 sias and his brother Polemarchus were among 
 the condemned. Theramenes, refusing to 
 participate in the diabolical business, was 
 himself denounced by Critias in the senate- 
 house, and though clinging to an altar waa 
 dragged away to execution. When given the 
 cup of hemlock he swallowed the draught, 
 threw a drop of the poison on the floor, and 
 exclaimed, "Here's a health to the gentle 
 Critias." It was amid such scenes that the 
 liberties of Greece went out in darkness. 
 
 It was in the mid.st of these proscriptions, 
 but not by means of them, that Alcibiades 
 met his fate. From his castle in Thracian 
 Chersonesus he had watched the downfall of 
 Athens and the progress of the oligarchical 
 revolution. When the proscription began he 
 became apprehensive of danger, and with 
 good reason, for the Thirty had already in- 
 cluded his name in a list of the condemned. 
 Sacrificing a great part of his property, he 
 fled for safety, with as much of his wealth 
 as he could carry with him, to the court of 
 Pharnabazus, satrap of Phrygia. From him 
 he sought the privilege of continuing his 
 flight to Susa, where he thought to play the 
 same part with Darius that Themistocles had 
 played with Artaxerxes. But Pharnabazus 
 refused him conduct through the province, 
 and in tlie meantime Lysander sent a dis- 
 patch to the siitrap to have the Athenian put 
 to death. Acting under this order, a band 
 of assassins set fire to the house of Alcibiades
 
 586 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 and stood ready to cut him down. "With uu- 
 flinching courage he seized his sword and 
 rushed forth upon the dastards; but before 
 he could reach them they pierced him through 
 with their javelins. Thus, in a foreign land 
 and unfriended, save by the woman Timan- 
 dra, who remained faithful to him until his 
 death, and performed alone for her brilliant 
 and eccentric lord the rites of sepulture, per- 
 ished the famous Alcibiades, who, but for a 
 certain want of principle, which was indeed 
 but the common vice of his couutrvmen, 
 
 Even Thebes and Corinth turned their sym- 
 pathies to the fallen Athens. A band of 
 Athenian exiles, temporarily domiciled in Boe- 
 otia, found a leader in Thkasybulus, seized 
 the fortress of Phyle, and bade defiance to 
 the oligarchy. The Thirty marched out with 
 a force of Spartans and native cavalry, but 
 were several times repulsed. Nor was it cer- 
 tain but that the troops whom they com- 
 manded, at least such of them as were Athe- 
 nian born, sympathized with Thrasybulus 
 rather than with their masters. Encouraged 
 
 DEATH OF ALCIBIADES. 
 
 would have been one of the greatest Greeks 
 of his age. 
 
 It was a part of the strange, bad temper 
 of the Hellenic states that they always turned 
 against the strongest. Sparta was now, after 
 the complete humiliation — almost extinction — 
 of her rival, destined to feel the force of this 
 law. A reaction took place in the Greek 
 mind unfavorable alike to the Lacedsemo- 
 nians and their leaders. Lysander himself, 
 after a career of unparalleled popularity, 
 power, and honor became, in the course of a 
 single year, an object of suspicion and hatred. 
 
 by his success and the manifestations of pub- 
 lic support, the Greek patriot abandoned 
 Phyle and seized Pirjeus. A large force was 
 immediately sent against him, and a severe 
 battle was fought, in which the army of the 
 Thirty was completely routed. Among the 
 best trophies of the field was the dead body 
 of Critias, who was killed in the engagement. 
 The death of this unprincipled tyrant threw 
 the government into the hands of the more 
 moderate of the oligarchical party, and a new 
 revolution was effected, by which the Thirty 
 were deposed, and a council of Ten appointed
 
 GREECE.— THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 587 
 
 in their stead. Such were the nnitterings of 
 discontent that the new governors felt con- 
 strained to call upon Pausanias, the Spartan 
 king, for assistance. The latter at the head 
 of an army marched into Attica, and had 
 several indecisive combats with Thrasybulus. 
 But a desire for peace now pervaded all par- 
 ties. Pausanias himself was at enmity with 
 Lysander, and for this reason was less severe 
 in determining the terms of settlement. With 
 singular liberality, considering the circum- 
 stances, it was agreed that the Athenian exiles 
 now under the banner of Thrasybulus should 
 be unconditionally re-admitted to Athens, and 
 as for the rest full amuesty should be granted 
 to all except the Thirty and the Ten. 
 
 As soon as this settlement was agreed to, 
 Thrasybulus and the exiles returned in tri- 
 umph to the city. Tliere was a universal re- 
 vival of democracy. An assembly was imme- 
 diately convened, and a complete undoiug of 
 the work of the oligarchy was determined on. 
 The whole field where tyranny had so loug 
 cultivated her brambles was plowed up to the 
 subsoil and harrowed to a level. The laws 
 of Solon and Draco were revised by a com- 
 mittee and adopted by the assembly and the 
 Senate.' The old regime was revived in every 
 part, and every effort was made by the new 
 government to obliterate forever from public 
 memory and the records of the state the his- 
 tory and infamy of the recent tyrannies of 
 the Thirty and the Ten. 
 
 It was at this juncture that Socrates, great- 
 est spirit of the pagan world, was arrested 
 and brought to his death. He fell a victim 
 to superstition. As early as B. C. 423 he had 
 been attacked — but not with great bitterness — 
 by Aristophanes, in the comedy of the Clouds. 
 From this, however, he rallied and continued 
 his teaching. For twenty-four years he dis- 
 seminated his views on those subjects concern- 
 
 ' It was in the inscription of these revised 
 statutes of Athens on the walls of the Pwcil^ 
 Stoa tiiat the full Ionic alphabet of twenty-four 
 letters was for the first time publicly employed. 
 Its use for some time previously hail been common 
 among the Athenian scholars, but for the public 
 acts of the government the old Attic alphabet of 
 sixteen or eighteen letters had always been 
 Iiitherto used. 
 
 ing which men have always felt the deepest 
 interest. Towards the close of the fifth cen- 
 tury he fell under the suspicion of heterodoxy 
 in the matter of the national religion. Nor 
 is it likely that his resolute and glorious 
 genius did tamely bow to the absurdities 
 which he as a teacher was expected to uphold 
 and honor. In B. C. 399 an open accusation 
 was brought against him by three fellows 
 whose base spirits were fit for nothing else — 
 Meletus, a seller of leather; Anytus, a third- 
 rate poet; and Lycon, a bad rhetorician. 
 
 This trio charged the philosojiher before the 
 assembly with neglecting the worship of the 
 gods, with introducing new deities, and also 
 with corrupting the youth of the city. Soc- 
 rates said little in defense, but rather pro- 
 voked his fate by a bold avowal of his prin- 
 cijjles. A small majority was obtained against 
 him. Even then by the use of means within 
 his reach he might have escaped death, but 
 with lofty disdain he allowed the bigotry of 
 his countrymen to take its course, and he was 
 sentenced to drink the hemlock. He told his 
 judges that instead of being put to duath he 
 ought to be supported at public expense to 
 teach in the Prytaneum ! He would neither 
 retract, nor modify, nor explain, but stood 
 like a Titan at bay. 
 
 The sacred vessel which had just gone to 
 the annual festival at Delos, until the return 
 of which it was unlawful to put any one to 
 death, did not again reach the city for thirty 
 days. During the interval Socrates remained 
 in prison. Nor was his manner of life much 
 changed from what it was before his condem- 
 nation. He continued to converse with his 
 friends. He refused to escape when the 
 means were afforded of his doing so. He 
 spoke cheerfully of his death and of his hope 
 of immortality. It was the custom of the 
 Greeks when one recovered from sickness to 
 sacrifice a cock to JDsculapius. When the 
 last hour came and the cup of hemlock was 
 calmly drained, the philosopher said to his 
 friend Crito who stood with other comrades 
 beside him: "Crito, we owe a cock to .lEscu- 
 lapius; discharge the debt, and by no means 
 omit it." Thus was eclipsed the sublimest 
 genius of antiquity.
 
 588 
 
 UNIVERSAL HiSTORY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 But liis work survived. The teachings 
 of Socrates can never fail to interest and in- 
 struct the seeker after truth. Every enlight- 
 ened age will drink from the exhaustless 
 fountain of his wisdora. The enunciation of 
 his doctrines marked an epoch, not only in 
 the ethics of Greece, but in the morality of 
 the human race. His contribution to the 
 ■wisdom of mankind was greater than that 
 which any other philosojiher has brought 
 
 to morals. His theme was human conduct. 
 He sought to impress upon his hearers a con- 
 viction of the Ijarrenness of those speculative 
 systems in which the Greek so much de- 
 lighted. He would reduce the current beliefs 
 to an absurdity. His weapon was dialogue; 
 his method, interrogation. His antagonist — 
 real or imaginary —was a Sophist whose prop- 
 ositions were admitted only to be quickly 
 ground into dust under a rcdudio ad abs^irdum. 
 
 LAST HOURS OF SOCR.\TES— After the paiutins; by David. 
 
 into the store-house of ages. The breadth 
 and profundity of his understanding, his 
 sturdy defense of the truth, his generous 
 nature, his masterful grasp of the greatest 
 themes, his honest assaults on error, and the 
 pungent speech and dramatic method in 
 which his immortal aphorisms are set before 
 us,— all conspire to stamp him as the loftiest 
 genius of the ancient world. 
 
 Socrates turned the mind of man from idle 
 speculation to practical ethics — from vagaries 
 
 Woe to the fallacy-monger who fell into the 
 power of this inexorable and humane giant! 
 The world beholds him yet, and will ever be- 
 hold him as he sits among his companions 
 and delivers to them his immortal sayings. 
 His magnificent, ugly face; his tremendous 
 head; his beetling lirows, and eyes that darted 
 their Promethean fire into the soul of mys- 
 tery and scorched the wings of falsehood -it 
 is Socrates, whom Plato and Xenophon have 
 pictured, whom hemlock could not kill.
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND TBEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 5S9 
 
 CHAF>XER XivVil —Spartan and Theban 
 
 ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 1 1 AT has been called the 
 Spartan Supremacy in 
 Grecian history may be 
 dated from the battle of 
 ^gospot^imi, iu B. C. 
 405. That conflict de- 
 cided the late of Athens, 
 and there was none other of the Hellenic 
 Btatfts at all able to compete either on land or 
 sea with tlie Laccdieraouians. The latter, 
 therefore, as if by right, assumed the mastery 
 of Greece, and for a wliile her dominion was 
 as unlimited as it was arl)itrary. 
 
 Among her first acts was the punishment of 
 certain states that had iu some way injured 
 her interests or insulted her pride. The 
 Eleans had on a certain occasion excluded 
 the Spartans from participation in the Olym- 
 pic games, and more recently had refused 
 permission tc King Agis to offer sacrifices in 
 the temple of Zeus. The inclination of Elis 
 CO the democratic rather than the oligarchic 
 form of government was especially distasteful 
 to the Lacedajmonians, who now determined 
 to regulate the affairs of their western neigh- 
 bors and punish them for previous misconduct. 
 In B. C. 402 Agis began a campaign against 
 Elis, but was sti>|)ped by his superstition. An 
 earih({uaiie aroused his fears, and the expedi- 
 tion was postponed until the following year. 
 With the ensuing summer, however, the 
 campaign was again undertaivcn. The allies, 
 even including a body of Athenians, joined 
 the expedition, and the Eleans were soon re- 
 duced to submission. The pious Agis per- 
 formed his sacrifices and dictated the terms 
 of peace. 
 
 In the mean time, Lysander, now a private 
 but ostentatious citizen «f Sparta, became a 
 source of trouble in that state. His ambition 
 had grown with what it fed on, and he con- 
 templated no less than a revolution of the 
 government, by which he hoped to have Agis 
 set aside and iiimself made king. To this 
 
 end he consulted the oracles of Zeus at 
 Dodona and at Amnion, iu distant Libj-a, as 
 well as that of Apollo at Delphi ; but, though 
 he used the persuasive power of money, the 
 answers were adverse to his schemes. He suc- 
 ceeded, however, in getting Leotychides, the 
 eldest son of Agis, set aside, on the ground 
 that he was an illegitimate son of Alcibiades. 
 But Agesixaus, a younger son, born of another 
 mother, obtained the throne, and soon became 
 a popular and efficient ruler. A conspiracy 
 was organized against him on the ground of 
 his lameness, an old oracle having warned the 
 Spartans to beware " of a lame reign." But 
 Lysander, hoping to use the new king for his 
 own purposes, explained that a lame reign and 
 a lame king were two very different things ; 
 so the insurrection was suppressed, and the 
 leaders put to death. 
 
 Nearly all the states of Greece were now 
 subject to Sparta. The system of govern- 
 ment, established through the agency of 
 Lysander in the dependencies, was that of the 
 Decarchy, or Council of Ten, under the leader- 
 ship of a Spartan IZ"-nwst, or governor. It 
 was essentially a tyranny, and the Lacedae- 
 monian supremacy, which was based thereou, 
 contained no element of strength or perpetuity. 
 There was, moreover, in the present state of 
 affairs a certain inconsistency which weak- 
 ened the Spartan authority. The state had 
 fought through the whole of the Peloponne- 
 sian wars for the ostensible purpose of liberat- 
 ing Greece from the dominion of Athens. 
 What good to substitute the dominion of 
 Sparta? On the whole, the Greek mind sym- 
 pathized with the Ionian race and the demo- 
 cratic tendencies' of tlie Athenians rather than 
 with the austere Dorians and their oligarchy. 
 
 Meanwhile, a stirring drama had been 
 enacted in Asia INIinor. Tlie conspiracy of 
 Cyrus the Younger against his brother Arta- 
 xerxes had gathered head and broken into 
 nothing at the battle of <^!unaxa. The part
 
 590 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 which the Spartans bore in the great cam- 
 paign, their heroism in the battle, their escape 
 from the clutches of the Persians, their cele- 
 brated retreat and return into Europe, have 
 already been recounted in the History of 
 Persia.' 
 
 As soon as the great expedition had col- 
 lapsed, the satrapy held by Cyrus was con- 
 ferred on Tissaphernes. The latter began his 
 administration by attacking the Ionian cities, 
 and the Spartans were obliged to iend out an 
 army under Dercyllidas for their protection. 
 After holding his own for a year and gaining 
 some advantages over the Persians, he was con- 
 fronted by Pharnabazus, who secured the ser- 
 vices of Conon the Athenian as commander 
 of a fleet to operate against the Lacedse- 
 monians. 
 
 King Agesilaiis himself went to Asia, in 
 B. C. 396, and took command of the Pelo- 
 ponnesian army. After wintering at Ephesus 
 he advanced upon Sardis and won a victory 
 over Tissaphernes on the banks of the Pacto- 
 lus. The latter was soon afterwards put to 
 death at the instance of Parysatis, who still 
 proved herself to be the mother of mischief 
 as well as of Artaxerxes. The satrapy of 
 Lydia was transferred to Tithraustes, and he 
 soon induced Age'-ilaiis to withdraw into the 
 country of his fr' ;ud Pharnabazus, satrap of 
 Phrygia. The .atter had always had the con- 
 fidence of the Spartans, and he now pro- 
 tested with the king in such manly terms that 
 the latter was induced to withdraw to Thebe, 
 on the gulf of Elisus; and from that place 
 he was erelong obliged to repair to Sparta 
 to protect his own country from impending 
 dangers. 
 
 For, in the mean time, the energies of 
 Conou, backed by Persian gold, had brought 
 into existence and equipped a fleet superior 
 to that of the Lacedtemonians. The appear- 
 ance of this armament in the western waters 
 tad the ^nect to incite in the island of Rhodes 
 a democratic insurrection by which the oligar- 
 chy had been suppressed. Afterwards, in 
 August of B. C. 394, the allied squadron of 
 Sparta and Phoenicia was overtaken at the 
 peninsula of Cnidus, in Caria, and defeated 
 "'"See Book Sixth, pp. 367-369. 
 
 with a loss of more than half of the arma- 
 ment. The eflect of these successes of the 
 enemies of Sparta was such as further to 
 weaken her hold upon her dependent states 
 and to hasten the day of the overthi'ow of 
 her power. 
 
 About this time Timocrates, a prominent 
 Rhodian, was dispatched to the leading Greek 
 cities, well supplied with Persian gold, to in- 
 duce a revolt against the Lacedaemonians. 
 Thebes, Corinth, and Argos were all induced 
 by his arguments to renounce the Spartan 
 alliance, and hostilities were elmost immedi- 
 ately begun. A quarrel occurred between the 
 Locrians and Phocians respecting the owner- 
 ship of a narrow strip of territory, and the 
 former appealed to Thebes for aid. The Pho- 
 cians on their part called on the Spartans for 
 help, and the latter at once responded in full 
 force under Lysander himself. After devas- 
 tating the Phocian territory he proceeded to 
 attack the town of Haliartus, where the insur- 
 gents were posted ; but the latter made a des- 
 perate sally, defeated the Lacedsemonians and 
 killed Lysander. In the following night, so 
 comjjlete was the Theban victory, the invad- 
 ers disbanded, and left the country. A few 
 days afterwards, when Pausanias, who ex- 
 pected to join Lysander at Haliartus, arrived, 
 he found only the unburied Sjsartan dead of 
 the recent battle. He ivas forced by the 
 actual peril of the situation to accept the 
 terms prescribed by the Thebans and with- 
 draw to his own home. The victorious insur- 
 gents followed in his rear and virtually drove 
 him beyond the border. Afraid to return to 
 Sparta, the king found a hiding-place in the 
 temple of Athene, at Tegea, and being con- 
 demned to death was obliged to save himself 
 by remaining at the altar of the protecting 
 goddess. 
 
 The effect of this decisive reversal of for- 
 tune was to strengthen and encourage the 
 enemies of Spartan rule. Athens, Thebes, 
 Corinth, and Argos now entered into a for- 
 mal league against the Lacedsemonians. The 
 Euboeans, the Ozolian Locrians, the Acarna- 
 nians, the Ambracians, the Leucadians, and 
 the Thracian Chalcidiciaus were presently 
 added to the alliance, which now made no
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 591 
 
 concealment of its purpose of open war. In 
 the beginning of B. C. 394, the allies gath- 
 ered at the isthmus of Corinth and bade de- 
 fiance to the Pcloponnesians. It was at this 
 juncture that the .Spartan Ephors, becoming 
 with good reason more anxious for the safety 
 of the country than for foreign conquest, re- 
 called Agcf^ihuis from Asia Minor to defend 
 his own dominions. 
 
 The Spartiins rallied for the conflict with 
 unusual energy. They advanced by way of 
 Mantinea to Sicyon, where they were con- 
 fronted by the allies, twenty-four thousand 
 strong. The latter, however, fell back to the 
 more defensible country in the immediate vi- 
 cinity of Corinth. Here was fought a severe 
 battle, in which the Spartans won an indeci- 
 sive victory. 
 
 In the mean time Agesilaiis had left Asia 
 Minor, and was approaching by the old Thra- 
 cian route marked out by Xerxes. He was 
 joined en route by the Ten Thousand Greeks, 
 who were now making their way homewards 
 from the Euxine. After reaching Phocis, 
 Agesilaiis heard of the defeat and death of 
 Pisandcr at the battle of Cnidus, but he con- 
 cealed the news from the army. On the plain 
 of CoROXEA he was confronted by the allied 
 army. The Thebans, who led the advance, 
 made a headlong charge and broke the oppos- 
 ing lines, but in other parts of the field the 
 Spartans were victorious. The Thebans turned 
 about and fought their way back to their 
 friends in one of the most desperate hand-to- 
 hand conflicts recorded in Grecian history. 
 Though the field remained to Agesilaiis, his 
 success was so little decisive that the only 
 mark of defeat on the side of the allies was 
 their petition for the privilege to bury the 
 dead. After the Itattle the Spartan king at 
 once made his way into Peloponnesus, where 
 be was received with great joy by the alarmed 
 Lacedaemonians and their allies. In the three 
 battles which had been recently fouL'ht, two 
 on land and one at sea — Corinth, Coronea, 
 Cniilus — the naval engagement had been espe- 
 cially di.sii.strous to the Spartans, while the 
 land conflicts had given them no decided ad- 
 vantage. On the sea, Conon and Pharna- 
 bazus, acting in concert, were sweeping every 
 
 thing before them, and the Spartan dominion 
 in the .^gean faded away more rapidly than 
 it had been acquired by the battle of ^gos- 
 potami. 
 
 In the year B. C. 3i)3, the allied fleet, hav 
 ing completed its woik among the islands, 
 bore down upon Greece. Presently the strange 
 spectacle was witnessed of a friendly Persian 
 armament lying in the harbor of Pirseus! 
 Pharnabazus, in his intense dislike of the 
 Spartans, assented heartily to the plans of his 
 colleague, Conon, who took advantage of the 
 situation to secure the resurrection of Athens. 
 The gold of Persia was freely used in the 
 work of restoring the walls and fortifications 
 of the city. Nor was the hearty aid given to 
 this enterprise by the Thebans — at whose in- 
 stance Athens had been dismantled and de- 
 stroyed — a less conspicuous example of the 
 mutability of parties among the Greeks. By 
 the assistance thus lent by her former enemies 
 mo.st bitter and unrelenting, the capital city 
 of Attica again assumed her place, and though 
 shorn of her renown and glory, was soon a 
 scene of busy life and ambitious projects. 
 
 The whole brunt of the war now fell on 
 Corinth. The allies, attempting to penetrate 
 Peloponnesus by way of the isthmus, were 
 resisted by the Spartans, who from their head- 
 quarters at Sicyon ravaged the country along 
 the gulf at will. They finally broke down a 
 considerable portion of the long walls by 
 which the city of Corinth was connected with 
 her .seaport of Lechseum, and also gained a 
 victory over those who tried to prevent the 
 demolition. An army of carpenters and 
 masons was soon sent out from Athens, and 
 the walls were quickly rebuilt ; but Agesilaiis, 
 by the aid of his brother Teleutias, who com- 
 manded the fleet, gained possession of Le- 
 chieum, and rendered the barricades of no 
 111 It her u.se to the city. Corinth herself waa 
 driven to the verge of capitulation, and a 
 company of Thebans, who came as an em- 
 bassy to sue for peace, were treated with insult 
 and contempt by the king, who was now con- 
 fident of his aljiiity to inflict a complete dis- 
 comfiture upon his enemies. 
 
 Just at this juncture an unexpected turn 
 occurred in the relations of the parties.
 
 592 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Hitherto the important wing of a Greek army 
 had always consisted of the hoplttes, or heavy- 
 armed soldiers. The peltastcF, or troops of 
 light armor, hait ever been regarded as of but 
 secondary importance in battles. It was consid- 
 ered the business of the peltasts to skirmish — 
 to annoy and distract the enemy rather than 
 actually to beat him from the field or into 
 the dust. That work was reserved for the 
 hoplites, who came to the death grapple and 
 were the actual combatants — the determining 
 force of a Greek army. 
 
 Some of the allied forces in Corinth were 
 at the time referred to under command of 
 the Athenian Iphicrates. For two years he 
 had been engaged in the training of a body 
 of peltasts with a view to making them more 
 formidable in battle. For the coat-of-mail 
 worn by the hoplites he substituted a linen 
 corselet, which did not impede the freedom of 
 the body. He lessened the weight aud diam- 
 eter of the shield. The length of the javelin 
 and short sword hitherto carried by the pel- 
 tast was increased one half. The new tactics 
 laid stress upon rapidity of evolution in the 
 field rather than upon the mere momentum 
 of the column. 
 
 Having got his corps well disciplined, 
 Iphicrates succeeded in several unimportant 
 engagements in inflicting considerable injury 
 upon the enemy. An opportunity now offered 
 to test the value of the new service on a more 
 extensive scale. A body of hoplites from 
 Amycla, desiring to participate in a festival 
 at home, were escorted by a division of Spar- 
 tans, also hoplites; and when the latter were 
 returning, Iphicrates, with what appeared to 
 aU a piece of reckless audacity, drew out his 
 corps of peltasts, and gave them battle. 
 
 The conflict grew sharp and then furious. 
 The heavy-armed Spartans began to fall on 
 every side under the assaults of their more 
 active and less encumbered assailants. They 
 were bewildered at the novel and dangerous 
 onsets of the new soldiery. After a large 
 part of their number had been cut down 
 without ability on their part to inflict much 
 injury in return, they broke and fled. They 
 were pursued, decimated, driven into the sea. 
 rhe effect was such that Agesilaiis withdrew 
 
 from before Corinth and returned lu a very 
 humble plight to Sparta, Iphicrates there- 
 upon sallied forth and retook nearly all the 
 towns in the eastern aud northern districts of 
 Corinth. 
 
 The Spartans, now thoroughly alarmed by 
 the successes of the allies, and especially by 
 the exposure of their coast to the ravages of 
 Conon's fleet, liable at any moment to drop 
 upon them, concluded that it was time for 
 peace. They accordingly opened negotiations 
 by sending Antalcidas, their best diplomatist, 
 to the court of Tiribazus, who had succeeded 
 Tithraustes as satrap of Ionia. For the time, 
 however, the ambassador was unsuccessful. 
 The representatives of the allies were able to 
 thwart his efforts, although Tiribazus was in 
 hearty sympathy with the Spartan cause. It 
 was at this juncture that, by the connivance 
 of the satrap and the Persian court, Conon 
 was seized — a perfidious act — and imprisoned. 
 Though he soon afterwards made his escape 
 aud returned to his old refuge at the court of 
 Evagoras in Cyprus, he never again took part 
 in the public affairs of his country. 
 
 By this time Athens had sufficiently re- 
 vived to send out a fleet of forty triremes tf 
 recover her possessions on the Hellespont 
 The command of the expedition was given to 
 Thrasybulus, who had complete success in 
 his mission. The Athenian authority was 
 reestablished, and the toll of ten per cent 
 reimposed on all vessels sailing out of the 
 Euxine. After this work was accomplished, 
 Thrasybulus sailed to Lesbos and deposed 
 the Spartan governor of the island. Landing 
 on the coast of Pamphylia, he began to lay 
 contributions on the inhabitants; but the lat- 
 ter gathered a force, attacked his camp by 
 night, and killed him. Like many another 
 illustrious Greek who had served his country 
 in the day of her need, he was doomed to 
 perish in an ignominious way on the shore of 
 a foreign land. 
 
 The attention of the Athenians was next 
 called to the condition of affairs in the island 
 of ^gina. It will be remembered that Ly- 
 sander had restored the exiled .lEginetans and 
 reestablished the oligarchy. Without suf- 
 ficient resources to create a regular navy, the
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AXD THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 593 
 
 people of the island began to fit out privateers 
 to prey upon Athenian commerce. The Lace- 
 daemonian commander, Tcleutias, went to 
 ^giua witli a small squadron, and turned the 
 attention of the buccaneers to an enterprise 
 hardly less dangerous but somewhat more 
 honorable. This was an attempt to capture 
 Piraeus. With a fleet of only twelve ships he 
 sailed audaciously into the bay, landed his 
 men on the (juays, seized all the portable 
 merchandise which was exposed about the 
 warehouses, robbed most of the ships in the 
 harlior, and sailed back to ^glna. 
 
 In the mean time Antalcidas, accompanied 
 by the Ionian satrap Tinl)azus, had made his 
 way to the Persian court at Susa. The Great 
 King was now more inclined than hitherto to 
 favor the establishment of a general peace. 
 After much negotiation the conditions were 
 finally determined ; and in B. C. 387 the am- 
 bassadors returned to Asia Minor to promul- 
 gate the terms of the treaty. The forces 
 with which Antalcidas was now backed were 
 so overwhelming, both by land and sea, as to 
 render resistance well-uigh hopeless. Amba.s- 
 Badors from the Grecian states were invited to 
 meet Tiribazus, and before them, under the 
 royal seal of Persia, the treaty was delivered. 
 It was couched in the following terms: "King 
 Artaxerxes thinks it just that the cities in 
 Asia and the islands of Clazomenaj and Cyprus 
 ehould belong to him. He also thinks it just 
 to leave all the other Grecian cities, both 
 small and great, independent — except Lemnos, 
 Imbros, and Scyros, which are to belong to 
 Athens, as of old. Should any parties refuse 
 to accept this peace, I will make war upon 
 them, along with those who are of the same 
 wind, both by laud and sea, with ships and 
 with money." 
 
 Such was the celebrated Peace of Antal- 
 <!1DAS, dictated, as it was, by an Asiatic mon- 
 arch, the threats of whose ancestors liad been 
 laughed to scorn by the Greeks in the heroic 
 days of old. Now, however, the conditions 
 were tamely accepted by a degenerate race, 
 whose resources had been consumed in inter- 
 necine strife and whose patriotism had per- 
 ished in the miserable heats of faction. The 
 «nly incident in the acceptance of the treaty 
 
 by the Greek states was that Thebes, instead 
 of taking the oath in her own name only, 
 persisted in swearing for the whole Boeotian 
 confederacy, of which she claimed to be 
 the head. 
 
 It was this assumption of something more 
 than local indeijcndence on the part of the 
 Thebaus that gave to the Spartans their first 
 excuse for interfering with the terms of the 
 treaty. They accordingly insisted, at the ear- 
 liest opportunity, that the other Boeotian 
 cities, as well as Thebes herself, shoUid be lo- 
 cally independent. These cities, with the 
 exception of Orchomenus and Thespiae, all 
 preferred to remain in their present relations 
 as members of the confederacy; but Sparta, 
 determining to have her will by force, pro- 
 ceeded to establish garrisons in the two towns 
 which favored her views, and at the same 
 time undertook the resurrection of Plataea, in 
 order to make the same a basis of her future 
 operations in Central Greece. After the de- 
 struction of this place, as previously narrated, 
 the Plataeans who escaped destruction became 
 domiciled in Athens, and by intermarriages 
 were now distinguished only by tradition from 
 the other inhabitants; but when their city 
 was rebuilt, most of these descendants of the 
 exiled families were induced to return. 
 Thebes, meanwhile, looked on and witnessed 
 these insulting proceedings without the pres- 
 ent power to interfere. 
 
 As soon as this work was accomplished in 
 the North, Sparta found time to settle an old 
 grudge which she held against the town of 
 Mantinea, in Arcadia. There was nothing 
 more specific to be alleged against this place 
 than that in the course of the Lacedaemonian 
 wars the Mantineans had always been un- 
 friendly, supplying encouragement to the 
 enemies of Sparta and rejoicing in her mis- 
 fortunes. Agesipolis was now dispatciied to 
 jiunisli the spirit rather than ;ae overt acts 
 of Mantinea. When the city refused to de^ 
 molish her walls, the Spartans dammed up 
 the river Ophis until the back-water, rising 
 against the bulwarks of sun-dried bricks, 
 undermined them. The people were then 
 obliged to surrender at discretion. All the 
 fortifications were destroyed, and the city wa»
 
 594 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 resolved into the five villages of which it was 
 originally composed. Over each of these vil- 
 lages a petty oligarchy was established, and 
 then the Lacediemonians retired to their own 
 place. 
 
 Meanwhile, the city of Olyuthus, at the 
 head of tiie Toronaic gulf, in the southern- 
 most of the Chalcidieian peninsulas, had be- 
 come the center of a formidable confeder- 
 acy. Nearly all the towns in that region, 
 with the exception of Acanthus and ApoUo- 
 nia, had entered a league for the maintenance 
 of their independence. But the two just 
 named, being under the influence of oligar- 
 chies, and threatened with war by the confed- 
 erate cities, appealed to Sparta for aid. Their 
 ambassadors were supported by Arayntas of 
 Macedon, and the Lacedsemonians were not 
 hard to convince of the propriety of taking 
 up arms against Olynthus. An army of ten 
 thousand was at once put into the field, and 
 two thousand of these were hurried to the 
 North. 
 
 This advance force gained some advan- 
 tages over the league, and Potidsea was 
 won over to Sparta. When the remainder 
 of the Lacedaemonian army, under the com- 
 mand of Phoebidas, was sent forward, it passed 
 through Boeotia, and by a singular act of 
 treachery gained possession of Thebes. The 
 Thebans had joined the Olynthian alliance, and 
 thus aggravated the existing animosity of the 
 Spartans, but the latter concealed their pur- 
 poses, and acting in conjunction with Leonti- 
 ades, one of the Theban polemarchs, laid a 
 plan to overthrow the government. It hap- 
 pened that at this time the festival of the 
 Thesmophoria was celebrating in Thebes, and 
 that' in accordance with the custom the Cad- 
 mea or citadel; was given up to the women. 
 While the city was thus in a defenseless con- 
 dition, Phoebidas, pretending to continue his 
 march, suddenly turned about, seized the 
 Cadmea, arrested and put to death Ismenias, 
 the popular leader, and compelled three hun- 
 dred of his followers to fly for their lives. 
 
 The sequel of this audacious villainy was 
 in keeping with the Spartan character. With 
 profound duplicity the Ephors, ivho had authnr- 
 vied the act, now, in answer to the indignant 
 
 voice of Greece, disavowed what Phoebidas 
 had done and imposed on him a fine for his 
 conduct. Then they restored him to his com- 
 mand, and were meanwhile careful to keep 
 possession of the Cadmea ! 
 
 Thebes, thus overrun, was obliged to enter 
 into a Spartan alliance, and to furnish troops 
 to assist in the prosecution of the Olynthian 
 war. For four years (B. C. 383-379) the 
 conflict was continued. Agesipolis died and 
 was succeeded by Polybiades. The Spartans 
 gradually gained on the allies until the latter 
 were broken up. Olynthus wa-s besieged, and 
 after a long investment, was taken and dis- 
 mantled. All the Macedonian towns which 
 had been in rebellion against Amyutas were 
 restored to his authority. The influence of 
 the democratic states in the North, so neces- 
 sary as a counterpoise to the growing power 
 of Macedon, was destroyed, and the flood- 
 gates left open for the coming deluge. 
 
 For three years the city of Thebes re- 
 mained in the hands of the Spartan confeder- 
 ates. The leaders of the democracy were liv- 
 ing in exile in Athens. Chief among these 
 was the wealthy young Pelopidas, who had 
 already, by his virtues and abilities, acquired 
 an ascendency over the minds of his country- 
 men. The leader in Thebes was the great 
 Epaminondas, between whom and Pelopidas 
 the warmest ties grew up. On one occasion, 
 when Pelopidas was scarcely of the military 
 age, he had fought rashly in battle and was 
 beaten down by the enemy ; but, in the crit- 
 ical moment, Epaminondas threw his broad 
 shield between the gallant youth and de- 
 struction. 
 
 Ever afterwards Pelopidas looked to Epam- 
 inondas as to a father. Between the two he- 
 roes communication was now opened, and a 
 conspiracy was formed for the liberation of 
 Thebes from thralldom. A banquet was given 
 to the polemarchs, Archias and Philippus, and 
 when they were well drunken Pelopidas, and 
 six others, who had come into the city in dis- 
 guise, were introduced dressed as women. 
 When the intoxicated officers undertook to 
 lift their veils the conspirators drew their 
 daggers and stabbed them. Leontiades, the 
 military governor, was surrounded in his
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 595 
 
 he use and killed. Epaminondas issued a proc- 
 lamation of freedoni, aud the Theljaus from 
 every side rushed to arms. Au assembly was 
 caKed and the conspirators were publicly 
 crowned with wreaths of flowers. Tlie old 
 office of Bceotrarch was revived, and Pelopi- 
 das, Charon, and Mellon were chosen to ad- 
 minister the affairs of the state. The city 
 was soon filled with returning exiles. Athe- 
 nian volunteers poured into the country, aud 
 
 but the fact of the invasion remained, and 
 the exasjieratiou of Athens could not be ap- 
 peased. 
 
 Having once more completely broken with 
 the Lacedsemoniaus, the Athenians set to work 
 with great energy to establish a new league 
 which should be powerful enough to uphold 
 the independence of the democratic states. 
 The plan proposed was the constitution of the 
 old confederacy of Delos. A congress was to 
 
 El'AMIXONDAS SAYKS THE LIFE OF I'ELOl'lDAS. 
 Drawn by II. Vogel. 
 
 Epaminondas soon found himself at the head 
 of a courageous and powerful force. 
 
 Sparta was thunderstruck with the intelli- 
 gence. R;illying from her consternation she 
 dispatched an army under Ci.f.omrkotus and 
 Sphoduias to suppress the alarming insurrec- 
 tion. The former soon retired from Boeotia 
 without accomplishing any thing, and the 
 latter was bribed by the Thebans to invade 
 Attica — this for the purpose of comi)elling the 
 Athenians to enter into an active alliance 
 with themselves. The ruse was successful. 
 The Spartans disavowed the act of Sphodrias, 
 
 be created of delegates from the seventy in- 
 dependent cities composing the league, and 
 this body was to have the power to advise 
 and direct in all matters of common interest, 
 under the leadcr.'<hip of Athens. It was at 
 once voted to raise an army of twenty thou- 
 sand hoplites and five hundred cavalry, and 
 to equip a fleet of two hundred galleys. A 
 sj)ecial ta.x was assessed in Athens to push 
 forward the preparations, and in Thebes the 
 army was rapidly brought into a state of per- 
 fect discijjline. 
 
 Now it was that the military genius of
 
 596 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Epaminondas began to shine with inextin- 
 guishable luster. He had every quality req- 
 uisite in a popular hero. He was a man of 
 the people. To the intellectual acquirements 
 most prized in his own country — music, danc- 
 ing, and gymnastic skill — he added the best 
 accomplishments of Athenian learning. By 
 the study of Pythagoras and Socrates he had 
 familiarized himself with the best aspects of 
 Greek thought. To the gifts of persuasive 
 eloquence he added personal virtue, and to 
 courage of the most heroic pattern the high- 
 est military genius ever produced in Greece. 
 
 After the failure of Cleombrotus and 
 Sphodrias, the now aged Agesilaiis himself 
 tock the field to restore the fortunes of Sparta. 
 In B. C. 378 he invaded Bceotia with a large 
 army. The country was ravaged to the gates 
 of Thebes, but no decisive battle was fought, 
 nor did the Spartans manifest any extreme 
 anxiety to incur the hazard of a general en- 
 gagement. In the next year the same scenes 
 were witnessed and the same results reached, 
 except that Agesilaiis was injured in his lame 
 leg and for several seasons disabled from com- 
 mand. The campaign of B. C. 376 was in- 
 trusted to Cleombrotus, but the Thebans met 
 him in the passes of the Cithteron and he 
 was obliged to retire without crossing the 
 Boeotian frontier. 
 
 During this same year the Athenian fleets 
 under Chabrias and Phocion gained complete 
 control of the seas. The Spartan squadron 
 commanded by PoUio was defeated off" Naxos, 
 and on the western coast the islands of Ceph- 
 ellenia and Corcyra were recovered for the 
 league. So great was the success of the allied 
 navy that by the close of the year there was 
 less cause to apprehend danger from the fleet 
 of Sparta than from the privateers of ^gina. 
 But for a growing jealousy between Thebes 
 and Athens every thing would have foreto- 
 kened the complete triumph of the allies. 
 
 The years B. C. 375 and 374 were marked 
 by still greater successes of the Theban arms. 
 In the former summer Pelopidas gained a de- 
 cisive victory over the Spartans at the town 
 of Tegyra. The harmost of Orchomenus had 
 begun an invasion of Locris, and at the same 
 time Pelopidas undertook the capture of Or- 
 
 chomenus ; but both leaders were foiled in the 
 objects of their campaigns. In returning, 
 however, the Thebans fell in with the enemy 
 near Tegyra, and although greatly inferior in 
 numbers Pelopidas did not hesitate to join 
 battle. Depending upon the splendid Theban 
 phalanx known as the Sacred Band, he boldly 
 made the onset, and when a mesisenger big 
 with alarm ran to him and cried out, "We 
 are fallen into the midst of the enemy," ha 
 coolly replied, " AVhy then the enemy are 
 fallen into the midst of us!" The result of 
 the battle was ruinous to the Lacedemonians. 
 Both of their generals were killed, and the 
 losses in the ranks were very severe. All of 
 the region round about, with the exception of 
 Orchomenus and Chffironea, was detached 
 from Spartan rule. 
 
 By this stage of the war it had become 
 with Thebes not so much a question of inde- 
 pendence as how far she might extend her 
 influence. Phocis was the first state against 
 which she felt called to take up arms. The 
 Phocians had refused to pay the tribute 
 levied by the congress of the confederacy, 
 and felt comparatively safe in doing so be- 
 cause of the support of her ar^cient allies, the 
 Athenians. The latter, oflended at the atti- 
 tude of Thebes, proposed peace to the Spar- 
 tans, and terms were at once agreed upon. 
 But the treaty was broken almost as soon as 
 made, and hostilities continued. 
 
 After a few years of varying successes, the 
 desire for a settlement became general through- 
 out Greece. Antalcidas was again dispatched 
 (B C. 372) to the court of Persia to represent 
 that Thebes, by the restoration of the Boeotian 
 confederacy, had violated the terms of the 
 treaty dictated by the Great King, and to ask 
 his intervention. This proceeding quickened 
 the desire for peace on the part of the demo- 
 cratic states; for they greatly preferred to 
 settle the affairs of Greece without the aid or 
 interference of Persia. In furtherance of 
 such a desire a conference was held at Sparta 
 in the spring of B. C. 371, and after con- 
 siderable discussion the conditions of peace — 
 known as the Peace of Callias from the 
 name of the Athenian ambassador — were 
 agreed to by the deputies.
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 597 
 
 The terras of the compact were — the iude- 
 pendence of the various Greek cities, the dis- 
 banding of the hostile fleets, and the dismissal 
 of all the Spartan garrisons from the towns 
 now occupied by them. When it came to 
 signing the treaty there was a strange inci- 
 dent, which revealed more plainly than words 
 the hollowness of the settlement, or perhaps 
 it might be said of any settlement between 
 the states represented in the congress. Sparta 
 ratified the terms for herself and her allies. 
 Athens signed for herself only, and each of 
 the confeiierate cities gave a separate ratifica- 
 tion until it came to Thebes. Epaminondas in 
 sisted that lie would sign for himself and for 
 the Eieotian confederacy. When this proceed- 
 ing was resisted by Agesilaiis, the Theban 
 boldly defended his right, maintaining that 
 the same difi'ered in no respect from the right 
 of Sparta to sign for the Lacediemouian 
 league. He declared that in either case the 
 right depended on the sword, and that a Boeo- 
 tian sword was as good as a Spartan. Agesi- 
 laiis was greatly angered at this "insolence," 
 and the altercation became so violent that the 
 king in a rage ordered the name of Thebes 
 to be struck out of the treaty. So Epamin- 
 ondas was left to himself and his sword. 
 
 Of course there was but one thing to be 
 expected — the immediate invasion of Boeotia 
 by the Lacedemonians. Nor was it regarded 
 as within the range of things possible that 
 Thebes, even with the support of her great 
 general, could long withstand the assaults of 
 her inveterate and jiowerful foe. Neverthe- 
 less, when Cleombrotus, who now held com- 
 mand of the Spartan army in Phocis, was 
 onlered to march into Bceotia and put down 
 all opposition, Epaminondas, notliing daunted, 
 made preparations to give him battle. The 
 combatants met on the plain of Leuctka. The 
 Thebans were greatly discouraged at the ap- 
 proach of the cncniy. Bad omens were re- 
 ported b_v the seers. Three of the seven 
 Bceotnirciis voted to return to the city and to 
 send tlu'ir wives and children to Athens. 
 But I'][)aruin()n(las could not be appalled. 
 Just before the battle began an exile dis- 
 covered that the field contained the tombs of 
 two Theban virgins who had killed themselves 
 
 after liaviug been violated by Spartan sol- 
 diers. The general had their graves covered 
 with garlands, and demanded that the out- 
 raged honor of Theban womanhood should 
 now be vindicated on the ilastardly race that 
 had committed the deed. The spirit of the 
 soldiers was fired with the appeal, and the 
 conflict began. 
 
 The tactics adopted by Epaminondas were 
 a novelty in Grecian warfare. Hitherto there 
 had been but little variation from the estab- 
 lished usage of the field. The Greek com- 
 mander generally arranged his forces so as to 
 "attack in line." The theory of battle was 
 that the whole line — center, left wing, right 
 wing — must be maintained unbroken. It is 
 to Epaminondas that the method of attacking 
 in column, that is, of throwing upon some 
 particular part of the enemy's lines a heavy 
 mass of men moving in a column with a nar- 
 row front, but of great depth, must be re- 
 ferred. He adopted this policy for the first 
 in the battle of Leuctra. Concentrating his 
 best troops in the left wing, where they were 
 massed to the depth of fifty files, he threw 
 them with irresistible force against the Spar- 
 tan right. The Theban center and right were 
 not advanced at all, but held in reserve to 
 act according to the emergency. With the 
 onset the Lacedtemoniau right wing was 
 utterly routed. Gleombrotus was mortally 
 wounded — the first Spartan "king" who had 
 fallen in battle since the da}' of Therm(>pyl£e. 
 The rout was complete. The Spartans were 
 granted the privilege of burying their dead, 
 but these were first stripped of their armor, 
 which was hung as a trophy in Thebes. 
 
 The effect of this victory was tremendous 
 in all Greece. It had been believed that in a 
 general field battle the Spartan hoplites were 
 invincible. Here at Leuctra, though superior 
 in numbers, advantageously posted, and ably 
 commanded, they had been beaten down by 
 the hitherto comjiarativelv undistinguished 
 soldiery of Thebes, and this, too, l)y a method 
 of attack which was an innovation upon the 
 established rules of battle. Sparta had never 
 before suflered so great a disaster in the field.' 
 
 'As illustrative of Spartan character ami nian- 
 ipr«. the reception of Uie news of tlie batt/e of
 
 598 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 '\\Tiether viewed iu itself as a ruinous defeat, 
 or considered as a precedent of what might 
 be expected hereafter, the shock might well 
 be regarded as fatal to Spartan military 
 fame. 
 
 At this epoch in Grecian history appeared 
 on the stage Jason of Pher.e, generalissimo 
 of Thessaly. After the battle of Leuctra, the 
 Thebans sent to him for assistance in the fur- 
 ther prosecution of their war with Sparta. 
 Already ambitious of extending his own in- 
 fluence in Northern and Central Greece, he 
 gladly joined his forces with those of Thebes 
 to complete the expulsion of the La,cedsemo- 
 nians from the country. This was accom- 
 plished, however, rather by strategy than by 
 force ; for Jason assumed the office of an ar- 
 biter, and the three hundred surviving Spar- 
 tans were permitted to escape from Breotia 
 and return home. 
 
 It was evident from this transaction that 
 Jason of Pherae, having had a taste of Greek 
 politics, was enamored of the situation, and 
 that he saw in the same an opportunity for the 
 extension of his own influence and authority. 
 After scanning the horizon, it appeared to 
 him that Southern Greece offered the most 
 favorable field for his operations. Accord- 
 ingly he announced his intention to partici- 
 pate in the ensuing Pythian Festival of 
 August, B. C. 370. He caused it to be pro- 
 claimed that he would himself take charge of 
 the celebration, and that his sacrifice to 
 Apollo should consist of one thousand bulls 
 and ten thousand sheep, goats, and swine. 
 The Delphian priests and Amphictyons were 
 thrown into consternation by these tidings, 
 but the oracle gave assurance that Phoebus 
 would guard his shrine. A short time after- 
 wards, and i)efore the date of the festival, 
 Jason was brought to a pause by assassina- 
 tion. Seven young men rushed upon him 
 
 Leuctra forms a striking incident. The festival 
 of Gyinnopsedia, wliich was celebrating at the 
 time, went on without interruption. Women 
 were forbidden to wail for their dead. The rela- 
 tives of those wlio were slain went about the 
 streets laughing; while those whose friends had 
 survived from the battle wept from shame and 
 mortification. As for the rest, Sparta merely pre- 
 pared to rescue her army. 
 
 and gave him his quietus while he sat in pub- 
 lic hearing causes. 
 
 In the mean time the Mantineans, whose 
 city, as heretofore related, had been disman- 
 tled by the Spartans, had availed themselves 
 of the decline of Lacedjemonian influence to 
 rebuild their ramparts. In this work they 
 were supported by other Arcadian towns and 
 also by Thebes; for the latter saw in these 
 movements a sign of the cloud that was to 
 break over Sparta. Agesilaiis marched into 
 Arcadia, but was unable to prevent the Man- 
 tineans from restoring their city. He, how- 
 ever, did much damage by ravaging the 
 country round about, and then withdrew. 
 Epaminondas was already on the march to 
 the south, where he was joined by the Argives 
 and the Eleans, by whom his already large 
 army was increased to seventy thousand men. 
 His plan now contemplated the restoration to 
 independence of Messenia, whose people for 
 generations had been scattered into all parts 
 of Greece. So great was the enthusiasm 
 created by the presence of Epaminondas in 
 Peloponnesus that the enemies of Sparta, 
 availing themselves of the manifest paralysis 
 of that power, exhorted him to make an in- 
 vasion of Laconia. To this he assented, and 
 his army was immediately advanced across 
 the border and was soon at Amj'clse, on the 
 the Eurotas, only a few miles from the 
 capital. 
 
 The alarm at that city knew no bounds. 
 The women of Sparta, who had never seen the 
 face of an enemy, went about wailing. 
 Nothing but the energy and courage of Ages- 
 ilaiis saved the city from capture and de- 
 struction ; but through his exertions, assisted 
 by the Ephors, the walless capital of Laconia 
 was soon brought into a state of defense. 
 And though the king did not dare to go 
 forth and give his antagonist battle, he yet 
 succeeded in protecting the city. Ejjaminon- 
 das, however, wasted the country at wUl, and 
 withdrew unmolested to the west. Here, in 
 Arcadia and Messenia, he prosecuted success- 
 fully his purpose of establishing an Arcadian 
 confederation and restoring the state of Mes- 
 senia to independence. To secure the latter 
 object, the ancient cliffs of Ithome were se-
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 .599- 
 
 lected, and a new capital, called Messene, was 
 established on the summit. 
 
 Such was the present abasement of Sparta 
 that she now sent humbly to Athens to solicit 
 an alliance against the Thebans. The Athe- 
 nians rcadilv assented, but SpartM, in order \i> 
 
 bans soon broke through the passes, and in 
 B. C. 369 made the usual invasion of South- 
 ern Greece. Still the campaign was not at- 
 tended with much success, and in the mean 
 time the Lacediemouian cause was cousider- 
 idilv revived 1)V tlie Mrrival of a squadroQ 
 
 w^^^^ 
 
 BANQUET I 
 
 secure the league, was obliged to renounce 
 her claims of leadership. It was agreed that 
 the command both by land and sea should 
 alternate in periods of five daj-s between the 
 generals of the two states. The first move- 
 ment of the new allies was to occupy the 
 isthmus of Coi'inth. Thus shoulil Epaminon- 
 das be cut oR' from communication with his 
 confederates in Peloponnesus. But the Tlie- 
 
 from Syracuse, the same being sent out by the 
 Sicilian tyrant, Dionysius." AVith the approach 
 
 ' It was at the court of the Tyrant Dionysius 
 that tlie celebrated incident occurred in which 
 the courtier Damocles figured as the principal 
 actor. As narrated by Cicero, this distinguished' 
 sycophant liad, after the manner of liis kind, 
 lauded Dionysius, and ascribed to him snoh hap- 
 piness as belongs only to the immortals. In order 
 to rebuke tliis unseemly (lattery, tbe Tyrant in-
 
 600 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 of winter Epaminondas retired to Thebes and 
 the allies to their respective states. 
 
 The year B. C. 368 was mostly occupied 
 by an expedition of Pelopidas into Thessaly. 
 After the death of Jason, Alexander, a Thes- 
 ealian prince, had succeeded, by murdering 
 his two brothers, in becoming generalissimo 
 of the country. Against him — for he enter- 
 tained the same ambitious projects of his 
 predecessor — the Thebau campaign was di- 
 rected. Pelopidas was entirely successful. 
 Alexander was obliged to solicit a settlement, 
 and the cities of Thessaly were mostly in- 
 duced to enter into a league against the ex- 
 tension of his power. As soon as the state 
 was reduced to quiet Pelopidas marched into 
 Macedonia, whose regent Ptolemy was induced 
 to make an alliance with the Thebans; and 
 to bind the compact the young Macedonian 
 prince, Philip, son of Amyntas, was given as 
 a hostage and taken to Thebes, where he spent 
 several years, keenly alive to the influences 
 of Greek politics and the culture of the 
 South. Thus was brought about the first con- 
 tact between the Greek states and the great 
 power of the North by whose sword their lib- 
 «rties were so soon to be extinguished. 
 
 Meanwhile, the league of the Arcadian 
 cities had grown strong as well as over-con- 
 fident under the leadership of Lycomedes. 
 Like all the other Greeks the Arcadians, as 
 soon as freedom dawned, rushed forward to 
 gain first independence and then ascendency. 
 This haste to be great roused the jealousy of 
 Thebes, and she now looked coldly on the 
 Arcadian confederation or even sympathized 
 with its enemies. After the arrival of the 
 Syracusan reinforcements the Spartans,, feel- 
 ing strong enough to assume the offensive, in- 
 vaded Arcadia, and succeeded in bringing on 
 an action in which the forces of the towns of 
 the league were completely routed. Not a 
 single Spartan fell in the conflict, and the 
 .'€ght was for this reason given the name of 
 the Tearless Battle. 
 
 vited Damocles to a lianquet. When the courtier 
 arrived and was seated, he glanced upward and 
 beheld ahove his head a sword suspended by a 
 single hair! Tlius would his master teach him 
 *he peril and precarious tenure of greatness. 
 
 The important event of the years B. C. 
 367-366 was the embassy sent by Thebes to 
 Persia. Ever since the Peace of Antalcidas 
 the Great King had claimed and exercised 
 the rights of an arbiter in the internal afiairs 
 of Greece. The Thebans, now claiming the 
 position of leadership, felt that it was neces- 
 sary for their assumption to be recognized by 
 the Persian court. Pelopidas and Ismenias 
 were accordingly sent to Susa to secure the 
 sanction of the royal power to the claim of 
 Thebes, and also to obtain the decision of 
 the king respecting several disputes now 
 pending between the Greek states. The 
 Athenians, in order if possible, to counteract 
 the arguments of the Theban ambassadors, 
 sent Timagoras and Leon to represent Athens 
 and the Peloponnesian league. But the king, 
 who had now learnt that the easiest way to 
 maintain his ascendency in Greece was to 
 support the strongest state, readily inclined 
 to the side c Thebes. Her leadership was 
 formally recognized, and the pending difficul- 
 ties in Peloponnesus were all decided accord- 
 ing to her wish. 
 
 The settlement, however, was unfavorably 
 received in Greece. In vain did Thebes in- 
 sist that the rescript of the Great King should 
 be accepted by the assembly convened to hear 
 the conditions of the adjustment. The Arca- 
 dians withdrew from the council. Other 
 states refused to ratify the terms. Pelopidas 
 and Ismenias went in person to Thessaly to 
 secure a ratification. Alexander had them 
 seized and imprisoned at Pherse. When the 
 Thebans undertook to recover their general 
 and sent an army of more than eight thou- 
 sand men into Thessaly they were defeated 
 and driven from the country. For in a fit 
 of folly they had refused that year to reelect 
 Epaminondas Bceotrarch, and the commanders 
 who went against Alexander were incompe- 
 tent as leaders. 
 
 The great general, however, was serv- 
 ing in the ranks, and when the army, pur- 
 sued by Alexander, was about to be ruined, 
 the soldiers called on Epaminondas to save 
 them. He accordingly took command and 
 the Theban forces were delivered from their 
 peril. A reaction in his favor was the imme-
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 m 
 
 diate result. He was restored to his office 
 and intrusted with a new expedition to se- 
 cure the release of Pelopidas. He at once 
 proceeded into Thessaly and induced Alexan- 
 der rather by diplomacy than by force to set 
 Pelopidas at liberty. Epamiuoudas then re- 
 frained from any severe retaliation against 
 the generalissimo on the ground of ex- 
 pediency. 
 
 The next incident of the struggle to main- 
 tain the Theban ascendency was the capture 
 of Oropus. This town, situated near the bor- 
 der line between Athens and Thebes, had for 
 a long time been in possession of the former 
 city; but the people of Oropus, composed for 
 the most part of Theban exiles, sympathized 
 with the mother state, and watching their op- 
 portunity seized the city and delivered it over 
 to Thebes. About the same time the Arca- 
 dians, under the load of Lycomodes, having 
 been alienated by the course of the Thei)an 
 authorities, sought and obtained an alliance 
 with Athens, though in the course of the 
 negotiations Lycomedes was assassinated by 
 some exiles acting in the Theban interest. 
 By this league it became more than ever de- 
 sirable for Athens to have possession of the 
 isthmus of Corinth to the end that she might 
 keep a free conmuinication between herself 
 and her Peloponnesian allies. She accord- 
 ingly with singular moral obliquity formed 
 the design of seizing Corinth, though ])etw('en 
 herself and that city there was not the slight- 
 est cause of quarrel. The Corinthians, how- 
 ever, gathered an intimation of the .scheme, 
 and were able by judicious measures to thwart 
 the purpose of her friend. They then turned 
 to Thebes with a proposition for a general 
 peace. To this the Thebans assented, and a 
 conference was accordingly convened at Sparta, 
 but only the minor states could agree on the 
 terms of settlement. Thebes, Athens, Sparta, 
 and Arcadia could not be reconciled, and the 
 struggle continued as before. 
 
 During the years B. C. 36.5-364 the Athe- 
 nians regained in some measure their ascen- 
 dency at sea. A fleet under command of 
 Timothcus conquered Samos and restored the 
 authority of his country in most of the Cyc- 
 
 lades. The effect of this revival of maritime 
 K.— Vol. 1—37 
 
 power was to arouse and exasperate the The- 
 bans, who had never hitherto wielded any 
 influence in the J<]gean. Epaminondas en- 
 couraged his countrymen to build a fleet of 
 one hundred triremes and was himself put in 
 command of the squadron. Sailing to the 
 Hellespont in B. C. 363 he made as though 
 he would begin a conquest of the countries 
 adjacent thereto, but nothing came of the ex- 
 pedition. The sea-service was a novelty both 
 to himself and his men. 
 
 While this maritime andiition had pos- 
 session of the mind of Ejjaminondas, Pelopi- 
 das organized a laud force and again invaded 
 Thessaly. The recollection of his imprison- 
 ment rankled within him, and he determined 
 that Alexander should feel the force of his 
 vengeance. The latter raised a large army 
 and advanced to meet the Thebans. The two 
 enemies confronted each other in the field of 
 Cynoscephal.e, where the Thessalians, though 
 greatly superior in numbers, were completely 
 routed. Pelopidas, however, like Cyrus the 
 Younger at Cunaxa, inspired by a sudden 
 rage on beholding Alexander in the enemy's 
 confused ranks, made a rash and furious 
 charge with the hope of reaching him. But 
 Alexander was surrounded by his friends, and 
 Pelopidas, cutting at them with blind fury, 
 was himself struck down and killed. His loss 
 was so great as to counterbalance the victory. 
 Shortly afterwards, however, a .second Theban 
 campaign against Thessaly was completely 
 successful. Alexander was stripped of all his 
 dependencies and confined to the limits of his 
 own city of Pherro. 
 
 In the mean time a war had broken out 
 between Elis and Arcadia. The latter state 
 in B. C. 364 had transferred the presidency 
 of the Olympic games from the Eleans to the 
 Pisatans, and the former enileavorcd to main- 
 tain their rights by force. During the prog- 
 ress of the festival they came armed into the 
 sacred ]>recinct.'i, and were resisted by the Ar- 
 cadians. The temjile of Zeus was seized and 
 used as a fortress, and the celebration was 
 broken up in a shameful conflict. The Eleana 
 were finally compelled to retire, but ihey 
 sought revenge by striking the one hundred 
 and fiuirtli 01ym])iad from the list of the
 
 602 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 festivals and counting it ever afterwards a 
 dies non. 
 
 After the war had continued for two years 
 Epamiaoudas again undertook the pacification 
 of Peloponnesus and marched a large army 
 across the isthmus. He was joined by reen- 
 forcements from those states and towns favor- 
 able to the Theban cause, while those who 
 were opposed rallied in great force at Man- 
 tinea. The aged Agesilaiis, of Sparta, set out 
 for this place at the head of the Lacedsemo- 
 nian forces, and Epaminondas seeing the La- 
 conian capital thus exposed, once more formed 
 the design of capturing it. By a swift move- 
 ment he reached the city before Agesilaiis 
 could reenter ; but the houses were so well 
 defended and the old king so alert that the 
 Theban was obliged to retire. Sparta again 
 escaped destruction by the skin of her teeth. 
 
 Epaminondas, however, at once made his 
 way to Mantinea, and here was fought the 
 decisive battle of the war. The conflict oc- 
 curred in the plain between the city and Te- 
 gea. On coming upon the field Epaminondas 
 ordered his soldiers to ground arms. From 
 this movement the Spartans and Mantinseans 
 inferred that the battle would not occur 
 until the following day. They accordingly 
 took off their breastplates and disposed them- 
 selves at ease. But Epaminondas was busy 
 with preparations, and had no thought of 
 procrastination. He adopted the same plan 
 of battle as at Leuctra. He massed his best 
 troops into a column of great depth and 
 hurled them upon the enemy, who, hurrying 
 into rank, were unable to withstand the 
 shock. The field was swept at a single charge, 
 and the soldiers of Sparta were again seen in 
 flight. But the victory was purchased by 
 Thebes at too dear a price. Epaminondas, 
 fighting in the foremost ranks, was struck in 
 the breast with a spear and fell mortally 
 wounded. He was carried from the field in 
 a dying condition. Having satisfied himself 
 that his shield tvas safe, and that the victory 
 was certainly won, he ordered the spear-head 
 to be drawn from his breast, and died. 
 
 The Theban ascendency perished with him. 
 Both of those — lolaidas and Daiphantus— 
 whom he had indicated as his successors per- 
 
 ished in the battle, and his oyu dying advice 
 to make peace was as necessary as it was judi- 
 cious. His great rival, Agesilaiis, survived 
 him but a short time, and then ended his 
 career in a most dramatic manner. At the 
 age of eighty years, the indomitable old man, 
 hobbling about on his lame leg, organized a 
 force of one thousand hoplites and went on 
 an expedition into Egypt. That country, 
 under the leadership of Tachos, was now en- 
 gaged in an insurrection against the Persians, 
 and the Spartan king went to his aid. He 
 cut so ridiculous a figure on his arrival that 
 Egyptian ridicule could not be restrained. 
 
 But the party of Neetanebis, who presently 
 rose against Tachos, better appreciated the 
 military genius of the short old octogenarian, 
 who went stumping about the ranks with the 
 imperturbable spirit for which his race had 
 always been noted. Agesilaiis actually raised 
 Neetanebis to power, and was by him re- 
 warded with a present of two huudred and 
 thirty talents. But on his way homeward 
 the old man died. His body was embalmed 
 in wax and carried to Sparta, where it was 
 buried with great honor. The ancient proph- 
 ecy which had confronted him at the be- 
 ginning of his reign, and which Lysander 
 had to explain away, had indeed been ful- 
 filled. Sparta had good reason to beware of 
 the "lame reign," for her prominence in the 
 afliairs of Greece ceased with the death of 
 Agesilaiis. 
 
 Mention has been recently made of a 
 squadron sent to the aid of the Lacedaemo- 
 nians by Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. The 
 incident naturally suggests a few paragraphs 
 on the progress of Grecian civilization in Sic- 
 ily and Southern Italy. After the complete 
 collapse of the Athenian expedition of B. C. 
 413, at which time the government of Syra- 
 cuse was in the hands of the oligarchic or 
 Spartan party, a revolution occurred in favor 
 of the democracy. One Diodes, a learned 
 and patriotic citizen, was appointed to draft 
 a popular constitution. Hermocrates, the 
 leader of the oligarchy, was banished; but 
 a counter revolution was soon organized by 
 which he was enabled to return and Diodes 
 was himself sent into exile. \Miile the oli-
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 603 
 
 garchic chief was endeavoring to regain pos- 
 session of Syracuse he was slain; but his 
 cause was immediately tiiken up by the young 
 Dionysius, a man of great abilities and au- 
 dacity, who soon obtained a vote of the assem- 
 bly by which he was raised first to authority 
 and then to despotism. He first made suc- 
 cessful war upon several of the Sicilian cities, 
 and then began a conflict with Carthage. But 
 this undertaking proved beyond his capacity 
 to manage. The island was invaded by an im- 
 mense force of Carthaginians, and Syracuse 
 was only saved from capture, and perhaps 
 destruction, by the ravages of a pestilence 
 which broke out iu the camp of the besiegers. 
 ImilcDii, the Canhagiuiau general, then pur- 
 chased from Dionysius the privilege of a safe 
 retreat from the island. 
 
 Under the direction of the tyrant, Syracuse 
 soon became the foremost city in the west. 
 And, indeed, in all continental Greece, Sparta 
 only could rival the power and grandeur of 
 the Sicilian capital. Dionysius himself set 
 the example in artistic and literary culture. 
 He courted the Muses. He had his poems 
 publicly recited, not only iu his own city, but 
 also iu Athens. He contended for prizes at 
 the Lenrean festival and at the Olympic 
 games. Several second and third prizes were 
 awarded to him, and finally the first ])rize in 
 tragedy, given for his play entitled the Ran- 
 toni of Hector. For thirty-eight years he 
 wielded the destinies of the city, and died 
 without an overthrow. 
 
 After him his sou. known as Dionysius the 
 Ydunger, became master of Syracuse, and for 
 A 'vhile, under the influence of Pi.ato, who 
 was invited to his court, showed some signs 
 of mitigating the rigorous rule established by 
 his father ; but the influence of courtiers ])re- 
 vailed against these tendencies, and Plato liini- 
 flelf, falling into disrepute, was for a season in 
 clanger of Ids life. At length, however, the 
 philosopher escaped and returned to Greece. 
 
 Soon afterwards, in B. C. .3.")7, Dion, the 
 leader of the opposing party in politics, headed 
 an insurrection against the tyrant, and the 
 latter was overthrown, to the great joy of the 
 peoiile. Dion then became ruler of the city, 
 and was expected to make an eflbrt at reform. 
 
 He had been the friend of Plato, and had im- 
 bibed that great thinker's profound but some- 
 what impracticable views of government, and 
 the people looked for a millennium; but in 
 this they were so grievously disappointed that 
 Dion was soon assassinated by one Callippus, 
 who held the city for about a year, when he 
 was iu turn driven out by a nephew of Dion. 
 Several revolutions followed in quick succes- 
 sion, untd finally an appeal was sent to Sparta 
 for the restoration of order. The Lacedje- 
 mouiau authorities thereupon disjiatched the 
 celebrated Timoleon to quiet the disturbances 
 in Sicily, and especially to restore the ascen- 
 dency of Spartan influence in Syracuse.' 
 
 The squadron given to Timoleon numbered 
 only ten vessels, but with this small armament 
 he made his way into Sicily. Having arrived 
 at Adranum he encountered Hicetas, the then 
 leader of the democratic party iu the island, 
 who came out with a large force to drive back 
 the Spartans. Timoleon, however, gained a 
 decisive victory, and then marched into Syra- 
 cuse without further opposition. Dionysius 
 (the third of that name), who now headed 
 the oligarchy, surrendered to him, and he thus 
 became master of the city. He at once pro- 
 ceeded to the demolition of the fortifications 
 of Orytigia and the destruction of the other 
 relics of the reign of the Elder Dionysius, in- 
 cluding his splendid mausoleum ; and when 
 this work was accomplished the new governor 
 erected courts of justice on the sites of the 
 overthrow. Those who had been banished 
 were invited to return, and of these — together 
 with companies of citizens who joined them — 
 there came from Corinth ton thousand in a 
 single colony. The constitution was revised, 
 and most of the statutes of Dioclcs again made 
 operative in the government of the city. 
 
 ' The story of Timoleon's previous life is a 
 tragedy. Once in battle be saved the life of his 
 elder brother Tiniojihenes, but afterwards, when 
 the latter was overtaken in a piece of treacliery 
 to bis country, he consented to his death. Then 
 remorse seized him, and, loaded with the impre- 
 cations of his mother, he slunk out of sight and 
 tried to starve himself to death. After a long 
 seclusion lie was, by one of those strange caprices 
 for which the Greek mind was so peculiarly noted, 
 called to take charge of the expedition just organ- 
 ized in aid of the Syracusans.
 
 604 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 After the defeat of Hicetas, that leader 
 Btill held out for a season, defending himself 
 in the town of Leoutini. Here he was pres- 
 ently besieged by Timoleou and obliged to 
 capitulate ; but he sought revenge by inviting 
 jn the Carthaginians, who immediately re- 
 sponded by sending into the island an army 
 of seventy thousand men. Against these 
 Timoleon could muster but twelve thousand ; 
 but with this small force he went boldly into 
 battle at the river Crimesus, and, assisted by 
 a terrible storm which burst suddenly in the 
 face of the enemy with hail and lightning 
 and wind, gained a complete and decisive 
 victory. Ten thousand of the Carthaginians 
 
 PLATO. 
 
 Museum of DePauw University. 
 
 were destroyed in the battle and fifteen thou- 
 sand made prisoners. The effect of the vic- 
 tory was such that the enemy was glad to ac- 
 cept the terms of peace which, in B. C. 338, 
 Timoleon saw fit to offer. 
 
 In the mean time, Hicetas was overthrown, 
 taken prisoner, and condemned to death 
 for his treachery. The various despots who 
 under the influence of the oligarchy had ob- 
 tained possession of most of the Sicilian 
 towns were now ejected, and the whole 
 island speedily brought to a condition of 
 quiet never before enjoyed. As soon as this 
 happy condition of affairs had been reached, 
 Timoleon resigned his trust and retired to 
 private life. For his services he would accept 
 nothing but a modest house given him by the 
 city. He soon afterwards brought his family 
 
 from Greece, and passed the rest of his life 
 in honorable seclusion. It was impossible, 
 however, that his influence should not be 
 sought and felt in the public business of the 
 city and island. He was frequently consulted 
 as a kind of patriotic oracle in deciding the 
 gravest questions of state. After his blindness, 
 which ensued not long after his retirement, 
 he continued to be a mark of the distin- 
 guished esteem and confidence of the Syracu- 
 sans, who took delight in bringing him in a 
 car into the public assembly or theater, and 
 on such occasions he was always received 
 with a burst of popular enthusiasm. At his 
 death, in B. C. 336, he was honored with a 
 splendid funeral at the public expense, and a 
 concourse of weeping people gathered at his 
 tomb to bear witness to his heroic virtues and 
 unselfish patriotism. 
 
 Before the events which have just been 
 narrated, the final act in Hellenic history had 
 begun in Greece. It will have been noticed 
 that, with the decline of Sparta, the appre- 
 hensions of the Athenians and Thebans were 
 directed to the North rather than to Pelopon- 
 nesus. The imbroglio with Alexander of 
 Pherse had indicated that even within the 
 limits of Northern Greece the elements of 
 danger to the independence of the smaller 
 states lay hidden ready for development; but 
 more particularly was there cause for alarm 
 from the growing power of the great kingdom 
 just beyond Olympus. 
 
 The giving of the youth, Philip of Mace- 
 don, as a hostage to the Thebans, and his 
 residence of several years among the Greeks, 
 have already been mentioned. While in 
 Thebes the young man made good use of his 
 opportunities. He studied the Greek lan- 
 guage and literature. He made the acquaint- 
 ance of Plato. He studied military science 
 under Epaminondas, and familiarized himself 
 with the current condition of the afl^airs of 
 Greece. His great natural abilities were thus 
 stimulated in a school well calculated to bring 
 out the best energies of his genius. Before 
 leaving Thebes — which he did in B. C. 359 — 
 to assume the duties of the Macedonian gov- 
 ernmeut during the absence of his brother 
 Perdiccas on the Illyrian campaign, he ha<1
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAX AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 605 
 
 already attracted the attentiou of the most 
 eminent Greeks of his time. Nor were there 
 wanting those who could discover in the 
 young prince the forecastings of a remarkable 
 career. 
 
 AVhen Perdiccas was slain by the lilyriaus, 
 the crown of Macedonia fell to his son, with 
 Philip for regent. Two claimants to the 
 throne now arose — Pausanias, who was sup- 
 ported by the king of Thrace, and Argseus, 
 with whom the Athenians were leagued on 
 account of the favor which he had shown 
 them in gaining possession of Amphipolis. 
 
 But Philip, by his address, soon secured the 
 withdrawal of support from both of the pre- 
 tenders, and thus brought their cause to 
 naught. Having thus provided for peace at 
 home, he at once entered upon his campaign 
 against the Pseoniaus and Illyrians. Both of 
 these peoples were quickly and easily sub- 
 dued. The tactics whicii Philip had learned 
 from Epaminondas were put to use in the 
 very first battle, and with terrible effect upon 
 the Illyrians. who were put to utter rout by 
 the beavy column whiili the Macedonian 
 mas.scd against a single point in their lines. 
 The effect of the victory so strengthened 
 Philip at home that by common consent he 
 assumed the crown ; Init the son of Perdiccas 
 was treated with con-^ideration by the new 
 king, who gave him liis daughter in marriage. 
 The first contact of Philip with the Athe- 
 nians was respecting the possession of Amphip- 
 olis. It will be remembered that this city 
 had been wrenched from Athens by Brasidas 
 of Sparta, and had subsequently had a nom- 
 inal independence. With the organization of 
 the Olynthian league the mendiers of that 
 confederacy became extremely anxio\is that 
 Amphipolis should become a member of the 
 alliiince. The position of the city at the 
 niDUiii of the Strymon rendered it of vast im- 
 portance to Philip, whose ambition reached 
 towards the ocean as well as landward. With 
 extraordinary skill, not unmixeil with crafti- 
 ness, ne secured the friendliness and support 
 of Athens by promising to give her Amph''i- 
 olis if she would yield Pydna to him ; and 
 at the same time he procured the withdrawal 
 of the claim of Olvntlius by agreeing to cede 
 
 to that city the town of Anthemus. These 
 measures having cleared the field of opposi- 
 tion, he suddenly laid siege to Amphipolis and 
 took it before assistance could be rendered by 
 any. He also kept Pydna ; and the Olyn- 
 thians and Athenians ipere left to nurse their 
 complaints. The people of Olynthus were 
 soon placated by the recovery of Potidsea, 
 which town Philip graciously turned over to 
 them as a kind of compensation for the loss 
 of Amphipolis. 
 
 The year B. C. 356 was a fortunate epoch 
 for the Macedonian king. In that year his 
 general, Parmenio, gained a great victory 
 over the Illyrians, by which the previous con- 
 quest of Philip was strengthened and con 
 firmed. In the Olympic games the king's 
 chariot won a ])rize in the face of the sharpest 
 competition ; and last, but not least, a son 
 was born and named — Alexander. 
 
 At this time Central Greece — especially 
 Athens — was distracted by the Social War. 
 A coalition was formed against tliat state by 
 Byzantium, Rhodes, Chios, and Cos; and the 
 efforts of the mother city to suppress the re- 
 volt proved unavailing. The conflict, how- 
 ever, was continued (B. C. 357-355) until 
 Artaxerxes interfered, and Athens was obliged 
 to assent to the independence of her insurgent 
 dependencies. Meanwhile another contest, 
 known as the Sacred War,* had broken out 
 between Thebes and Phocis. The people of 
 the latter state had long been held in dislike 
 by the Thebans, who now, using their great 
 influence in the attkirs of Greece, secured a 
 vote at the Amphictyonic council by which a 
 heavy fine was imposed on the Phocians, who 
 had — as was alleged — been cultivating a por- 
 tion of the consecrated jilain of Cirrha. 
 
 Phocis, after protesting in vain and being 
 afllicted with a second fine, flew into a pas- 
 sion, and, under the lead of Philomelus, seized 
 Delphi, temple, oracle, and all. With the 
 enormous treasures thus secured, the Phocians 
 bid defiance to the Thebans. Ten thousand 
 mercenaries were hired, and with this force 
 Philomelus, making his way into Locris, de- 
 feated the army which Thebes had put into 
 
 ' This was the second conflict so-called. See »u- 
 pra, p. 518.
 
 606 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 the field against hira. But the tide soon 
 turned, and in a second battle the Phoeians 
 ■were routed and their leader killed. Ono- 
 marchus succeeded to the command, and the 
 war continued with varying success and 
 great barbarity ; for the sacrilegious nature 
 of the quarrel embittered the contest by 
 as much as superstition is more cruel than 
 reason. 
 
 Thus by the Social and the Sacred War 
 was Greece weakened. Philip saw in the dis- 
 tractions of his neighbors on the south an 
 opportunity to interfere for the aggrandize- 
 ment of his own influence. First he invaded 
 Thessaly, where the exactions of Alexander 
 
 of Pherse and his 
 successors had so 
 embittered the 
 people that an 
 easy conquest was 
 open to any lib- 
 eral-minded and 
 sagacious general. 
 The town of Phe- 
 rie, however, more 
 subjected to the 
 influence of the 
 recent tyrants 
 than other Thes- 
 salian cities, re- 
 ■^isted Philip and 
 was besieged. 
 Ouomarchus, the 
 Phocian, who had 
 received some assistance from the Pherse- 
 ans, now sent a force of seven thousand men 
 to their aid, and Philip was obliged to retire 
 fo" a time from the country. Returning, 
 however, with an army of twenty thousand 
 men he overran all Thessaly, but Onomarchus 
 again marched into the country and gave the 
 Macedonian battle near the gulf of Pagasse. 
 The latter was this time completely victorious. 
 The Phocian general was slain. Philip pro- 
 claimed himself the defender of the Delphic 
 shrine, and was about to march at once into 
 Central Greece, but was turned back by a 
 strong force posted at Thermopylse. 
 
 Now it was that the great Demosthenes 
 appeared in the arena at Athens. The peo- 
 
 DEJiobTHESES. — Berlin. 
 
 pie of the city divided into a Macedonian and 
 an anti-Macedonian party. The latter was 
 led by the orator; the former, by his 
 rivals, Phocion and JEschines. The story of 
 the life of Demosthenes is full of interest and 
 instruction. Defrauded by his guardians and 
 turned out in poverty on the world, weak in 
 body, and subject to great dejection, he began 
 a struggle for preeminence against every dis- 
 advantage. His first public appearance on 
 the bema was a failure; but he applied him- 
 self with indefatigable industry to study and 
 practice, and soon wrested from public oj)in- 
 ion the jialm of oratory which twenty-two 
 centuries have not plucked away. 
 
 The subject which then agitated the Athe- 
 nians — the encroachments of Philip and the 
 consequent peril to the liberties of Greece — 
 was of a sort to evoke the highest interest and 
 to arouse the most patriotic passions. In a 
 series of orations known as the Philvpjncii the 
 orator discussed the whole question involved 
 in the present state of his country, and more 
 particularly sought to stimulate the Athenians 
 to a vigorous and united eflbrt to stay the 
 approach of the Macedonians. His efforts, 
 however, were comparatively unavailing. In 
 B. C 352 the assembly voted to organize a 
 fleet to operate against Philip, but the move- 
 ment was marked by neither energy nor suc- 
 cess. Two years later the city of Olynthus, 
 still at the head of the Northern confederacy, 
 sent an urgent appeal to Athens to assist in 
 repelling the insidious, but now scarcely dis- 
 guised, ambitions of PhUip. Demosthenes 
 delivered three orations, known as the OlifntJii- 
 acs, on the question thus presented to the as- 
 sembly. But no energetic action could be 
 evoked, even by the fiery appeals of the 
 matchless orator. Greece sat languidly by 
 and saw town after town of the Olynthiaa 
 league won over or conquered by Philip, until 
 finally Ol3'nthus herself was taken, her forti- 
 fications leveled, her people sold as slaves, and 
 the whole Chalcidician peninsula reduced to 
 a Macedonian province. 
 
 Meanwhile, the disgraceful Sacred War 
 continued. As long as the treasures in the 
 Delphian temple held out, the Phoeians were 
 able year after year to hire new armies of mer-
 
 GREECE.— SPARTAN AND THEBAN ASCENDENCIES. 
 
 607 
 
 cenaries and continue the struggle. Thebes 
 was, perhaps, as nearly exhausted as her 
 rival. In this condition of affairs the ques- 
 tion was bruited of a league which, l)egiuniug 
 with the Thebans and the Athenians, should 
 extend to most of the states of Central 
 Greece — to the end that civil hostilities might 
 cease, and the country t)e united to repel for- 
 eign aggression. 
 
 The news of this promising enterprise, 
 however, was carried to Philip, and in the 
 summer of B. C 347 he sent indirect pro- 
 posals to Athens inviting a conference in the 
 mutual interests of the two powers. In re- 
 sponse the Athenians sent an embassy to the 
 court of Philip headed by Demosthenes, JEs- 
 chines, and Philoeratos. They were enter- 
 tained by that wily monarch, but nothing 
 came of the negotiations. The Macedonian 
 king soon afterwards sent an embassy to 
 Athens, and tlie terms of a treaty were 
 agreed upon. In oi-der to secure the ratifica- 
 tion of this compact the former Athenian 
 envoys were again dispatched to IMacedon, 
 but Philip was absent on a campaign ; and 
 even when he was found he insisted that the 
 ambassadors should accompany him into Tlies- 
 saly to mediate, as he averred, between Phar- 
 salia and Halus. The whole object was to 
 gain time to prosecute his plans in Central 
 Greece. 
 
 The treaty, however, was ratified. The 
 envoys of Athens returned home. Demos- 
 thenes entered a protest against the conditions 
 of the settlement. His following in the city 
 declared that .^Eschines iiad deluded the peo- 
 ple with a false notion of security. Tlie 
 usual political wrangle occurred ; but the 
 Macedonian party was in the ascendant, and 
 o vote of thanks to Philip teas passed by t]ie as- 
 temlhj for the ternu wlilch he had dictated! That 
 monarch was already on his march into 
 Greece. The supine Athenians sent him 
 word that unless tho Phocians would redeliver 
 to the Amphictyons the .shrine of Apollo they 
 would unite with him against the defilers of 
 the sacred city. The curtain was up for the 
 last scene in the independence of Greece. 
 
 In the mean time, Phalajcus, general of 
 the Phocian army, entered into negotiations 
 
 with Philip and withdrew, with the monarch's 
 consent, into Peloponnesus. The Macedonian 
 then entered Phocis without opposition. The 
 towns made a virtue of necessity by surren- 
 dering. Delphi was taken. The Amphicty- 
 ons were convened. To them was referred 
 the question as to what disposition should be 
 made of those who had profaned the temple 
 of Apollo and wasted his treasures. The 
 council voted that every Phocian town, with 
 
 ^ESCiiiNES— Naples. 
 
 the exception of Aba;, should be leveled to 
 the ground. The people should be scattered 
 into hamlets of not more than fifty houses. 
 The Phocians should be taxed until the an 
 nual tribute should amount to ten thousand 
 talents — this to replace the squandered treas- 
 ures of the temple. The Spartan members 
 of the Amphictyony should be deposed. 
 Finally and specially : the two votes of Phocb 
 in the council .should be taken away and con- 
 ferred on Philip of Macedon ! Thus, in the 
 year B. C. .346, was a foreign king, with full 
 power to enforce his will, given a seat at the 
 head of that venerable bodv, which for so
 
 608 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 many centuries had been reserved with sacred 
 fidelity for members of the Hellenic race. 
 
 It was now no more than a question 
 of time when the Macedonian monarch would 
 assert his advantage and absorb the Greek 
 states in his dominions. The cry of patriot- 
 ism might now be lifted in the streets, but to 
 what purpose? The rapid decline of the 
 
 and versatile people who contributed to an- 
 tiquity her brightest pages. The voice of the 
 Greek, so shrill in battle so musical in peace; 
 his gay activities, his energy, so often reviv- 
 ing from humiliation and ruin; his brush, his 
 chisel — alas, for all these ! where are they ? 
 The beauty of Athens has sunk into the dust. 
 The wolves of Mount Taygetus howl in the 
 
 ANCIENT CORINTH. 
 
 Grecian communities, their failure in public 
 spirit, the decadence of Grecian institutions, 
 and the substitution of centralization for indi- 
 viduality — all this will come properly into the 
 field of view in the course of the following 
 Book, which will contain the history of the 
 Macedonian a.?cendency. 
 
 For the present, it is sufficient to take 
 leave, not without regret, of that brilliant 
 
 dark among the broken stones of Sparta. . 
 The splendor of Corinth Ls no more. Only 
 by the imperishable Thought — the verse of 
 Homer, the page of Herodotus, the infinite 
 spirit of Plato, the clarion of Demosthenes — 
 has the renown of Hellas survived, illumining 
 the world that now is, and shedding a glory 
 over her name, even to the far-ofi" shores of 
 the setting sun.
 
 look f 14. 
 
 MACEDONIA. 
 
 Chaf»ter XTvVIIT.— Country, Cities, and tribes. 
 
 i HE most ancient name of 
 the country known in the 
 times of Philip and Alex- 
 ander, as Macedon, or 
 Macedonia was Emathia. 
 By this appellation it is 
 ™-^ referred to in the Iliad. 
 Doubtless the more recent name was derived 
 from the mythical founder of the nation, a 
 certain JIaccdo, who was, of course, one of 
 the sons of Zeus. Another ancient appella- 
 tive of this country was Macetia, or the land 
 of the Maceta, which name, in its turn, has 
 been associated by the curious with the word 
 Kittim, used in the tenth chapter of Genesis. 
 Already in the times of Herodotus the more 
 ancient names had been rtyected in favor of 
 Macedon ; but the region so called was, in the 
 times of that ancient story-teller, only a small 
 district in the vicinity of Mount Pindus. A 
 better acquaintance with the primitive lan- 
 guage 'of the AEacedonians would, no doubt, 
 throw much light, not only on the origin of 
 the tribes by which Macedon was peopled, but 
 also on the geographical districts in which 
 they settled 
 
 Of the general character of the countries 
 
 which constituted the empire of Alexander, 
 much has already been said. Nearly all of 
 the provinces within the limits of that vast 
 dominion, except Macedonia Proper, had been 
 previously included in one or more than one 
 of the kingdoms which preceded the advent 
 of the conqueror. What had been Egypt, 
 Chaldaea, Assyria, Media, Babylonia, became 
 Persia ; and the various countries dominated 
 by Cyrus and Cambyses were in turn subdued 
 by the son of Philip. These countries, having 
 been described in the preceding Books, from 
 the First to the Seventh inclusive, will here 
 require no further consideration as it respects- 
 their geography or productions. It is only of 
 the character of the original kingdom of Philip 
 that something should now be added. 
 
 Macedonia, then, is bounded on tha south 
 by the fambunian mountains, which divide 
 it from Tliossaly. On the west rises the chain 
 known in different parts of it.s course as Scar- 
 dus, Bernus, Pindus. Beyond this range lie* 
 Illyria. From Miesia on the north, Macedo- 
 nia is divided by the Orbeliau mountains, 
 while on the east it is separated from Thrace 
 by the river Strymou The country was thus- 
 included on three sides by mountainous eleva- 
 
 1611)
 
 €12 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 dons, and on the fourth by a stream of con- 
 siderable volume. In the time of Herodotus, 
 Macedon had boundaries not nearly so great 
 as those here given ; but in the age of the 
 geographer Strabo, the limits were made to in- 
 clude a large part of Illyria and Thrace. 
 
 The rivers of Macedonia are three in num- 
 ber; the Axius, the Lydias, and the Haliac- 
 mon. All of them find their way into the 
 Thermaic gulf. The most easterly and largest 
 is the Axius, now called the Vardar. It 
 gathers its waters from the hill-country, be- 
 tween the ranges of Scardus and Orbelus, and 
 flows in a course somewhat south-easterly, re- 
 ceiving several tributaries, the most important 
 being the Ericon. The second of the princi- 
 pal streams is the Lydias, now called the 
 Kara Azmac. This is the river which passes 
 through the lake on which Pella, the capital 
 of Macedonia was situated. It drains the cen- 
 tral part of the country, and becomes conflu- 
 ent with the Axius about a league above the 
 entrance of that stream into the sea. Still 
 further to the south-east is the Haliacmon 
 which gathers its streams from the Cambu- 
 nians, and flows through the marshy districts 
 of Macedonia into the sea. In the time of 
 Herodotus, however, it was in its lower course 
 deflected to the north and joined its waters 
 ■with those of the Lydias before falling into 
 the gulf. 
 
 The valleys of these three rivers are sepa- 
 rated from one another by tranverse chains of 
 mountains, branching from the Scardus. The 
 range dividing the Haliacmon from the Lydias 
 is called Bermius, and that between the Ly- 
 dias and the Axius, Dysorum. Macedonia was 
 thus geographically constituted of three prin- 
 cipal valleys, all opening out upon the Ther- 
 maic gulf. 
 
 It is, however, with the political divisions 
 of the country rather than its physical con- 
 stitution that the historian is mostly concerned. 
 Within the limits of Macedonia, then, as it 
 was inherited by Philip, son of Amyntas, 
 were to be found the following provinces: 
 Lyncestis, Stymphalia, Orestis, Elimea, Eor- 
 daea, Pieria, Bottisea, Emathia, Mygdonia, 
 Chalcidice, Bi^^altia, and Pseonia with its sub- 
 divisions. Lyncestis, the first of these dis- 
 
 tricts lay to the west, next to Illyria, from 
 which it was divided by the Bernus range. 
 It was bounded on tlie north by Pseonia. 
 The principal stream was the Erigonus, and 
 the principal thoroughfare the Egnatian Way. 
 The district was originally inhabited by an in- 
 dependent tribe governed by their own king. 
 
 To the south-east of Lyncestis lay the ter- 
 ritory of Orestis. The barbarians of this dis- 
 trict also were originally independent of the 
 Macedonian kings. The country was of small 
 extent and contained but few towns, the prin- 
 cipal being Celetrum and Orestia, the latter 
 the birthplace of Ptolemy Lagus. Immedi- 
 ately south of this district was the small coun- 
 try of Stymphalia, the principal town of 
 which was Gyrtona. Like the two preceding, 
 the original Stymphffii were barbarians, and 
 retained their independence until conquered 
 by the Macedonian kings. Immediately east 
 was the province of Elimea, a mountainous 
 and barren country, but of great importance 
 to the Macedonians ; for through this district 
 lay the passes into Epirus and Thessaly. The 
 principal river of Elimea was the Haliacmon ; 
 the principal towns were a city of the same 
 name as the province and ^Eane, said to have 
 been founded by colonists from Tyre. 
 
 Adjacent to Elimea on the east was the 
 little barbarian state of Eord/EA, which, like 
 its neighbors, maintained its independence 
 until subjugated by Macedon. Through this 
 district passed the great Egnatian Way, which 
 reached from Edessa and Pella into Greece. 
 The two principal towns of the state were 
 Cellse and Arnissa. Further to the south-east 
 was the celebrated district of Pieria, said to 
 have been the birthplace of Orpheus and the 
 native seat of the Muses. Pieria was contig- 
 uous to Thessaly, and was nestled at the base 
 of Olympus. It contained the towns of Phila — 
 situated near the famous Thessalian vale of 
 Tempe — Heraclia, and Dium, one of the chief 
 cities of Macedonia; also the small town of 
 Pimplea, in which Orpheus was born, and 
 near which is the conical tumulus, said to be 
 the tomb of that mythical maker of song. In 
 this same district was the city of Pydna, cele- 
 brated for the great victory gained there bj 
 Publius .^milius over the Macedonians under
 
 MACEDONIA.— COUNTRY, CITIES, AND TRIBES. 
 
 6]3 
 
 Perseus — by which ovent the Empire founded 
 by Philip was at last extinguished. Some 
 miles to the north of this city was the town 
 of Methone, before the walls of which, as will 
 be remembered, the right eye of Philip was 
 shot out by an archer.' Another Pieiiau town 
 of some importance was Phylace ; and a sliort 
 distance to the north of this was Agassie, which 
 was occupied by ^Emilius after the battle of 
 Pydna. 
 
 The next .«idxlivision of ancient Macedonia 
 was the province of Botti.ea, situated between 
 the Haliacmon and the Lydias. One of the 
 principal towns of this district was Alorus, on 
 the left hank of the Haliacmon. At the 
 mouth of the Lydias was the city of Jehnse, 
 and a hundred and twenty stadia up that 
 river was Pella, the Macedonian capital. 
 
 Emathea was, as already said, the most 
 ancient of tlie Macedonian districts. It was 
 the small but fertile region in which was 
 planted the central root of that great tree 
 which was destined to overshadow the nation. 
 According to tradition this province was first 
 colonized Viy a company of Argives, called 
 the Teinenida;. The chief city was ^"Egre, or 
 Edes-sa, which up to the time of Philip was 
 regarded as the capital of Macedonia. The 
 other important cities were Cydrre, Brysi, 
 Mieza, and Cyrrhus, in the latter of which 
 was the temple of Athene, built by Alexander. 
 Nor should failure be made to mention the 
 two cities of C'itium and Idomene, the former 
 of which was the head-quarters of Perseus, and 
 the latter of some note on account of its cap- 
 ture by Sitalces, king of the Odrysie. 
 
 The province of Mygdonia extended from 
 the Axius to the Strymon. It remained under 
 the dominion of the primitive barbarians until 
 they were expelled by the Teraenidse. The 
 principal river of the district was the Axius, 
 and the cliief town Amydon, which is men- 
 tioned in the Iliad as a place of note. At the 
 mouth of the Axius was the city of Chalastra, 
 which was one of the first places taken by 
 Xerxes in his invasion of Greece. On the 
 river Echedorus, which loses itself in a vast 
 marsh close to the Axius, was situated the 
 ancient city of Thernse, the modern Thessa- 
 
 ' See »c9W'("r, p. 621. 
 
 lonica, one of the most celebrated of the Mace- 
 donian cities. 
 
 To the south and east of Mygdonia lay the 
 peculiar province of Chalcidice, consisting of 
 several peninsulas, jutting into the ^gean. 
 This region was originally colonized by people 
 from the island of Euboea. The Chalcidicians 
 for a long time maintained their independence, 
 but were at length subjugated and added to 
 the conquests of the Macedonian kings. The 
 peninsula of Pallene was of special importance. 
 Here was said to have occurred the combat 
 between the gods and the Titans. A more 
 authentic distinction was the possession of the 
 rich city of Potida?a, which occupied the neck 
 of the isthmus by which Pallene was joined 
 to the main-land. This place was founded at 
 a very early date by a colony of Coiinthians, 
 but in after times it became a dependency of 
 Athens. Afterwards, near the same site, was 
 founded by Cassander the city of Cassandrea, 
 which atone time was the most opulent munic- 
 ipality in all Macedonia. Other important 
 towns in the peninsula were Clitie, Aphytis, 
 Neapolis, Thrambus, Mende, and Seioue, all 
 of which are mentioned by Herodotus. 
 
 Between Pallene and the next of the three 
 peninsulas, named Sithonia, at the head of 
 the gulf, was the celebi-ated city of Olynthus, 
 founded by Eretrians fiDm Eulxea. This cor- 
 poration at a very early date adopted a demo- 
 cratic form of government, and taking up the 
 federative .system, which had been so success- 
 fully employed by the Athenians, became the 
 center of that Olynthian league which will 
 occupy our attention in the times of King 
 Philip. The people of the Sithonian penin- 
 sula were of Thracian origin, though several 
 of the towns — such as Galepsus and Torone — 
 were founded by Greek colonies. 
 
 The third of the Chalcidician peninsulas is 
 called Acte. It is that tongue of land which 
 terminates in Mount Athos, and which was cut 
 off from the shore by the canal of Xei'xes. 
 Acte abounded in towns, of which the princi- 
 pal were Sane — on the Singitic gulf — Uranop- 
 olis, Dium, ApoUonia, Thyssus, Cleona;, and 
 Acanthus, which stood at the other extremity 
 of the canal from Sane. This was perhaps the 
 most ini]iortant city in this part of Chalcidice,
 
 614 
 
 UNIVERSAL EISTORY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 aud will be frequently mentioned as the scene 
 of historical events. Nor should Arethusa, 
 the burial-place of Euripides, be omitted from 
 a list of Chalcidiciau towns. 
 
 The next of the Macedonian provinces was 
 BiSALTiA, situated between the river Strymon 
 and the lake Bolbe. This district was orig- 
 inally settled by colonists from Thrace. It was 
 governed by native kings until the time of 
 Xerxes, and soon afterwards fell into the hands 
 of the Macedonians. The chief town of the 
 province was Argil us, said to have been founded 
 by a colony from the island of Andros. In 
 the interior were several other towns — Ossa, 
 Bisaltes, Berta, Arolus, and Callithera — of no 
 great importance in Macedonian history. 
 
 The country of Pjeonia, though after the 
 times of Philip included in Macedon, was pre- 
 viously an independent state. It was by far 
 the largest of those original territories on which 
 the son of Amyntas laid the foundations of 
 his dominion. As early as the time of the 
 Trojan war the Pseonians were powerful enough 
 to be conspicuous in the host of Agamemnon. 
 They embraced originally several barbarian 
 tribes ; but these were ultimately gathered into 
 one nation, governed by a single chief. The 
 subordinate provinces into which Pseonia was 
 divided were Pelagonia, with its cities of Stu- 
 bera and Bryauium ; Deuriopis; and the 
 countries of the Almopes, lori, Agrianes, and 
 Doberes. The various tribes inhabiting these 
 districts gradually lost their individuality, and 
 were absorbed into a single people. 
 
 The geography of Macedonia should not be 
 dismissed without a reference to the great 
 thoroughfare by which the different provinces 
 and towns were connected. This was known 
 by its Roman name of Via Egnatia, or the 
 Egnatian Way. It was a great military road 
 leading from Lyncestis, on the confines of II- 
 lyria to Edessa, Pella, Methone, and the other 
 principal Macedonian cities. From the main 
 way several roads branched north and south, 
 the former leading into Pfeouia, Dardania, 
 Moesia, and the Danubian districts, and the 
 latter into the southern provinces of the king- 
 dom, Thessaly aud Central Greece. 
 
 In the course of these geographical notes 
 on Macedonia references not a few have been 
 
 made to the primitive peoples by whom the 
 country was settled. It will now be appro- 
 priate to notice somewhat more fully those 
 early populations aud their movements down 
 to the time when the kingdom was firmly es- 
 tablished by the House of Amyntas. The 
 origin of the Macedonian dynasty has been 
 involved in much dispute. Only one thing 
 may be regarded as certainly established, and 
 that is that the royal family was sprung from the 
 race of the Temenidse of Argos, and that these 
 were, according to tradition, the descendants of 
 Hercules. The myth is to the effect that the 
 Argive Cavanus, who was the son of Temenus, 
 who was the son of Hercules, led out a colony 
 from his native city, and, arriving in Emathia, 
 overcame the reigning king, Midas, and took 
 possession of Edessa, the capital. It would 
 thus appear that the dynasty was Dorian in 
 its origin, being thus allied with the Lace- 
 diemonians, more than with the .^olian and 
 Ionian races. Herodotus, however, recites the 
 tradition somewhat differently. By him we 
 are told that three brothers — Gavanes, ^ro- 
 pus, and Perdiccas — descendants of Temenus, 
 left Argos, and making their way into Upper 
 Macedonia, succeeded in establishing a king- 
 dom which fell to Perdiccas, the youngest of 
 the three ; and with this statement of the Fa- 
 ther of History the concurrent testimony of 
 Thucydides may also be adduced. By some 
 authors it is held that there was a double mi- 
 gration, and that the three brothers were the 
 grandsons of Cavanus. 
 
 Of the reigns of the first four kings who 
 succeeded the mythical Perdiccas nothing is 
 known ; but in the reign of Amyntas (B. C. 
 537-498), who was the fifth in descent from 
 the founder, the affairs of Macedonia begin to 
 come into the light. It was already the be- 
 ginning of the Persian aggressions in the West. 
 Megabazus, the general of Darius, having al- 
 ready made considerable conquests in Thrace 
 and Pseonia, advanced to the northern bor- 
 ders of Macedonia ; and Amyntas was glad to 
 make his submission as a condition of peace. 
 Soon afterwards some of the Persian officers 
 offered grave insults to the Macedonian women, 
 whereupon Alexander, son of Amyntas, took 
 summary vengeance on the offenders. A diffi-
 
 MACEDONIA.— COUNTRY, CITIES, AND TRIBES. 
 
 615 
 
 cultv thus arose which was about to bring on 
 war, but hostilities were avoided by the timely 
 marriage of Gygea, daughter of Amyutas, to 
 Bubares, the Persian deputy, who had been 
 sent out to obtain siitisfaction for the murder 
 of the Great King's otiicers. 
 
 On his accession to the throne this prince 
 Alekander presented liimself for admission to 
 participation in the Olympic games. He was 
 at fi.rst refused, but on an examination of his 
 claims to be an Argive by descent, the man- 
 agers decided that the Macedonian dynasty 
 was indeed Greek, and the prince was accord- 
 ingly admitted. 
 
 The reign of Alexander covered the period 
 <tf the great Persian invasion of Greece. Mace- 
 donia was occu|)i('d by the invaders, and the 
 king had a ditficult part to perform between 
 tlie Greeks with wiioni he sympathized, and 
 the Persians whom he dreaded. He sent much 
 secret information to the allied commanders, 
 but at the same time succeeded in retaining 
 the confidence of the barbarians. At last 
 Mardonius sent him to Athens in a final cffbrt 
 which he made to detach that commonwealth 
 from the Greek league. 
 
 During the reign of Perdiccas, who suc- 
 «eeded his father, Alexander (B. C. 476), on 
 the throne, the alfairs of the kingdom became 
 more complicated. The prince was of a crafty 
 disposition, and took part according to hLs in- 
 terest in the politics of Greece. He sided first 
 with the Lacediemonian and then with the 
 Athenian party, as success inclined froin one 
 to the other. While in league with llic Spar- 
 tans, he induced the revolt of several Athenian 
 dependencies in the north ; but for this course 
 he Wiis presently punished with an invasion of 
 his own kingdom by Sitalces, king of Thrace, 
 by whom Macedonia was well-nigh overrun. 
 
 From a description given by Thucydides 
 of the extent of the Macedonian dominions in 
 the time of Perdiccas, it may be seen that the 
 country then embraced nearly all the provinces 
 and tribes which were included under the au- 
 thority of Philip, the father of Alexander. 
 Pieonia had not yet been subjugated, lint the 
 remaining districts were nearly all ruled by 
 the house of Temenus. It was a proper retri- 
 bution to the Macedonian kins: that the war 
 
 which he fomented in the north between Ath- 
 ens and Sparta, and which led to the expedi- 
 tion of Brasidas, brought to him no augmenta- 
 tion of power, but only disappointment. 
 
 Quite unlike Perdiccas was his son and 
 successor, Archelaijs. He soon proved him- 
 self to be the most prudent and liberal of the 
 earlier kings. To his single reign Thucydides 
 ascribes a greater improvement in the condi- 
 tion of the kingdom than to all the eight that 
 had preceded. The interhal affairs of the state 
 now began to receive the attention and sup- 
 port of the government. Koads were built, 
 fortresses erected, the army equipped and or- 
 ganized. It was the dawn of art and litera- 
 ture at the Macedonian court. Distinguished 
 men were invited thither by the king, who 
 sought to substitute the reign of intelligence 
 for the reign of force. At his capital Eu- 
 ripides resided for many years, supported by 
 royal favor. Zeuxis, the celebrated painter, 
 lent his genius to the work of decorating the 
 residence of the king. Socrates also was in- 
 vited to reside in Edessa, but, as usual, that 
 resolute and saturnine genius refused to be 
 beholden to any. A great light began thus 
 to be diffused through the North, which, if 
 less resplendent than the glow which kindled 
 over Athens, was nevertheless such as to dis- 
 pel the shadows beyoud Olympus. 
 
 Ai-chelaiis fell by the hand of an assa,ssin, 
 though the occasion and circumstances of his 
 death are not fully known. After his reign 
 Macedonia suffered a decline. Of the careers 
 of the four following kings very little has been 
 preserved either in history or tradition. The 
 fifth sovereign from Archelaiis was Amyntas, 
 wlio inherited the kingdom in a distracted con- 
 dition, and suffered most of the ills of kingly 
 misfortune. Domestic troubles kept him em- 
 broiled, and foreign foes were busy on his 
 borders. Of these the most active wore the 
 Elyrians on the west, and the Olynthians on 
 the north-east. From the former he purchased 
 a respite by means of bribes and presents, and 
 from the latter he was saved by the interfer- 
 ence of the Spartans. For twenty-four years 
 (B. C. 393-369) he supported the arduous 
 duties of government and died, leaving three 
 sons to the care of their mother, Kurvdice.
 
 ou; 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Of these sons the eldest was Alexander; 
 the second, Perdiccas ; and the youngest, 
 Philip — that Pliilip who was destined to make 
 his power felt in all the West, and to pave the 
 way for the still greater achievements of his 
 son. Thus through the region of myth and 
 tradition have been traced the brief annals of 
 
 Macedonia from the days of the earlier Te- 
 menidje to the time when the great state of 
 the North, under the direction of the son of 
 Amyntas, began first to be distinctly felt as a 
 political power, and then to rise rapidly to an 
 unequivocal ascendency over all the surround- 
 ing kingdoms. 
 
 Chapter XLix.— reiqn ok Philip. 
 
 F the career of Philip of 
 jMacedon a sketch has al- 
 ready been given in the 
 History of Greece. To 
 him the Macedonian Em- 
 pire owed its foundation 
 and strength. Without 
 the masterful abilities of his more distinguished 
 son, without the far-reaching ambition of Cie- 
 sar, he nevertheless possessed the genius to 
 erras]) the condition of his times, and to plant 
 on the ruins of surrounding states the foot of 
 power and dominion. 
 
 Philip was the third and youngest son of 
 Amyntas. The eldest brother, Alexander, lost 
 his life in a civil turmoil. Perdiccas, the next 
 eldest, was hard pressed by opposition, and was 
 on the eve of losing the kingdom, when Pelop- 
 idas, the Theban, interfered in his behalf, and 
 secured under his powerful influence the peace- 
 ful j)ossession of the crown. It was in grati- 
 tude for this support that Perdiccas, as an 
 earnest of good faith and a pledge for the 
 6delity of JIacedonia to the interests of Thebes, 
 gave into the friendly custody of Pelopidas 
 the youth Philip and thirty others from the best 
 families in the kingdom. 
 
 Thus it was that destiny prepared the way 
 #3r greatness. For Philip could hardly have 
 lecorae the distinguished monarch that he was 
 but for the incident which, bringing him to 
 Thebes, threw him into contact with the civil- 
 ization of the Greeks. His education was of 
 precisely the sort to fashion a hero. He was 
 established in the family of Polymnus, father 
 of Epaminondas; and here he absorbed his 
 tirst ideas of politics and generalship. He 
 
 became, at an early age familiar with the lit- 
 erature and customs of the Greeks, learned 
 then- language, became a Greek himself. The 
 example and influence of Epaminondas, whose 
 conversation and friendship he enjoyed with- 
 out restriction, molded his views and senti- 
 ments. The Theban became his model. He 
 grew like that which he admired ; and although 
 his native talents and ambitions were by no 
 means subordinated to the Theban environ- 
 ment, yet so far as education could go towards 
 the shaping of character and the determination 
 of future activities, to that extent undoubt- 
 edly was Philip the result of the forces which 
 played upon him while domiciled in Thebes. 
 It must be confessed, moreover, that the Mac- 
 edonian prince showed himself to be an apter 
 puj)il of Epaminondas in the matter of acquir- 
 ing military skill than in imitating the sterling 
 integrity and moral virtues of his model. For 
 in essential soundness of character Philip was 
 by no means comparable with the Theban 
 general. 
 
 During his residence at the Boeotian capital 
 the prince, accompanied by his masters, trav- 
 eled into other parts of Greece. He visited 
 Athens and was profoundly impressed with 
 the institutions and peculiarities of that city. 
 There he became acquainted with the greatest 
 geniuses of the age. Among his acquaintances 
 and friends were Plato, Isocrates, and Theo- 
 phrastus. He studied the Athenian character 
 and apprehended its weakness and its strength. 
 He w-as initiated into the mysteries of Deme- 
 ter, and while attending one of the celebra- 
 tions held in honor of this divinity, had the 
 good fortune to meet Olympias, daughter of
 
 MACEDONIA. — REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 617 
 
 jhe king of Epirus, and mother that was to be 
 of Alexander. 
 
 Soon afterwards the prince was called home 
 to enter, under trying circumstances, upon the 
 duties of the kingdom. For a long time Illyria 
 had claimed tribute of Macedonia. During 
 the period when Amyntas, and after him Per- 
 diceas, was supported by the powerful influence 
 of Thebes, the claim had been refused. But 
 when Pelopidas fell in the struggle with Alex- 
 ander of Pherte and Epaminoudas was pres- 
 ently killed at the battle of Mantinea, Mace- 
 donia was left to her own resources, and the 
 claims of the lllyrians were renewed. This pre- 
 tense, however, was resisted by Perdiccas, who 
 raised an army and took the field to maintain 
 the independence of his kingdom. A hard 
 battle was fought with the king of Illyria, in 
 which the latter was completely victorious. 
 Perdiccas was killed and four thousand of his 
 troops cut to pieces. Macedonia was thus to 
 all seeming left to the mercy of the foe. 
 
 Now it was, in B. C. 383, that the youth- 
 ful Philip was hurriedly recalled from his 
 sojourn in Greece to assume the duties of the 
 tottering government. It was, however, as 
 regent for the infant son of Perdiccas, and not 
 in his own right, that he began his public 
 career. The circum.stances were disheartening 
 to the last degree. The lllyrians were ravag- 
 ing the country as the sequel of the victory 
 over Perdiccas. The Pieonians, encouraged 
 by supposed immunity from punishment, de- 
 scended from the mountains and plundered as 
 they would. Two claimants to the throne, 
 Pausanias and Argseus, came forward in open 
 opposition to Pliilip. The Athenians were 
 hostile on account of the alliance of Macedo- 
 nia with Thebes, and sent an army to the 
 North to i)revent the rise of Philip to power. 
 The Thracians also availed themselves of the 
 opportunity to make an invasion of the country. 
 
 The ])rince of Macedon, nothing daunted, 
 ioon showed himself equal to the emergency 
 of his country. His confidence inspired the 
 people. An ancient oracle had said that Mac- 
 edonia, under a son of Amyntas, should rise to 
 the highest pitch of power. Philip was now 
 the only son of Amyntas ; and should the pro- 
 phetic voice of the gods prove false? Soldiers 
 
 rallied to the standard of the prince destined 
 to victory. The Macedonian phalanx, mod- 
 eled after that of Thebes as constituted by 
 Epamiuondas, was created. From every side 
 of the huge living mass' projected an impene- 
 trable thicket of spears. With this invincible 
 body of destruction, Philip bore down upon 
 the lllyrians and Pa3onians, and in a short 
 time routed them from the country. 
 
 This work was less serious than that of dis- 
 posing of the rival claimants. In the princi- 
 pal Macedonian towns there was a strong party 
 in favor of Argasus. A fleet was .sent out by 
 Athens to uphold his pretensions. The squad- 
 ron anchored before Methone, a city on the 
 Thcrmaic gulf, and here a junction was effected 
 between the Macedonian malcontents and the 
 Athenians. The combined forces then pro- 
 ceeded to lay siege to Edessa, the capital of 
 the province of Pieria ; for it was believed 
 that the capture of this place would decide 
 the fate of the kingdom. But Philip was on 
 the alert, and before the arrival of Argoeus be- 
 fore the town, the defenses were so strengthened 
 that it could not be taken. The pretender 
 then became alarmed for his safety and sought 
 to retreat to Methone ; but on the way thither 
 he was attacked by Philip and killed. The 
 Macedonians in the army of the malcontenta 
 were kindly treated by the king and incorpo- 
 rated with his own forces ; and with singular 
 liberality the Athenians under the command of 
 Argseus, were loaded with favors and sent home 
 without any mark of contempt or cruelty. It 
 Wits upon such acts as these that the future 
 popularity of Philip in Central Greece wa» 
 laid upon secure foundations. Generosity in 
 the conduct of war was a new thing under 
 Grecian skies — a fact which at the first it was 
 difficult to understand or appreciate. 
 
 By this time the lllyrians had rallied from 
 their first chastisement and gathered in great 
 force on the western frontier. They were led 
 by their king Bardyllus, now more than ninety 
 years of age. A decisive battle was fought in 
 which the new tactics and sjiirit of the Mace- 
 donians bore down all oppositon. A signal 
 victory was gained by Philip. Bardyllus waa 
 slain and the shattered powers of his govern- 
 ment were unable to ofl^er further resistance.
 
 618 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Dlyria was converted into a Macedonian prov- 
 ince. This was the last of the premonitory 
 struggles by which the authority of Philip was 
 •established on a basis that could not be shaken. 
 The ambition of the king, however, was by 
 no means appeased by these initial successes. 
 The condition of Greece, moreover, at this 
 time was such as to furnish abundant food for 
 the aspiring spirit of the Macedonian ruler. 
 In the long struggle between Thebes and 
 Sparta, by which the resources of each had 
 been, in a measure, exhausted, Athens had, in 
 «ome degree, regained her pristine • influence 
 among the Grecian states. Epaminondas was 
 dead, and the brief but glorious ascendency 
 of Thebes had perished with him. Sparta was 
 eo broken by tlie long struggle of the war, that 
 
 she exhibited no 
 present symptoms 
 of a revival. 
 
 The Athenians 
 were thus left in 
 a temporary pre- 
 dominance in the 
 affairs of Greece. 
 But a foe more 
 dangerous than 
 tlie hosts of Per- 
 sia, more to be 
 dreaded than the 
 Spartan Phalanx, 
 was rapidly sap- 
 ping the founda- 
 tion of Attic strength. The spirit of the peo- 
 ple had given way to fickleness and frivolity. 
 Patriotism was well-nigh dead. The old heroic 
 virtues were extinct. The new vices of licen- 
 tiousness ran riot in the streets ; and even the 
 ehrill clarion of Demosthenes was unable to 
 evoke from the lethargy of his country, the in- 
 dignant flash of ancient heroism. 
 
 Nor were the Phocians and Thessalians in 
 a better condition to resist the possible growth 
 of Macedonia. The former people, brave and 
 daring as they were, had exhausted their en- 
 ergies in the conflict? of the Sacred War, and 
 the latter had been so mischievously governed 
 by Alexander of Pherte, and were by disposi- 
 tion so reckless and eager for change as to 
 form no bulwark against the designs of such a 
 
 ARISTOTLE.— Museo Visconti, 
 Iconographica Greca. 
 
 prince as PhUip. That discerning monarch 
 readily perceived in the condition of ttie Gre- 
 cian states that Athens, being the most influ- 
 ential, should be first won to his interests. 
 
 Being by nature crafty and diplomatic, 
 Philip adopted the policy of creating and fos- 
 tering in Athens a Macedonian party, upon 
 which he could rely in the work of extending 
 his influence over Greece. He accordingly 
 espoused the Athenian cause in the Olynthian 
 war, and aided the Greeks in regaining pos- 
 session of Amphipolis. The latter, with their 
 usual duplicity, soon repaid him by inducing 
 the seaport town of Pydna to revolt, and it 
 was in vain that Philip remonstrated against 
 the bad faith of his allies. Thus early in the 
 relation of the two powers was a breach eflected 
 and the seed sown of unending distrust. The 
 immediate ettect was as unfortunate for Athens 
 as it was displeasing to Philip ; for the Greeks 
 were obliged, for the time, to abandon the 
 siege of Amphipolis, and to try to save the 
 honor of the state by the capture of a few un- 
 important towns in Thrace. But what they 
 thus failed to accomplish by force of arms waa 
 soon effected by one of their commanders. A 
 certain Charidemus, having gone over to the 
 Olynthians, succeeded in persuading the Am- 
 phipolitans that their interests required them 
 to ent«r into an alliance with Athens. 
 
 In the mean time Philip added to the dig- 
 nity and promise of his court by marrying 
 Olympias, daughter of the king of Epirus, a 
 princess of great vivacity and beauty. AVithin 
 a year, and on the very day of the announce- 
 ment of a great victory by his general, Par- 
 menio, Philip received the news that an heir 
 was born to the throne of Macedon. It was 
 to the king an event of great joy. He imme- 
 diately expressed his delight in the following 
 letter the philosopher Aristotle, whom he at 
 once selected as the future teacher of his son : 
 
 " King Philip to Aristotle. Health! You 
 are to know that a son hath been born to us. 
 "We thank the gods not so much for having 
 bestowed him on us as for bestowing him at a 
 time when Aristotle lives. We assure our- 
 selves that you will form him a prince worthy 
 to be our successor, and a king worthy of 
 Macedon. Farewell."
 
 MACEDOMA.— REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 619 
 
 Returning to the relation of Philip to the 
 Greeks, the next important complications to 
 be noted were those arising from the Social 
 War. Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, and Cos, 
 supported by king Mausolus, rose against the 
 Athenians and entered into a league for mu- 
 tual defense. A declaration was published that 
 the members of the alliance were "resolved 
 henceforward to protect their own commerce 
 with their own fleets; and wanting thus noth- 
 ing from the Athenian navy they would, of 
 course, pay nothing for its support." At the 
 same time an insurrection broke out in the 
 island of Euboea ; and the Thebans, being 
 solicited to aid those in rebellion, passed over 
 thither with an army. But the Athenian 
 general, Tiniotheus, succeeded without great 
 difficulty in bringing tlie insurgents to subniis- 
 sion, and as for the Thebans, who had rashly 
 rushed into the conflict, they were gla<l to 
 ca])itulate with the privilege of retiring from 
 the island. 
 
 At this juncture, however, and before Ti- 
 motheus could proceed against the other states 
 in insurrection, the alarming news was borne 
 from the North that Philip, justly angered at 
 the Athenians for having induced the inhab- 
 itants of Pydna to revolt against him, had 
 made an alliance with Olynthus, thus threat- 
 ening the overthrow of Potidaja, Methone, and 
 all the other dependencies of Athens in that 
 region. Owing, however, to the distracted 
 condition of Attic public opinion, it was 
 thought better to enter into negotiations with 
 Philip and the Olynthians rather than to take 
 up the sword. Thus would the Atlienians be 
 left free to bring the Social War to successful 
 conclusion. Amba.ssadors were accordingly 
 dispatched from Athens to Macedon, and a 
 counter emba.s.sy was presently sent by Philip. 
 
 Not much headway was made, however, to- 
 ward the establishment of peace. The jiolitic 
 Macedonian king made some concessions to the 
 Athenians, especially by the surrender of the 
 town Authemus, but he reserved his settled 
 purpose to wrench from the Greeks, at the 
 earliest opportunity, the possession of Amphi- 
 polis. Nor was the occasion long deferred. 
 Having fomented the discord which already 
 
 existed in the citv, and strengthened as for as 
 N.— Vol. 1—38 
 
 nracticable the Macedonian party among the 
 Araphipolitans, he suddenly besieged the place 
 and compelled a surrender. The Athenian 
 party within the walls was subjected to no 
 persecutions. The prisoners were set at lib 
 erty, only a few of the more rampant leaders 
 of the Athenian faction being reserved for 
 banishment. 
 
 Having secured this important conquest, 
 Philip immediately turned his attention to the 
 two towns of Pydna and Potidsea. In both 
 of these cities, as well as in all the other Chal- 
 cidician towns, a strong party remained at- 
 tached to the interests of the king, and by a 
 prudent use of this friendly faction the work 
 of subjugation was abridged and facilitated. 
 Such was the influence of the king with the 
 inhabitants of both Pydna and Potidwa that 
 both places were taken without any prolonged 
 investment or serious opposition from within. 
 
 In both captures Pliilip again displayed his 
 magnanimity. Indeed, Potidsea was volun- 
 tarily restored to the Olynthians, the king 
 being careful, however, to protect the Athenian 
 faction from the rage of the natives. His 
 liberality extended even to supplying with a 
 free hand the needs of those who had been sud- 
 denly reduced by the capitulation to poverty. 
 The effect of this unusual procedure was still 
 further to strengthen the ever-widening influ- 
 ence of the Macedonian. All the towns from 
 the borders of Thessaly to the Thracian Cher- 
 sonesus, acting of their own accord, renounced 
 their relations with the Greeks and added 
 themselves to the dominions of the king. Even 
 in the streets of Athens the praises of Philip 
 were freely spoken by his friends and admirers. 
 
 So great was the embarrassment of the 
 Greeks, occasioned by the liberality of the 
 popular nioiiarch of the North, that the latter 
 was left comparatively free to prosecute what 
 j)lan soever he might adopt for the further ex- 
 tension of his ])ower. His next enterprise 
 was the conquest of Thrace. The king of this 
 country was Sitalces — a kind of "genius," 
 being a mixture of ruler and rhapsodist. He 
 affected in his government the manners of the 
 East. He chose not war as a jjursuit, or to 
 devote himself to those works which the an- 
 cients regarded as heroic. To Iphicrates, the
 
 620 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 favorite Athenian general, lie gave his daugh- 
 ter in marriage, trusting by this soft method 
 of substitution to station a warrior between 
 himself and harm. Thus might he find oppor- 
 tunity to retire with his court to some Arca- 
 dian river-bank, and there sit musing among 
 the flowers while the brutal race of his fellow- 
 men surrendered itself to the bloody intoxica- 
 tions of war. Albeit the king of Macedon 
 made short work with this poetic sovereign, 
 who, unable to meet the pupil of Epaminondas 
 in the field, sent to him a literary eifusion, 
 with which he thought to soften the stony 
 heart of Mars. But Mars and his ofiicers 
 were infinitely amused. They laughed im- 
 moderately at this new species of tactics, and 
 then proceeded to complete the conquest of the 
 country.' In the coarse of the expedition the 
 gold mines of Thrace were captured by the 
 Macedonians, who immediately began to work 
 them with such success that Philip's revenues 
 are said therefrom to have been augmented by 
 more than a million of dollars annually. 
 
 The king of Macedon, caring nothing for 
 his friend Sitalces, whom he had just subdued, 
 permitted that ruler to remain in nominal au- 
 thority. Scarcely, however, had Philip with- 
 drawn from Thrace when an inisurrection broke 
 out under the leadership of Miltocythes. The 
 latter was supported by the Athenian party. 
 Nevertheless Philip, though seeing clearly that 
 the movement was instigated by his enemies, 
 permitted the revolt to take its course until 
 Sitalces was assassinated by a certain Python, 
 who thereupon repaired to Athens and was 
 rewarded for the murder. Not even this cir- 
 cumstance, nor the subsequent persecution of 
 the infant son of Sitalces by the Athenian 
 party, induced Philip to interfere. Keeping 
 steadily in view the one great purpose of ex- 
 tending his authority over the whole of the 
 Grecian peninsula, he was willing — even de- 
 sired — that the Athenians and Thracians 
 should exhaust themselves in the struggle, to 
 
 ' It was during this campaign of Philip in 
 Thrace that he came upon the Thsesian colony of 
 Crenidse. Liking the situation of the settlement, 
 he dislodged the occupants, and substituted in 
 their place a company of Macedonians. The new 
 colony was named Philippi — afterward rendered 
 femous by the overthrow of Brutus and Cassius. 
 
 the end that he might be the gainer from 
 their weakness. 
 
 The events which led to the outbreak of 
 the Sacred AVar, beginning as it did in the 
 animosity of Thebes and Phoeis, and involving 
 in its course nearly all of Central and most 
 of Southern Greece, have already been nar- 
 rated in the preceding Book.' It will be re- 
 membered that the Phocians, under the lead 
 of the able PhUomelus, and supported, though 
 somewhat feebly, by Archidamus of Sparta, 
 availed themselves of the resources of the 
 Delphic temple, organized an array of merce- . 
 naries and defended themselves year after year 
 against the assaults of the Thebans and their 
 allies. They even defied the wrath of heaven, 
 for the decree pronounced against them by the 
 venerable Amj^hictyons was set at naught. 
 
 In the struggle that ensued the Athenians, 
 though nominally arraying themselves with the 
 enemies of Phoeis, in reality stood aloof For 
 their own complications in the North, and 
 especially the dread and suspicion of Philip, 
 kept their attention directed to himward rather 
 than to the vortex which was whirling around 
 Delphi. There is good ground for believing 
 that Athens, even at this time, contemplated 
 sending an invitation to Philip to interfere ac- 
 tively agaiust the defilers of the Delphic tem- 
 ple, and thus to become a member of the 
 Hellenic body. Perjiaps the suggestion of 
 such a course was inspired by the king him- 
 self, who greatly desired in this half-peaceable 
 way to become a participant in the affairs of 
 Greece. 
 
 In the mean time, however, Philip's in- 
 terest was more immediately excited by the 
 project of adding Methone to his possessions. 
 This city was accordingly invested, and was 
 brought to the brink of capitulation before 
 the Athenians could interfere. Nor did their 
 troops arrive, even at the last, in time to save 
 the Methoneans from the clutches of their 
 adversary. The town was taken in B. C. 353, 
 and although the fortifications were razed to 
 the ground and the lands divided among the 
 soldiers, the prisoners were treated with the 
 greatest moderation and humanity. Each was 
 allowed without molestation to go quietly fortb 
 
 ' See Book Eighth, p. 605.
 
 MACEDONIA.— REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 621 
 
 in searcli of a new home. Whether acting 
 from huniane and philanthropic motives or 
 merely from the suggestions of policy, the 
 conduct of the great Macedonian was in most 
 grateful contrast with that of the other heroes 
 of his age. 
 
 It was during the siege of Metlione that 
 Philip had the misfortune to lose one of his 
 eyes. A raiulom arrow discharged from the 
 rampart fell square in the king's face and de- 
 stroyed one-half of his sight. When the ar- 
 
 was succeeded by Onomarchus, who in a short 
 time effected an alliance with Lycophron, gen- 
 eralissimo of Thessaly, whom Philip had re- 
 cently deposed from office. The issue was 
 thus made of sustaining Lycophron by Pho- 
 ciau and overthrowing him by IMacedonian 
 influence. Philip marched into Thessaly, as 
 did also Phayllus, brother of Onomarchus. A 
 severe battle was fought and the Phocians 
 were defeated ; but Onomarchus immediately 
 came to the scene with another array, and the 
 
 'ASTOIi TO PHILIP'S l;l',il 1 1-Vi:. 
 
 row-head was drawn away, it was found to 
 contain the following label : " Astor to Philip's 
 right eye." It appeared on inquiry that the 
 unerring missile had been discharged by an 
 offended archer who had recently oflered his 
 services to the king and been rejected. He 
 hatl represented to Philip that his skill with 
 the bow was so great that he could kill a small 
 bird on the wing. The king nut l)elicviug the 
 story had put off the applicant witii the re- 
 mark, "Well, well, I shall make use of thee 
 when I go to war with the starlings." Astor 
 had then joined the Methoneans and now vin- 
 dicated his skill in a way never to be forgotten. 
 Meanwhile the Phoeian general, Philomelus, 
 
 victory was reversed by the overthrow of the 
 Macedonians. 
 
 It was now the turn of Philip to rally and 
 fight for hLs kiugdom ; for had Onomarchus 
 successfully followed up the advantage gained 
 by the defeat of his adversary, the king might 
 have been hard pressed to save his crown ; but 
 to him the defeat which he had sustained was 
 but a temporary reverse. He at once reorgau: 
 ized his forces and augmented them to twenty 
 thousand men. Onomarchus again came to 
 the contest with an eipial number of troops. 
 Philip openly avowed his cause to be that of 
 the Greeks — the cause of Apollo and liberty 
 against irreligion and the despotism of a tyrant.
 
 623 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Taking advantage of the superstition of tte 
 people, he decked the heads of his soioiei-s 
 with laurel, the emblem sacred to Phoebus. A 
 spirit of enthusiasm was thus diffused through 
 the army ; uor did the Phocians come to the con- 
 flict without the highest incentives of battle. 
 
 The struggle that ensued was long and 
 bloody. As between the Macedonian and 
 Phocian phalanxes, it seemed doubtful which 
 would bear the other down. At length, how- 
 ever, the fate of the day was decided hy a 
 charge of the Thessalian cavah-y which broke 
 the lines of Onomarchus, and was the begin- 
 ning of his overthrow. The Phocians wavered 
 and then fled. They were pressed into the sea 
 by the triumphant ^Macedonians. Nor did the 
 Athenian squadron, which just then hove in 
 sight, arrive in time to bring succor to the fu- 
 gitives. Six thousand of the Phocians fell in 
 the battle and the flight. Onomarchus him- 
 self was killed and his body hung on a gibbet, 
 Departing trom his usual method in victory, 
 and yielding to that despicable spirit of relig- 
 ious bigotry, which caught from the supposed 
 vindictiveness of the gods, has in every age con- 
 verted men into demons, Philip gave his assent 
 to the murder of the three thousand prisoners 
 who fell into his hands. The effect of this 
 decisive victory was to reverse completely the 
 relative prospects of the two parties in the 
 North, and still further to open the way for 
 the ambitious projects of the king. - His posi- 
 tion was already such as to enable him to in- 
 fluence the destinies — at least indirectly — of 
 most of the states of Greece. His army was 
 the most effective in all Europe. His soldiers 
 believed in his talents and courage. He had 
 shown himself capable of magnanimity. Even 
 superstition looked out from under her cowl, 
 and gave him a sardonic smUe as the avenger 
 of sacrilege. 
 
 After the defeat and death of Onomarchus, 
 the command of the Phocian army was de- 
 volved on Phayllus. The treasures of Delphi 
 still sufficed to hire and equip armies. When_ 
 it was seen that Apollo did not come down in 
 sublime anger to destroy the profaners of his 
 shrine, several of the other states seemed to 
 have caught an itching palm for a share in the 
 divine resources. The pliable Athens was not 
 
 proof against the seductions of the sacred gold, 
 and a force of five thousand of her citizens 
 were enrolled under the mercenary banner of 
 Phocis. The Achaeans, too, were ready to 
 share the spoils, and sent a contingent to be 
 paid from the Delphic treasury. 
 
 Notwithstanding these preparations, how- 
 ever, the Thebans showed themselves more 
 than a match for the heterogeneous soldiery 
 commanded by Phayllus. The war continued 
 with varying successes until finally at Ch.ero- 
 NEA a decisive battle was fought in which the 
 Phocians were disastrously routed. After this 
 the scene of hostilities was transferred to Pe- 
 loponnesus. Sparta took up the cause of Pho- 
 cis. Megalopolis was besieged, and the adhe- 
 rents of the sacred cause were hard pressed, 
 until the Thebans came to the rescue. 
 
 In the mean time the Athenians were busy 
 in planning trouble for Philip in Thrace and 
 Thessaly. Their most successful piece of di- 
 plomacy was in the instigation of the revolt 
 of Olynthus. The king himself was absent on 
 a campaign in Thrace when the news was 
 borne to him of the Olynthian secession. It 
 was not easy to perceive for what reason that 
 people had rebelled against his authority ; but 
 it is certain that the Athenians were priv^y to 
 what was done, for they immediately de- 
 spatched a fleet under the command of Chares 
 to uphold the insurgents. It was late in the 
 year before Philip could return from his Thra- 
 cian campaign and direct his attention to the 
 rebellious city. When he approached with a 
 large army the fears of the inhabitants got the 
 better of their rash patriotism, and they sent 
 out envoys to the king to discuss the question 
 of a settlement. But Philip was now thor- 
 oughly angered, and resolved to punish the 
 Olvnthians according to their deserts. The 
 city was rigorously besieged, and was soon 
 obliged to surrender at discretion. In this 
 case the discretion was used with great sever- 
 ity. Olynthus was leveled to the ground. The 
 people were made prisoners and sold by public 
 auction into slavery. No age or sex was 
 spared by the enraged king, whose wrath, as is 
 alleged, was fanned by the philosopher, Aris- 
 totle, who was present at the sale, pointing 
 out to Philip the richest citizens, and suggest
 
 MACEDONIA.— REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 623 
 
 ing in what manner the heaviest ransoms might 
 be obtained. 
 
 By this time the power of the king of Jlace- 
 don was so well established, and his warlike 
 fame liad sounded so far, a:? to make even the 
 factious Greeks wary of further hostilities. 
 They accordingly made overtures for peace, 
 and sending a deputation of their most distin- 
 guished citizens to represent the sUite, opened 
 negotiations with the king. The two orators, 
 Demostifenes and ^Esciiine.s, were the spokes- 
 men on behalf of the Greeks. After some 
 length of discussion, in which it is said that 
 the former, owing to the strangeness of the 
 situation and the importance of the business 
 in hand, appeared to a great disadvantage as 
 compared with his rival, the conference was 
 adjourned, and a counter embassy was pres- 
 ently thereafter sentto Athens to make known 
 the views of the king respecting the terms of 
 peace. 
 
 Then followed the usual hot discussions in 
 the Athenian assembly, and then in B. C. 346, 
 five plenipotentiaries were appointed to go to 
 Pella, the Macedonian capital, and conclude a 
 Rettlcnient. Here the terms of the treaty were 
 finally decided. All the states were brought 
 to peace except Halus, which was excluded at 
 the dictation of Athens, and I'hoeis, which was 
 made an exception by the demand of riiilip. 
 Thus was a pacification effected between Ath- 
 ens and Macedonia, and Philip was freed to 
 bring the Phociau war to a conclusion. 
 
 Accordingly, as soon as the treaty was made, 
 a decree was pa.-^sed by the Athenian assembly 
 declaring that unless the Phocians should at 
 once surrender the temple of Delphi to the 
 Aniphictyons, Athens would enter the league 
 again.-t them. Philip himself addressed a let- 
 ter of the same tenor to his allies in Central 
 Greece, inviting all to join him in bringing to 
 a sudden end the resistance of the contuma- 
 cious Phocians. Phis proposition was rejected, 
 however, by the Athenians, wlio greatly de- 
 sired the friendly interest of Phili]> when it 
 was manifested at a proper distance. Their 
 duplicitv, moreover, soon led them to open 
 negotiations with Phocis ; but the latter dis- 
 trusted the overtures of her would-be ally, and 
 tontinued the war. 
 
 It was at this juncture of affairs that the 
 scholarly and eloquent Isocrates gave to the 
 Greeks his elaborate oration on the condition 
 and true policy of the country. On the whole 
 the theory of the address was that the Greek 
 race should accept the leadership of Philip in 
 a crusade against barbarism. A pacific tone 
 was assumed throughout, and the idea of a 
 common cause in which the Greeks and Mace- 
 donians should embark against a common 
 enemy was made predominant. The oration 
 was after the manner of the times addressed 
 to Philip, and concluded in the following 
 words: "The .sum of what I advise is this — 
 that you act beneficially toward the Greeks; 
 that you reign constitutionally over the Mace- 
 donians; tliat you extend your sway as wide 
 as may be over 
 the barbarians. 
 And thus will 
 you earn the 
 gratitude of all ; 
 of the Greeks, 
 for the good you 
 will do them ; 
 of the Macedo- 
 nians, if you 
 will preside over 
 them constitu- 
 tionally and not 
 tyrannically ; 
 and of all oili- 
 crs, as far as you relievo them from bar- 
 baric despotism, and place them under the 
 mildness of a Grecian administration. Others 
 must have their opinions of what the times 
 require, and will judge for themselves how far 
 what is here written may be adaj)ted to them; 
 but I am fully confident that no one will give 
 you better advice or any more fitly accommo- 
 dated to the existing state of things." 
 
 The efl'ect of this able and dispassionate 
 oration was favorable to a general pacification, 
 but not on the basis of the local independence 
 of the Greek states. The positions assumed 
 by Isocrates were ably and pa.ssionately con- 
 troverted by Demosthenes and other demo- 
 cratic orators. Nor does it appear that Philip 
 himself was at this time especially anxious to 
 assume the office of arbiter in settling the 
 
 ISOCRATES. 
 
 Museo Viscoiiti.
 
 624 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 quarrels of Ms southern neighbors. For the 
 present he was detained with his campaign 
 against Halus. That brought to a successful 
 conclusion, he once more turned his attention 
 to the affairs of Phocis and resolved to bring 
 the Sacred War to a sudden end. 
 
 Collecting a large army, Philip advanced 
 by way of Thermopylie into Central Greece. 
 Here he was joined by the Thebaus. The 
 Phocians quickly perceived that their day had 
 come. Athens was not to be trusted. Sparta 
 had designs of her own. All Peloponnesus 
 was wavering toward the Macedonian interest. 
 The Phocian army was now under command 
 of Phalfficus, who, perceiving the hopelessness 
 of the cause, offered to capitulate. Philip 
 agreed that he should retire unmolested into 
 Southern Greece. The principal towns of 
 Phocis were then surrendered to the king. 
 
 The passions of the Thebans against those 
 who had so long resisted them could hardly be 
 restrained ; but PhUip insisted that the terms 
 should be observed. The general question of 
 what should be done with Phocis and her in- 
 habitants remained to be settled by a congress 
 of the states, which was now convened by 
 Philip at Thermopylse. Before this body the 
 most cruel demands wer3 made by the extreme 
 party of the Amphictyons. The deputies from 
 CEta demanded that all the Phocians should 
 be hurled down from the cliffs about Deljjhi ; 
 but Philip was less vindictive than Phoebus, 
 and the penalty finally voted by the council, 
 though excessive in its severity, was less 
 bloody than might have been expected. 
 
 The terms granted were these : The Phocians 
 should lose forever their place in the Amphic- 
 tyonic councU ; the three principal cities of 
 Phocis should be dismantled, and the remain- 
 ing towns destroyed ; no hamlet should be 
 permitted of more than fifty houses, nor any 
 nearer to the next than a furlong ; the heavy 
 arms and horses belonging to the people should 
 be given up; finally, a tax of sixty talents 
 annually should be assessed upon the lands of 
 Phocis until all the squandered treasures of 
 the Delphic shrine should be replaced. To 
 PhUip was assigned the duty of enforcing the 
 conditions; and in order that he might the 
 more consistently undertake the settlement, 
 
 the two votes hitherto belonging to Phocis in 
 the council of the Amphictyons were trans- 
 ferred to him, with full membership in the 
 body. 
 
 It appears that, with the exception of the 
 anti-Macedonian party in Athens, nearly all 
 the Greeks were satisfied with the conditions 
 of peace. The moderation of PhUip and the 
 general wisdom of the measures which he 
 promoted were such as to elicit hearty praises. 
 Even Demosthenes, in his oration. On the 
 Oi-own, concedes the great popularity of the 
 king in the time just succeeding the treaty. 
 Diodorus, who, however, was more favorable 
 to the Macedonian interest, says: "Philip, 
 after concurring with the Amphictyons in 
 their choice for the common welfare of Greece, 
 providing means for carrying them into exe- 
 cution, and conciliating good will on all sides 
 by his humanity and affability, returned into 
 his kingdom, bearing with him the glory of 
 piety, added to the fame of military talents 
 and bravery; in possession of a popularity 
 which gave him great advantage for the future 
 extension of his power." 
 
 The peace thus established was generally 
 accepted as a finality. The smaller states, 
 which had long been subject to the domination 
 of the stronger, found the authority of PhUip 
 more tolerable than that of their former mas- 
 ters. All of the Peloponnesian states without 
 exception favored the new regime, and in 
 Central Greece, only Athens looked askance 
 at the preeminent influence thus conceded to 
 the king. 
 
 The promising heir to the throne of Mace- 
 donia was now fourteen years of age. Asjs- 
 TOTLE, his instructor, resided at the court. 
 Upon him and his influence over the prince, 
 the king bestowed the most anxious attention. 
 The philosopher received royal honors at the 
 hands of his liberal master. He was loaded 
 with favors. His birthplace, the town of Sta- 
 gira, was rebuUt and beautified by the orders 
 of PhUip. The monarch, as a farther mark 
 of consideration, laid out near Pella a spacious 
 and beautiful park, in which were shady walks, 
 rustic seats, marble statues, and cool retreats 
 in which the Peripatetics gathered to discuss 
 the origin of things and the destiny of man.
 
 MACEDONIA.— REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 625 
 
 At this time the most disturbed region ad- 
 jacent to King Philip's dominions was Thrace. 
 In the eastern part of this country a leader 
 named Cersobleptes arose, and acting under 
 an inspiration from Athens, gathered a large 
 force of iusurgtflCs. It was found necessary 
 to bring a Macedonian army into the country 
 kefore the rebellion could be suppressed. The 
 work, however, was easily accomplished, and 
 
 sickness and death had been scattered through- 
 out Greece ; nor did such reports fail to produce 
 the usual results. The Athenians seized the 
 opportunity to organize a fleet and send it 
 against the maritime dependencies of Macedon. 
 Marauding expeditions were made along the 
 coast, and in defiance of the terms of tho recent 
 treaty, the influence of the Greeks was used 
 to induce revolt and dissensions in Philip'? 
 
 ARISTOTLE .\.NU ills Pfl'IL. AI.KXANPEK. 
 
 the coast districts of Thrace were incorporated 
 with Macedonia. 
 
 Soon afterwards the king undertook an ex- 
 pedition into barbarous Scvthia ; but the north- 
 ern wilds proved to him as they had done to 
 Darius, a more formidable foe than a phalanx 
 of spears in an open field. Philip was snow- 
 bound in a desolate country where he could 
 find no enemies. After his army had been 
 brought to the borders of starvation he was 
 glad with the opening of spring to make bis 
 way back to his own capital. 
 
 Before his return, however, rumors of his 
 
 kingdom. The Athenian admiral, Diojiithes, 
 instigated by the clamors of the assemlily, now 
 under the lead of Demosthenes, proceeded to 
 jMisitive hostility, and took by storm two towns 
 licloiiging to Philij). Those who escaped from 
 tlio assault were dispersed into the Cherso- 
 nesus, and the Macedonian envoys who were 
 sent to romonstiate against the outrage, were 
 thrown into prison. In the next place an 
 embargo was laid ujion all ships sailiiig into 
 Macedonian ports, by which means the grow- 
 ing commerce of the kingdom was suddenly 
 cut off" and destroyed.
 
 626 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 While this business was progressing in the 
 North, Demosthenes entered into correspond- 
 ence with Persia, with a view to securing the 
 cooperation of that country against the grow- 
 ing power of Philip. The project was suc- 
 cessful to the extent of obtaining from the 
 court at Susa a large remittance of money to 
 be used by the Athenians according to their 
 discretion. By this means the fleets were 
 Btill further strengthened, and the island of 
 Eubtea, long alienated from Athens, was won 
 back to her old relations. 
 
 Meanwhile Philip returned from his Scyth- 
 ian campaign. It is related that as he was 
 making his way back to his capital he was 
 attacked by a wild people called the Triballi, 
 in the passes of the Msesian mountains. So 
 sudden and fierce was the onset that for a 
 while the Macedonians were well-nigh over- 
 whelmed. Nothing but the desperate exer- 
 tions of the king and the valor of his soldiery 
 saved him from utter rout. Philip himself 
 was dangerously wounded in the thigh, and 
 was about to be taken when the prince Alex- 
 ander, rushed to his side and covered him 
 with his shield. Victory finally declared for 
 the JIacedonians. The barbarians were driven 
 back with great los.ses, but the king's army 
 also suffered not a little, and himself was 
 lamed for life.' 
 
 As soon as Philip was himself again he 
 undertook the reconquest of those cities which 
 had revolted against him. His first movements 
 were directed against Periuthus and other 
 towns on the Hellespont. In this enterprise, 
 however, he was, on account of the weakness 
 of the Macedonian navy, unable to make 
 any headway, and the campaign had to be 
 abandoned. This want of success greatly ex- 
 hilarated the Athenians, and Demosthenes 
 redoubled his exertions to secure favorable 
 alliances for Athens, and to induce further de- 
 fection among the dependencies of Macedonia. 
 
 ' Philip was greatly embarrassed by his wounded 
 limb. He is reported to have been sensitive on the 
 score of his lameness. It was on this account that 
 Alexander indulged in his famous piece of pleas- 
 antry at his father's expense : " How can you, sir," 
 said the prince, " be displeased at an accident 
 which at every step serves to remind you of vour 
 valor?" 
 
 At this juncture of affairs the Greek states 
 were again thrown into commotion by the 
 prospect of war among themselves. The peo- 
 ple of Amphissa, seeing in some of the grounds 
 sacred to Apollo a fine opportunity of garden- 
 ing, set at defiance the old Amphictyonic 
 decree and began to honor nature with culti- 
 vation. This act raised the cry of sacrilege, 
 and another sacred war was imminent; but 
 the influence of Philip was so great that he 
 was elected president of the Amphictyons and 
 was thus brought into a position to mitigate, 
 if not prevent, the expected conflict. 
 
 Athens, meanwhile, was busy in creating 
 a coalition against Philip. Thebes was induced 
 to join her. Corinth, though for many j'cars 
 standing aloof from the hostile broils in which 
 most of the states had been immersed, gave 
 her adherence to the anti-Macedonians and 
 exhibited an unwonted energy of preparation.' 
 Philip, though cognizant of this unfriendly 
 business, proceeded in his own way. He con- 
 vened the Amphictyons at Thermopylae and 
 laid before them the complaints against the 
 people of Amphissa. In obedience to the 
 order of the council he issued an edict requir- 
 ing all the states to furnish a contingent of 
 troops for the punishment of the sacrilege of 
 tilling Apollo's ground. The Athenians and 
 their allies were thus thrown into a most un- 
 pleasant dilemma. Either they must answer 
 Philip's call and join him in a crusade against 
 the Amphissians, or else they must array them- 
 selves by the side of those who had profaned 
 the national religion. They chose the latter 
 course, and actually sent ten thousand merce- 
 naries to the aid of the sacrilegious city! It 
 was done, not that they loved the defilers of 
 Apollo's lands, but dreaded Philip of Macedon. 
 
 The alliance, however, was of no great 
 value to the Amphissians. Against them the 
 king at once proceeded and they were soon 
 
 ' A happy incident is related of this movement 
 on the part of the Corinthians. While they were 
 busily engaged in preparing for war, Diogenes, 
 who now resided in Corinth, was seen anxiously 
 and energetically rolling his tub from one place to 
 another. When inquiry was made of him why he 
 did so, he replied that he did not desire to appear 
 singular by being the only man in Corinth who 
 was not absurdly employed !
 
 MACEDONIA.— REIGN OF PHILIP. 
 
 62» 
 
 subdued and punished, but with far less sever- 
 ity than had been visited upon tiie obstinate 
 Phocians. 
 
 As soon as Philip's success had been such 
 as to alarm the assembly at Athens that body 
 dispatched an embassy to the king to complain 
 of his violation of the treaty ! As a matter of 
 fact, they themselves had violated it from the 
 beginning-, and he had observed the terms 
 with scrupulous fidelity. Still he replied to 
 the envoys, and through them to the Athenian 
 people, with such severe courtesy as the cir- 
 cumstances seemed to warrant. His letter 
 was as follows: 
 
 "Philip, King of the Macedonians, to the 
 Athenian council and people, greeting. What 
 your disposition towards me has been from the 
 beginning, I am not ignorant, nor with what 
 earnestness you have endeavored to gain the 
 Thessalians, the Thebans, and the rest of the 
 Boeotians to your party. But now you find 
 them too wise to submit their interests to your 
 direction, you change your course and send 
 ministers with a herald to me to admonish me 
 of the treaty, and demand a truce, having in 
 truth been injured by me in nothing. Nev- 
 ertheless, I have heard your ambassadors, and 
 consent to all your desires ; nor shall I take 
 any step against you, if, dismissing those who 
 advise you ill, you consign them to their de- 
 served ignominy. So may you prosper." 
 
 The last clause of the king's paper, relating 
 to the dismissal of the democratic leaders, was 
 directed against Demosthenes and his associates. 
 These were themselves now tlie ruling influ- 
 ence in the a.ssembly, and Philip's address was 
 not therefore likely to be received with favor. 
 The passions of the "sovereign multitude" 
 were swayed by the very powers which were 
 to be renounced and consigned to ignominy. 
 
 Meanwhile the Thebans, after much waver- 
 ing between interest uiul inclination, decided in 
 favor of an Athenian alliance, and as soon as 
 the league was effected the assembly of Athens 
 dispatched into Boeotia a large force, to oc- 
 cupy the frontier towns which wsuld lie first 
 in the way of a Macedonian invasion. Philip 
 at the head of his forces took ])osse.ssion of the 
 town of Elateia, which commanded the pass 
 of Thermopylie. While occupying this posi- 
 
 tion he made one further efibrt to secure a 
 settlement of their difficulties without the 
 shedding of blood ; but his overtures were re- 
 garded by the allies as so many symptoms of 
 fear. The ]\Iacedonian party, on the other 
 hand, urged the king's sincerity, as evidenced 
 in his previous course; and but for the hot 
 apjieals which were poured from the popular 
 tribunals peace might still have been preserved. 
 It was, however, in Thebes, rather than in 
 Athens, that symptoms of wavering were most 
 discoverable. Demosthenes accordingly re- 
 paired to the former cit}% and poured out the 
 fiery torrent of his eloquence to persuade those 
 who faltered to stand fast in their resistance 
 to the common foe." 
 
 The allied army of mercenaries now thrown 
 into the field consisted of fifteen thousand foot 
 and two thousand horse. The Boeotian hop- 
 lites consisted of fourteen thousand, while the 
 Athenian division comprised nearly twenty 
 thousand men. The army of Philip exceeded 
 thirty thousand, and though inferior in num- 
 bers to the combined forces of the allies was 
 greatly superior to them in discipline and or- 
 ganization. 
 
 The battle-field on which the destinies of 
 Greece were now to be decided was at Ghm- 
 RONEA. Here in the summer of B. C. 338 
 it was to be determined whether the old organ- 
 ization, involving a multitude of petty and 
 independent states, should be longer main- 
 tained, or whether the expanding kingdom of 
 the North should dominate the whole penin- 
 sula of Hellas. The issue was really decided 
 by the military genius of Philip, against whom 
 the allied Greeks could bring no commander 
 of equal abilities. The youthful Alexander, 
 too, bore a conspicuous part in the contest. 
 The battle was long and sanguinary. The 
 victory inclined to the ^lacedonians. The de- 
 feat of the allied forces was complete and 
 overwhelming. Philip, with his usual moder- 
 ation, dismissed the prisoners without punish- 
 ment. The bodies of the dead were sent to 
 
 ' It was in the course of tlie oration delivered 
 on this occasion that Deinostlienes swore by Pallas 
 Athene that if any one should dare to say that 
 peace ought to be made with Pliilip lie would him- 
 self seize him by the hair and draf; him to prisoR.
 
 628 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Athens for burial, and the king sent thither 
 his general Antipater and his son Alexander 
 to treat with the Athenians on the subject of 
 peace. He invited them to renew the compact 
 which had recently existed between Greece 
 and Macedon. A counter embassy was re- 
 turned to the king, and the Greeks were only 
 loo ready to accept the favorable conditions 
 which were offered. 
 
 As soon as peace was reestablished the at- 
 tention of Philip was directed to the king of 
 Persia. For some time it had been his policy 
 to establish himself at the head of a Hellenic 
 confederacy, and then hurl the united forces 
 of Greece and ]Macedonia upon the dominions 
 of the Great King, against whom all the people 
 of the West cherished so profound an antipa- 
 thy. Diodorus, in his account of the course 
 pursued by Philip at this juncture, says: " The 
 king, encouraged by his victory at Chseronea, 
 by wliich the most renowned states had been 
 checked and confounded, was ambitious of 
 becoming the military commander and head 
 of the Greek nation. He declared, therefore, 
 his intention of carrying war, in the common 
 cause of the Greeks, against the Persians. A 
 disposition to concur in this purpose and to 
 attach themselves to him as their chief per- 
 vaded the Grecian people. Communicating 
 then with all, individuals as well as states, in 
 a manner to conciliate favor, he expressed his 
 desire of meeting the nation in congress to 
 concert measures for the great object in view, 
 and such a body was accordingly convened at 
 Corinth. This explanation of his intentions 
 excited great hopes, and so produced the de- 
 sired concurrence that at length the Greeks 
 elected him generalissimo of their confederate 
 powers. Great preparations for the Persian 
 war were put forward, and the proportion of 
 troops to be furnished by every state was cal- 
 culated and determined." 
 
 The final scene in Philip's eventful and am- 
 bitious career was now at hand. The army 
 of more than two hundred thousand men, 
 raised by the allied states to war against the 
 Persians, was destined to be led into Asia by 
 another. After his victory at Chscroiiea the 
 monarch returned to his capital, and in B. C. 
 336, occupied a brief interval with the mar- 
 
 riage of his daughter to Alexander, king of 
 Epirus. A feast was made in honor of the 
 occasion. When the banquet was at its height 
 and Philip, after the manner of the times, had 
 given himself freely to indulgence, a certain 
 Pausanias, who harbored a grudge against 
 the king on account of a supposed injury, 
 plunged a dagger into his breast and laid him 
 lifeless. The assassin immediately fled, but 
 before he could make his escape through the 
 city gates he was overtaken and instantly cut 
 down. 
 
 The causes of this tragic event, beyond the 
 petty resentment which the murderer was 
 known to have felt, have never been deter- 
 mined. The most plausible theory of the as- 
 sassination is that which attributes it to the 
 revenge of Olympias, who, in the preceding 
 year had been discarded by the king. Philip 
 had chosen in her place a maiden named Cle- 
 opatra, daughter of Attains, one of his gen- 
 erals. It is said that the conduct of Olympias, 
 on hearing of the murder of the king, waa 
 such as to warrant the suspicion that she had 
 been privy to his taking off. The sudden de- 
 struction of the assassin prevented his divulg- 
 ins his motives, and it is therefore not known 
 whether political influences originating in 
 Greece or Persia had any thing to do with 
 procuring the crime. 
 
 Philip of Macedon may be fairly ranked aa 
 the greatest ruler of his time. At the begin- 
 ning of his career he had to' battle with lim- 
 ited resources to create and consolidate his 
 kingdom. Such was his success that at the 
 close of his reign — though the end was pre- 
 cipitated by sudden violence — the Macedonian 
 supremacy was established on a basis not to be 
 shaken. Nor was it more by force and mili- 
 tary genius than by the possession of great 
 civil abilities that he gained his preeminence. 
 He was a diplomatist, a thinker, a discernet 
 of motives. His disposition was more humane 
 than the age he lived in. His self-possession 
 was remarked by all who came into his pres- 
 ence. His power of conversing and his affa- 
 ble manners made his company to be sought 
 by the learned and polite. The summary 
 given by Diodorus respecting Philip's charac- 
 ter may be quoted with approval : " He esr
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 629 
 
 teemed mere physical courage and physical 
 strength in the field as among tlie lowest qual- 
 ities of a superior officer. He set an almost 
 exclusive value on military science as distin- 
 guished from personal prowess, and not less on 
 the t<ilent of conversing, persuading, and con- 
 ciliating those over whom a general might be 
 
 appointed to preside. Upon these qualities he 
 founded the only favorable opinion which he 
 cnturtaiiK-'il of himself; for he was wont to 
 remark that the merit of success in battle he 
 could only share with tliosc under him, whereas 
 the victories he gained liy argument, atfabilitji 
 and kindness were all his own." 
 
 Chapter L.— Alexander the Great. 
 
 IIEN Philip was assassi- 
 nated the prince Alex- 
 ander was in his twen- 
 tieth year. Doubtless the 
 vague suspicion which as- 
 sociated him with his fa- 
 ther's murder wasground- 
 
 i and unjust. Even if Olynipias was j)roperly 
 charged with complicity in the crime, it is 
 not likely that Alexander, who was almost 
 constantly with his father, and a])pears to 
 have been greatly attached to him, would con- 
 nive at his destruction. It is more probable 
 that in so far as the assassination had any po- 
 litical significance, it was based on a scheme 
 to transfer the crown to Amyntas, the son of 
 Autiochus, and was therefore in the highest 
 degree agahiM the interest of Alexander. Nor 
 was it in accord with the character of the 
 prince to begin his career with parricide. 
 
 In accordance with custom, tlie new king 
 was conducted to the throne with military 
 pomp. He addres.sed the Macedonian nobles 
 who were assembled tn witness the ceremony 
 in words well calculated to inspire confidence. 
 He declared his purpose to rule in accordance 
 with the policy adopted by his father, and 
 added with great gravity: "The king's name 
 is changed, but the king you shall find re- 
 mains the same." As an earnest <<t' liis pur- 
 pose, he retained his father's officers, liotli in 
 the government and in the army; nor might 
 any one find cause to complain on areoiint of 
 his own dis|)aragemeiit in the esteem and 
 honor of the court. 
 
 It was not to be apprehended, however, 
 that a prince of twenty could succeed such a 
 
 ruler as Philip, whose powerful arrn had made 
 his name a terror to conspirators, without many 
 and serious trials. It was to be expected that 
 not a few of the turbulent peoples over whom 
 the father had held sway would try the cour- 
 age and ten\pt the patience of the son. At 
 this time, moreover, the influence of Persia 
 was constantly felt in the West, particularly 
 in the states of Greece. The agents of Darius 
 went everywhere to promote the interests of 
 their master by creating confusion in the coun- 
 sels of his enemies. The purpose of Philip to 
 invade Asia was well known at the court of 
 Su.sa, and the news of that monarch's death 
 was received with delight by the Persian king, 
 who fondly iiuagined that the youthful succes- 
 sor of the great Macedonian would be unable 
 to prosecute his father's ambitious plans. The 
 emissaries of Darius undci-stood thoroughly the 
 factious and turbulent .'ij)irit of the Greeks, and 
 the policy pursued was that of fanning the 
 slumbering jealousy of the states until it should 
 burst into a fiame of insurrection. 
 
 The first attention of the new king was di- 
 rected to Thessaly. Of tliose states included 
 within the limits of Northern Greece, this was 
 the most ])owerful ally of the Macedonians. 
 The agents .sent out by Alexiwider found the 
 Thessalians in a loyal disi)osition, and the 
 friendly relations existing between them and 
 Philip were easilv confirmed. The civil and 
 military authority of the state remained in the 
 same hands as before. The influence of Thes- 
 Sivly thus became of great im])ortance to Alex- 
 ander, who was able to use his ally to good 
 advantage in securing the allegiance of the 
 other states.
 
 630 
 
 UNIVERSAL EISTORY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 The next important matter occupying the 
 attention of the young king was the meeting 
 of the Amphictyonic council at Thermopylte. 
 It was necessary for Alexander to have con- 
 ferred on him his father's seat as president 
 of that venerable body. This dignity, however, 
 was easily attained at the hands of the Am- 
 phictyons, and Alexander immediately sought 
 the still higher honor of being elected general- 
 issimo of all the Greeks. For this purpose a 
 
 congress of the states was called to meet at 
 Corinth. When the body was assembled, the 
 king proposed to the delegates that the great 
 expedition against Persia, which had been cut 
 short by the death of his father, should now 
 be resumed, and that himself should be elected 
 to command the combined forces of the 
 West. The proposition was readily assented 
 to by a majority of the delegates, though not 
 without the opposition of the Lacedtemonians, 
 who held that they were restrained by an an- 
 
 cient custom from committing the command 
 of their armies to another. 
 
 It appears, withal, from this circumstance, 
 that the deliberations of the congress were un- 
 trammeled by any fear of the king, each state 
 being allowed to exercise the suffrage in its 
 own way. Thus was brought to a successful 
 conclusion the preliminary arrangements by 
 which the largest and most important expedi- 
 tion ever undertaken in Greece was intrusted 
 to a youth of twenty 
 years. 
 
 Now it was that the 
 ambitions of Alexander 
 found free scope for 
 exercise. Preparations 
 were immediately re- 
 sumed for the equipment 
 of the army for the 
 grand campaign into 
 Asia. It was perhaps 
 fortunate for Alexander 
 that at this juncture 
 difficulties arose which 
 furnished an opportu- 
 nity to test his capacities 
 and try the mettle of 
 his soldiery in a field 
 near home. Before the 
 expedition could set out 
 for Asia Minor, ominous 
 clouds gathered around 
 his kingdom, and threat- 
 ening invasions gathered 
 on three sides of the 
 realm. On the west the 
 Ulyrians revolted and 
 resumed their independ- 
 ence. On the north the 
 Thracians, headed by the warlike tribe of Tri- 
 balli, rose in arms; and on the east the mis- 
 cellaneous nationalities inhabiting the coasts 
 and islands of the ^geau threw off the re- 
 straints of authority and again betook them- 
 selves to marauding and piracy. 
 
 It was this alarming condition of affairs 
 which first struck fire from the daring spirit 
 and military genius of the young king. Has- 
 tily dividing his forces he despatched Parmenio 
 with one division against the Ulyrians, while
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 G31 
 
 he himself at the head of the other i)roceeded 
 against the freebooters of the coast. AVith 
 extraonliuary rapidit}' he fell upon those who 
 had defied his authority and scattered them 
 in terror before him. He pursued the fugi- 
 tives into the mountaiu.s of Hienius, and gave 
 them no rest even in the rocky defiles where 
 they had sought refuge. No cami)aigii con- 
 ducted by Philip had esiiibited sueli audacity 
 or been crowned with such speedy success. 
 
 Turning from his expedition to the coast, 
 Alexander next made his way into Thrace. 
 Here the enemy had seized the tops of the 
 mountains, and having fixed their war-chariots 
 in front of their lines so as to form a rampart 
 against the jjhalanx, they regarded tiicir po- 
 sition as im]iregnable. It was propo.sed, more- 
 over, should the Macedonians attempt to 
 scale the heights, to hurl down the chariots in 
 their faces. But Alexander, nothing daunted, 
 ordered his men to ascend the acclivity, and 
 to open their ranks for the passage of any en- 
 gines that might be sent down against them. 
 It is said by Arriau that not a single Mace- 
 donian was killed in the charge. The heights 
 were carried and the barbarians scattered to 
 the winds. Fifteen hundred of their dead, 
 together with all the women and spoils of the 
 battle, were left on the field. 
 
 The king next turned his attention to the 
 Triballi whom he followed northward of 
 Hsenuis into the great forests which stretch 
 out on the right bank of the Danube. After 
 hunting the barbarians out of the woods, he 
 assaulted them and their king, Syrmus, on 
 the island of Pence, in the river Ister; but 
 for once his audacity was overdone. The 
 place proved impregnable, and he was obliged 
 to desist from the attack. The Triballi, how- 
 ever, were glad to escape with their lives, and 
 made no further attempt to disturb the peace 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 Alexander next crossed the Danube, and 
 made a successful campaign against the Geta;. 
 These people were le.«s warlike than the Tri- 
 balli, and could offer no successful resistance 
 to the progress of the Macedonians. The 
 whole countrj' was speedily overrun ; the 
 capital was destroyed and the tribes subdued. 
 Returning to the south bank of the river, the 
 
 king was met by a humble embassy from 
 Syrmus, who begged that he and his people 
 might have peace. Likewise came envoys 
 from the Celts dwelling on the Ionian bay. 
 They too, though representing a haughty and 
 warlike race, sought the favor of Alexander, 
 and were received as friends and allies.' 
 
 Alexander next directed his course against 
 the revolted Illyrians. Marching with great 
 ra])idity into their country, he penetrated to 
 the capital, Pellion, which he seized before 
 the insurgents were well aroused to a sense of 
 their danger. The Illyrians, however, and 
 the Taulantians, who had joined them, trusted 
 rather to the defensible position which they 
 had chosen among the hills than to the risks 
 of a battle. They therefore waited to be at- 
 tacked, and it was some time before Alexan- 
 der could bring them to an engagement. At 
 last, however, he assaulted them in their po- 
 sition, and they were quickly dispensed. The 
 leaders of the revolt thereupon made over- 
 tures for peace, which were readily accepted 
 by the king. News had already been carried 
 to him of a troublous state of affairs in 
 Greece, whereat Alexander was so greatly 
 disturbed that he speedily withdrew from 
 Illyria and returned to Macedon. 
 
 After the death of Philip, the anti-j\Iace- 
 donian party in the Greek states became more 
 active than ever. Especially were the radical 
 energies of Demosthenes vehemently directed 
 against the young king of the North. Every 
 motive which envy and revenge could suggest 
 was busily and j)ersistently paraded to incite 
 insurrection among the southern dei)endencies 
 of Macedonia. Thebes took fire. This state, 
 after the battle of Chjeronea, had been reduced 
 to a condition of vas.salage. The people, 
 naturally proud and headstrong, chafed under 
 the domination of Macedonia, and, Greek- 
 like, were ready at the first ojjijortunitv to 
 break into revolt. It was in anticipation of 
 such an emergency that in the very year of 
 
 ' It is related that, in tlie interview- of Alexan- 
 der with the Celtic ambassadors, he inquired 
 what might be the cause of their alarm, expecting 
 tlie flattering answer that they dreaded his name. 
 Wluit, tlierefore, was his chagrin on being told 
 that the thing which the Celts most feared was 
 that llie ski/ might fall on Iheir heads and bury thein!
 
 6-6A 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD.
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 633 
 
 Alexander's accession a garrison had been, by 
 the order of the Amphictyons, established in 
 the Tliebau citadel. The two commanders of 
 this body of guards were Amyntas and Timo- 
 laiis. The first was a Thebau and the second 
 a Macedonian. Both, believing in the peace- 
 able disposition of the citizens, took up their 
 quarters in the town instead of the citadel. 
 Meanwhile a sedition was fomented in Athens, 
 and certain Theban exiles residing there were 
 instigated to return to their own city and 
 head an insurrection. Accordingly, in the 
 dead of night, Amyntas and Timolaiis were 
 beset in their quarters and killed. Heralds 
 then ran tlirough the town, proclaiming that 
 Alexander was dead, and urging the citizens 
 to attack and destroy the JIaccdonian garrison. 
 
 Hearing of this condition of affairs, Alex- 
 ander came down with all haste from the 
 North, and marched into Bceotia. Before the 
 Thebans could prepare resistance, the king 
 was upon them. They were incredulous, and 
 refused to believe that he who but a few days 
 before had been proclaimed dead in the moun- 
 tains of Illyria was actually at their doors 
 with a Macedonian phalanx. Thinking that 
 the advance was some company of marauders, 
 they sent out a body of cavalry and peltasts 
 to confront them. Alexander, acting with 
 great moderation, made proclamation that the 
 infatuated multitude should cease from their 
 ra.«h hostility and return to tl. r allegiance. 
 When the demagogues who had c>y. trol of the 
 city would not hear to the proposed settle- 
 ment, the king advanced his army to the city 
 gates, and stood ready for action. For it was 
 believed that the Macedonian party in Thebes 
 would presently assert itself, and that the 
 storming of the town would thus be avoided. 
 
 But while matters stood in this attitude a 
 party of the besiegers, under command of 
 Perdiccas, being close to the city wall, discov- 
 ered the means of scaling the rampart, and, 
 without waiting for orders, began an assault. 
 They fought their wa}' into the heart of the 
 city, but the Thebans rallied in great num- 
 bers and the a.ssailants were driven back. 
 Retreating through the gates, the Macedonians 
 were pursued by the rash throng of citizen 
 soldiers, who recklessly pressed on until they 
 
 struck the phalanx, which Alexander had. 
 drawn up to resist them. Against this im- 
 movable wall the Thebans dashed themselves, 
 and were hurled back in confusion. A battle 
 was now fairly on. The Macedonians followed 
 the insurgents into the city. 
 
 The besieged garrison now poured out of 
 the citadel, and the discomfiture of the The- 
 bans was soon complete. Great numbers were 
 slaughtered in the streets. The auxiliaries in 
 Alexander's army, burning with the recollec- 
 tion of wrongs which they had suffered at the- 
 hands of the Thebans in the times of Pelopi- 
 das, gave free rein to their passions, and madfr 
 an indiscriminate butchery of the inhabitants. 
 Nor did the violence of the victors cease with 
 the bloody tragedy by which the town was- 
 taken. A congress of the confederate states- 
 was presently convened, and decrees of relent- 
 less barbarity were passed against Thebes and 
 her people. It was solemnly resolved that the- 
 Theban name should be blotted out ; that the- 
 city should be destroyed ; that the women and 
 children should be sold into slavery ; that the 
 territory should be parceled out to the alliea- 
 and to those of the natives who had main- 
 tained their allegiance to Macedonia ; and 
 that the citadel should be held by a garrisorh 
 in the Macedonian interest. 
 
 The character of Alexander was illustrated 
 in the enforcement of the act of the congress. 
 Much of the severity of the edict was al)ated. 
 Especially where the interests of literature- 
 and art were concerned did the king act the- 
 maguanimous part. The house of the poet. 
 Pindar was not demolished, and even his rela- 
 tives were spared from persecution. In other 
 respects the decree was enforced, and Thebe* 
 was extinguished. Six thousand of her peo- 
 ple had perished in battle, and thirty thou- 
 sand were sold into slaverj-. It is said that, 
 the mind of Alexander was haunted not a 
 little with the recollection of these atrocities^ 
 perpetrated against the Thebans, and that he 
 attempted, as far as lay in his power, to make 
 amends by the bestowal of favors upon those- 
 who survived the destruction of the state. 
 
 Great was the alarm at Athens when it 
 was known that Thebes had been taken and 
 destroyed. It was confidently expected that.
 
 634 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Alexander, well knowing that the Theban re- 
 volt had been instigated by the Athenians, 
 would at once proceed to inflict on them the 
 punishment which they had provoked. An 
 assembly was immediately called in the terri- 
 fied city, and an embassy was dispatched to 
 the king congratulating him on his safe return 
 from Illyria and hk success in exterminating ilw 
 Thebam ! So great was the difference in their 
 feelings towards Alexander dead and Alex- 
 ander living! The king made answer to the 
 €mbassy, accepting their compliment ; but at 
 
 tors, and promising themselves to try and 
 punish their leaders for the seditious counsel 
 which they had been in the habit of giving. 
 To this Alexander acceded, but made it a con- 
 dition that Charidemus, who had acted as a 
 Greek spy at the court of Philip, should be 
 banished from the country. The king indeed 
 was anxious at as early a date as possible to 
 bring all Greece to a state of quiet to the end 
 that he might enter upon the prosecution of 
 those larger plans which he had mherited from 
 his father. 
 
 THEBANS AND MACEDONIANS IN BATTLE. 
 
 the same time he sent a letter to the Athe- 
 nians telling them that their friendly feelings 
 would be reciprocated on condition of the sur- 
 render by them to him of ten of their leaders, 
 ■whom he named. The list included Demos- 
 thenes, Lycurgus, Hyperides, Polyeuctus, 
 Charites, Charidemus, Ephialtes, Diotemus, 
 and Meroeles. The city was thrown into great 
 confusion by the demand. It is said that De- 
 mosthenes, l)eing in terror, gave Demades five 
 talents to intercede for him with Alexander. 
 The Athenians sent back another embassy, 
 begging the king's indulgence for their ora- 
 
 Returning to his own capital Alexander 
 diligently renewed his preparations for the 
 invasion of Asia. In this work he spent the 
 winter of B. C. 335-334, and with the open- 
 ing of spring found himself in readiness to 
 proceed with his campaign. His army con- 
 sisted of but thu-ty-five thousand men, but 
 these were thoroughly drOled and hardened 
 by the severe discipline of exposure and war. 
 They were mostly veterans who, under Philip, 
 had learned to overcome all obstacles, and 
 who now, under Philip's son, had come to 
 share his courage and ambitions. '
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 635 
 
 The Macedonian advance began from Pella 
 to Sestos on the Hellesjwnt. Here, at the 
 tomb of Protesilaiis Alexander oflercd sacrifices. 
 Then flinging himself into a galley he bade 
 adieu to tlie shores of Europe, and was rowed to 
 the opposite coast. Arriving in Asia, he fir.st 
 visited the site of ancient Troy. Thoroughly 
 imbued witli the spirit of the Iliad, he paused 
 to make offerings in the temple of Jlinerva, 
 and from this shrine he obtained a suit of 
 armor wliich tradition said had been preserved 
 from the time of the Trojan war. In the 
 place of this he dedicated to the goddess one 
 of his own coats-of-mail, which was liung up 
 in the temple. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Persian king appeared to 
 take no alarm on account of the ^laoedonian 
 lion who had entered his dominions at a 
 bound. The crossing of the Hellespont had 
 been made without opposition, though the 
 Persian fleet far outnumbered any armament 
 that Alexander could have brought against it. 
 No general preparations had l)een made by tlie 
 court of Susa to resist the impending inva- 
 sion. The defense of the western provinces 
 had been left to their respective satraps, while 
 the Greek cities on the coast had been in- 
 trusted to the guardianship of the Rhodian 
 general, Memnon. The carelessness of Da- 
 rius and liis officers in permitting the actual 
 invasion to begin without taking measures 
 necessary to rei)el it was little less than a 
 blind infatuation of .security for which the 
 Persian Empire was presently to pay a ruin- 
 ous price. 
 
 Alexander greatly desired to try the mettle 
 of the Persians, rather than of the Greeks 
 inhabiting the Ionian cities. He also had a 
 respect for the military abilities of Memnon, 
 but none at all for the prowess of the average 
 satrap. He, therefore, made his way first 
 along the shores of tlie Propontis in a north- 
 easterly direction, and thus came into the 
 province of Lower Phrygia, of which Arsitos 
 was tlie governor. To him Memnon sent a 
 most excellent piece of advice to the effect 
 that the sjitrap should lay waste the coun- 
 try in advance of Alexander, and avoid a 
 battle. But Arsites liafl an army of more 
 
 than forty thousand men, and was himself 
 N — Vol. I — 39 
 
 not devoid of courage. He therefore an- 
 swered that not a house should be burned, 
 nor an article of property be destroyed within 
 the limits of his satrapy. This, of course, 
 meant battle, and the day was at hand. 
 
 For delay was not in Alexander's nature. 
 He pressed forward rapidly to the river Gran- 
 icu.s, and came upon the stream near the town 
 of Zelia. On the opposite bank the Persian 
 army was already encamped; for Arsites, 
 knowing the route of Alexander, had taken 
 advantage of the stream to oppose his passage. 
 When Alexander reached the bank he was 
 for giving immediate battle ; but at this junc- 
 ture the veteran Parmenio, who knew better 
 than the impetuous young king the hazards 
 of war, advised his master not to attempt the 
 crossing of the stream in the face of such an 
 enemy. But the king was not to be foiled in 
 his purpose. With a vision more far-reaching 
 than that of Parmenio, he saw that immedi- 
 ate and victorious battle was the thing now 
 needed to fire the spirits of the Macedonians 
 and to strike terror into the foe. To his vet- 
 eran general's admonition he therefore re- 
 plied : "Your reflections are just and forci- 
 ble ; but would it not be a mighty disgrace to 
 us, who so easily passed the Hellespont, to be 
 stopped here by a contemptible brook? It 
 would, indeed, be a lasting reflection on the 
 glory of the Macedonians as well as on the 
 personal bravery of their commander; and 
 besides, the Persians would forthwith consider 
 themselves our equals in war, did we not in 
 this fir.st contest with them achieve something 
 to justify the terror which attaches to our 
 name." 
 
 So it was determined to give battle with- 
 out delay. Parmenio was appointed to the 
 left wing; Philotas, to the right. Here also 
 Alexander himself took his station. The 
 ])r('paiatii)iis made by the Macedonians were all 
 in ])hiiii view of the Persians on the opposite 
 bank. Discovering, from the armor and dec- 
 orations of Alexander's principal officers, in 
 what part of the lines the king was to com- 
 mand, the Persians drew up their best cohorts 
 opposite where the great Macedonian must 
 cross the river. This movement on the part 
 of the enemy was altogether agreeable to
 
 636 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Alexander, who was complimented by this dis- 
 position of the Persian forces. He saw more- 
 over that if he should be able to break that 
 part of the enemy's line which had been 
 strengthened to resist him personally, the rest 
 would, in all probability, after the manner of 
 Asiatics, fall into confusion and fly from the 
 field. He accordingly determined to charge 
 through the river and into the face of the 
 foe. The first body consisting of the peltasts 
 and cavalry rushed through the stream and 
 up the opposite banks. Here they were met 
 by the Persians in superior numbers and after 
 a brief struggle were driven back. The time 
 thus gained, however, enabled Alexander to 
 cross with the main division of heavy-armed 
 soldiers. 
 
 The fight now began in earnest. For some 
 time it seemed doubtful whether the Macedo- 
 Dians could force the enemy from their posi- 
 tion. Alexander exhibited the greatest per- 
 sonal bravery. He was in the thickest of the 
 fight and when his lance was broken quickly 
 supplied its place with another. He charged 
 with the greatest impetuosity and with his 
 own hand killed the commander of the Per- 
 sian cavalry. At one time he was surrounded 
 by the enemy and beaten down, and was 
 barely rescued by some courageous friends. 
 At length the Persian cavalry broke and fled 
 ignominiously. 
 
 In the mean time Parmenio crossed with 
 the left wing, and had with greater ease gained 
 a footing on the opposite bank. The opposing 
 Persian lines had here been weakened to 
 strengthen their left, opposed to Alexander. 
 It thus happened that Parmenio had a less 
 desperate struggle for victory than did Alex- 
 ander. The Persians were scattered from all 
 parts of the field, and the Greek mercenaries 
 under Omares were soon borne down by the 
 phalanx, and either killed or captured. Of 
 the Persians fully ten thousand were slain in 
 battle. Spithridates and Mithrobazanes, gov- 
 ernors of Lydia and Cappadocia, Mithrides, a 
 son-in-law of Darius, Pharnaces, the queen's 
 brother, Omares, general of the mercenary 
 Greeks, and many other nobles and distin- 
 guished men, were among the slain. It is 
 stated the loss on the side of the Macedo- 
 
 nians amounted to no more than one hundred 
 and twenty.' 
 
 Alexander at once gathered the spoils of 
 the battle-field and sent a portion to each of 
 the states represented in the expedition. The- 
 present in each case was sent with the request 
 that the spoils should be devoted as a memo- 
 rial of the joint success of the Macedonians 
 and Greeks against the enemy of both. The 
 factious Athenians, who had as a matter of 
 fact so many times broken faith both with the 
 king and his father, were specially remem- 
 bered in the distribution of trophies. Three 
 hundred suits of complete armor, stripped 
 from the bodies of the Persian dead, were 
 sent to Athens to be hung up in the temple 
 of Pallas Athene ; and to accompany this gift 
 the avenger of Europe on Asia dictated the 
 following inscription: "Alexander, son of 
 Philip, and the Greeks, excepting thk 
 Lacedaemonians, offer these, taken from 
 
 THE barbarians OF ASIA." 
 
 The battle of the Granicus made more 
 easy the future progress of the conqueror. 
 The terror of his name preceded him, and 
 town after town fell into his power. Resis- 
 tance almost ceased, insomuch that where the 
 king had expected hard conflicts he met no 
 opposition. Dascylium, the Bithynian capital, 
 threw open her gates to Parmenio. Sardis, 
 the rich metropolis of Lydia, strong both by 
 nature and military preparation, was surren- 
 dered with obsequious readiness. The satrap, 
 Mithranes, accompanied by the dignitaries 
 of the city, went out and met Alexander 
 seven miles beyond the gates, and humbly 
 implored his considerate mercy for themselves 
 and their subjects. 
 
 From Sardis Alexander moved forward 
 to Ephesus and Miletus. In both of these 
 cities the strife of the Persian and Macedo- 
 
 ' It is said that Alexander was deeply affected 
 by the loss of those slain in his first battle. 
 Twenty-five of the royal guards, mostly young men 
 of fiery spirit \\Ve himself, fell in the conflict near 
 the person of their king. He ordered statues ot 
 the valiant soldiers to be cast by Lyeippus and 
 placed in the city of Dium, Macedonia. He also- 
 gave to the parents and other relatives of those 
 who fell at the Granicus the freedom of their 
 respective cities; and the children of liis dead 
 soldiers were forever exempted from taxation.
 
 MACEDONIA— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 637 
 
 nian factions had risen to such a height a.s to 
 portend massacre and destruction. Never was 
 the prudeuce of Alexander displayed to a 
 better advantage than in the settlement of 
 these internal broils. Assuming the office of 
 mediator, he behaved with such moderation 
 and liberality as to secure the confidence even 
 of the democracy. He established and con- 
 Brmed the government of the cities in a man- 
 ner so little selfish as to substitute good order 
 
 selfish — or remitting the tax altogether — which 
 would have been unwise — required a continu- 
 ation of payment, and directed that the whole 
 revenue .should be used in restoring the tem- 
 ple of Diana — a measure well calculated to 
 stimulate the patriotism and flatter the pride 
 of the Ephesians. 
 
 Of still greater importance, alike to Alex* 
 ander and the Persian king, was the city of 
 MileKis. Of all the seaports belonging t* 
 
 ALEX.\NI>KK IN I'EKII. OF HIS LIFE. 
 Drawn by II. VogeL 
 
 for anarchy and prosperity for destructive 
 turmoil. At Ephesus he greatly heightened 
 his popularity by a politic measure respecting 
 the trilnite. Hitherto the city had been bur- 
 dened with a heavy annual tax, which went 
 to the satrap of the province. At the times 
 when Ephesus was subject to Athens and 
 Sparta, the tribute had been paid to them. 
 So that to the Ephesians the temporary lib- 
 erty which they gained by the Ionian revolt 
 amounted merely to a change of masters. 
 Alexander, however, instead of exacting the 
 tribute for his own — which would have been 
 
 Persia on the .^gean, this was the most valu- 
 able and necessary. For Darius already had 
 a large armament in the western seas, and the 
 free communication of the conqueror with hia 
 own country was thus endangered. To gain 
 possession of Miletus was, therefore, a matter 
 of prime importance to Alexander, and to 
 lose it a serious di.saster to the king of Persia. 
 As .soon as the Macedonian could settle affairs 
 in Ei)hesus, he accordingly set out for ^lilctus. 
 On his arrival he at once began a siege; for 
 the Milesians were not so ready to s^irrender 
 their citv as had been the citizens of Sardia.
 
 638 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 It required, however, but u short time for the 
 walls to be knocked down by the battering- 
 rams and the garrison dispersed. Such was 
 the fame of iuvi'icibility which already at- 
 tached to the uarLi.^ of Alexander that the 
 Persian fleet, lying in the harbor of Miletus, 
 made no effort tf save the city from falling. 
 Thus was Miletu.- added to the trophies of 
 Macedonia. 
 
 In the mean time, iVIemnon had given 
 special atteition to the defenses of Halicar- 
 nassus, and the garrison was thoroughly 
 drilled in anticipation of an attack. On ar- 
 riving before the city, Alexander found that 
 the walls were surrounded with a ditch thirty 
 cubits in width and fifteen cubits deep. It 
 was necessary that this should be filled up be- 
 fore the rams could be brought to bear on the 
 ramparts. The garrison was vigilant, and 
 from the walls discharged every species of 
 missile upon the assailants. But the siege was 
 pressed with vigor, and Memnon was soon 
 brought to such straits that he found it neces- 
 sary to withdraw by night. In doing so he 
 set fire to his enginery to prevent it from 
 falling into the hands of Alexander. By this 
 means a portion of the city was burned. The 
 king took possession without further resistance, 
 and with his usual moderation quieted the 
 alarm of the people. The citadel was still 
 held by a portion of the forces of Memnon. 
 but Alexander, not deeming it prudent to 
 consume time in the reduction of the place, 
 left Ptolemy with a body of three thousand 
 men to keej) the province in subjection, and 
 appointed the princess Ada, who had put her- 
 self under his protection, to be regent of 
 Caria whUe he should prosecute his campaign. 
 
 The next point to which the conqueror 
 directed his march was the city of Tralles. 
 This place was speedily reduced, and the ex- 
 pedition was then directed into Phrygia. The 
 winter was now at hand, and according to all 
 precedent military operations must cease. 
 Not so, however, with Alexander, who in- 
 formed his army of his intention to continue 
 the campaign eastward, so that if Darius 
 should accept the challenge he might meet 
 him in the following spring on the confines of 
 Syri}», To quiet all discontent, however, he 
 
 gave free permission to all who had been re- 
 cently married to return to their wives and 
 spend the winter months in Macedonia. Three 
 of his generals — Ptolemy, Coenus, and Me- 
 leager — were of this number, and to them he 
 gave the command of the division which was 
 to return home. He then ordered Parmenio 
 to take his station at Sardis, so as to preserve 
 an uninterrupted line of communication be- 
 tween Macedonia and the army. 
 
 With the remainder of his forces Alexander 
 now set out through Lycia and Pamphylia. 
 His object was by the reduction of all the 
 seaport towns to make the Persian fleet use- 
 less; for without friendly harbors a squadron 
 in these waters could do no harm. In his 
 progress through the coast provinces the four 
 principal cities- — Telmissus, Pinara, Xanthus, 
 and Patara — made voluntary submission, and 
 more than thirty of the smaller towns sent 
 embassies and made their peace with the con- 
 queror. Phaselis, the capital of Lower Lycia, 
 tendered him by the hands of her ambassadors 
 a golden crown, and solicited his friendship 
 and protection. All the province was brought 
 into submission, and jjarticularly was a certain 
 fortress, held by the barbarous Pisidians, re- 
 duced by assault and the garrison expelled 
 from the country. 
 
 Meanwhile the enemies of the king, unable 
 to oppose him in the field, undertook to secure 
 his destruction by treachery. The scheme 
 was worthy of its authors. A certain son of 
 the Macedonian prince, Aeropus, also named 
 Alexander, whom the great Alexander on his 
 accession to the throne had admitted to his 
 friendship, was now made the tool of a con- 
 spiracy by which the king was to be put out 
 of the way. It will be remembered thai 
 Amyntas, who was himself a claimant to the 
 throne, had fled to the Persian court, from 
 which great hot-bed of treachery he became 
 an active member of the plot. He sent a cer- 
 tain Asisines into Phrygia as a pretended 
 messenger to the satrap of that province, but 
 really as a bearer of dispatches to the spuri- 
 ous Alexander. The latter was advised that 
 if he would procure the murder of the king 
 he should himself have the throne of Mace- 
 donia under the protection and favor of Persia.
 
 MACEDONIA.— Ai.«xANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 J3ft 
 
 But the vigilant Parmenio caught the mes- 
 senger and sent him to Alexander, to whom 
 he confessed the whole treasonable business. 
 The other Alexander was at that time serving 
 as an officer in Parmenio's army. He was at 
 once seized and imprisoned, and the whole 
 scheme ended in a mi.surablc abortion. 
 
 Alexander then resumed his march east- 
 ward along the sea-coast. It was in this part 
 of his course that the first of many omens 
 was noticed by the army, and ascribed to the 
 will and favor of the gods. At a certain part 
 of the Panipliylian coast one of the spurs of 
 the Taurus juts into the sea so as to prevent 
 a pa.ssage along the beach. The king's pro- 
 gress was thus suddenly hindered; but as he 
 approached the obstacle the wind, which had 
 for many days blown from the south and 
 driven the surf high against the rocks, turned 
 about as if by magic, and, blowing from the 
 north, carried the tide far down the beach, 
 leaving a broad space of sand expo.sed, over 
 which the array passed in safety. Thus for 
 the son of Philip was established the prece- 
 dent of the favor of the ruling deities — a 
 circumstance of which the king was by no 
 means too modest to avail himself. It became 
 a part of his policy to encourage the belief 
 that he was under the guidance and protec- 
 tion of heaven. 
 
 In the hilly country, on the eastern con- 
 fines of Lycia, dwelt the barbarous tribe of 
 Marmarians. They were a race of robbers. 
 Not dai-ing to oppose the progress of the 
 Macedonians, they waited until the army had 
 pas-^ed by, and then falling upon the baggage 
 and cattle-train, succeeded in securing a large 
 amount of booty. With this they fled to 
 Marmara, their principal town, a place almost 
 impregnable from the nature of the surround- 
 ings. But Alexander quickly turned about, 
 pursued the robbers to their den, brought np 
 his engines, and began to batter the walls. 
 The barbarians, seeing that they were ginned 
 In their own trap, held a council, and adopted 
 the horrible expedient of murdering their 
 women and children, burning the town, and 
 escaping who could through the Macedonian 
 lines. A great fe.ast was accordingly made, 
 and after all liad well eaten the work of de- 
 
 struction began. Human nature revolted, 
 however, in the midst of the massacre, and 
 six hundred of the young men of the tribe 
 refused to be the butchers of their mothers 
 and sisters. But the town was fired, and the 
 rest of the program was carried out to the 
 extent that most of the robbers broke through 
 and escaped to the hills. Their experience 
 had been sufficient to take away all desire of 
 further depredations. 
 
 The next point toward which the expedi- 
 tion was ('.irected was the town of Perga, in 
 Pamphylia. Here there was no disposition 
 on the part of the authorities to resist or 
 even resent the coming of AJexander. While 
 marching thither the king was met by ambas- 
 sadors from the city of Aspendus, who came 
 to tender their submission and to obtain fa- 
 vorable terms of peace. The Macedonian met 
 them in his usual temper of moderation. He 
 conceded to them the conduct of their own 
 affiiirs. No garrison should be established in 
 their city. The annual tribute — payable in 
 horses — hitherto assessed by the king of Per- 
 sia, should now be sent to Alexander. In 
 addition to this, a contribution of fifty talents 
 should be made by the city. On these condi- 
 tions the people of Aspendus should in no 
 wise be disturbed. The terms were readily 
 agreed to by the commissioners; but on their 
 return home there had been a revulsion 
 among the citizens, and the whole settlement 
 was rejected. The king was thus obliged, as 
 soon as Perga and Sida had made their sub- 
 mission, to set out against Aspendus. The 
 city was at once invested, and the inhabi- 
 tants soon came to their senses. They now 
 desired to cajiitulate on the conditions previ- 
 ously offered, but the IMacedonian was not 
 so easy a master. He exacted double the 
 amount of the contribution which he had 
 first named, assessed a yearly tribute, and 
 compelled the Aspendians to accept a gov- 
 ernor to be named by himself. 
 
 No people of the West received the news 
 of Alexander's successes with so much dis- 
 pleasure as did the Lacedtemonians. They 
 alone had stood aloof from the confederacy 
 of which Alexander was generalissimo. They 
 alone had not been remembered, or remem-
 
 640 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 bered in a disparaging way, in the sending 
 home by the conqueror of trophies from his 
 battles. In his presents and messages to the 
 Greeks it was his habit to add the clause, " ex- 
 eepting the Laefdiemoniaiis." Agis, the Spartan 
 king, now sought to neutralize these indigni- 
 ties by fomenting discord among the Grecian 
 states to the end that Alexander might be 
 obliged to abandon his far-reaching plans for 
 the settlement of petty rebellions at home. 
 In this work Memnon, the Rhodian, was an 
 able coadjutor, while in the distance stood the 
 Persian monarch ready and eager always to 
 furnish both the means and the motives of 
 distraction to the fearless prince who had in- 
 vaded his dominions. 
 
 In furtherance of his plans the Lace- 
 daemonian king canvassed the republican 
 states of Peloponnesus, and induced several 
 of them to join him in inviting Darius to 
 send a portion of his army to occupy South- 
 ern Greece. At the same time Memnon, who 
 now had command of the Persian fleet, was 
 urged to assume the aggressive in the ^gean. 
 Thus was it planned to compel the withdrawal 
 of Alexander from the East. The king of 
 Persia, however, not fully confident that the 
 Macedonian could be frightened from his 
 purpose by a noise behind him, began to 
 gather armies and prepare all needed means 
 «f defense. 
 
 The approach of spring, B. C. 333, found 
 Alexander in Pamphylia. Gathering infor- 
 mation of the measures adopted by his ene- 
 mies to compass his destruction, he determined 
 to retire to Gordium, the capital of Lower 
 Phrygia, and make that place a rendezvous 
 for the various divisions of his army. The 
 time had come for the return of those who, 
 under Ptolemy and Meleager, had spent the 
 winter in Macedonia. With them large reen- 
 forcements were expected to arrive. After 
 the consolidation of his forces the king would 
 determine the plan of the year's campaign. 
 
 In his way from the Lycian coasts to 
 Phrygia, Alexander had to cross the ridges of 
 Taurus. In doing so he encountered several 
 warlike tribes, who attacked him with fury, 
 only to be dispersed. The proper pur.suit and 
 punishment of these half-savage bands was, 
 
 however, quite impossible in such a region ; for 
 the mountain fastnesses gave them immunity. 
 The city of Celfense, the metropolis of Phrygia, 
 opened her gates to receive the new mas- 
 ter instead of the old. What was it to the 
 inhabitants of these towns of Asia Minor 
 whether they should pay tribute to Darius or 
 to the son of Philip? Only this — that the 
 son of PhUip was the more generous ruler. 
 All Phrygia, after the surrender of the city, 
 submitted to the conqueror, and readily ac- 
 cepted the provisions which he made for the 
 future management of the province. 
 
 Before reaching Gordium, the king re- 
 ceived intelligence of the successes of Memnon 
 in the jEgean. The island of Chios had 
 been taken by the Persian fleet. All of Les- 
 bos except Mitylene had been reduced, and 
 that city was closely invested. It was the 
 purpose of Memnon, as soon as the siege 
 could be brought to a successful conclusion, 
 to make his way to the Hellespont, fall upon 
 the coast of Macedonia, and compel the re- 
 turn of Alexander for the defense of his own 
 dominions. Nor was it likely that Antipater, 
 who had been left by the king at Pella to 
 serve as regent during his absence, could be 
 able to raise a sufficient armament to beat 
 back the invaders from his coasts. The situ- 
 ation was not without its dangers ; but before 
 the crisis could be reached in which Alexan- 
 der would be obliged to decide between aban- 
 doning hb own territories to invasion or 
 giving up his cherished and inherited ambi- 
 tion of conquering Persia, he was relieved of 
 all anxiety by the death of Memnon. The 
 loss of that able commander was a severe 
 blow to Persian hopes in the West. The fleet 
 could make no further progress, and was 
 presently dislianded. The ^gean was re- 
 lieved of Persian domination, and the schemes 
 of the anti-Macedonian party in Southern 
 Greece were brought to naught. A reaction 
 set in in Alexander's favor, and from nearly 
 all the states of continental Greece reenforce- 
 ments went forward to join him in Asia. It 
 was seen, moreover, that contingents of troops 
 began to move from the Perso-Grecian towns 
 in Ionia and elsewhere to swell the forces of 
 Darius in the East ; from which it was dis-
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 641 
 
 terned that the Great King had abandoned 
 the idea of distracting Alexander from his 
 purpose, and had resolved to meet him in 
 battle. Than this nothing could have been 
 more gratefid to the feelings of the conqueror. 
 
 So, after a brief stay at Celsense, the king 
 continued his course to Gordium. Here oc- 
 curred that famous incident to omit which 
 were a grave crime against the cherished 
 traditions of the human race. It is the 
 story of the undoing of the Gordian Knot. 
 One of the legendary kings of Phrygia was 
 Gordius, who, when as a peasant plowing in 
 the field, was favored with the descent of 
 the bird of Jove, alighting on the yoke of 
 his oxen. There the eagle sat until the even- 
 tide. Clearly this presaged his own and the 
 greatness of his house. The soothsayers of 
 Telmessus interpreted the omen, and a pro- 
 phetess became his wife. Of this union was 
 born the child Midas, who, when grown to 
 manhood and the state was greatly disturbed 
 with civil commotions, rode with his father 
 and mother in a car into the city. . 
 
 Ak'auwhile an oracle had said that the king 
 whom the people sought should be brought to 
 them in a car. Accordingly Jlidas was hailed 
 as king by the shouting populace. He there- 
 upon took off the yoke of his oxen, and 
 dedicating it and his chariot to Zeus, fastened 
 them with cords made of the cornel tree to 
 the shrine in the acropolis of Gordium. The 
 cord was twisted and fastened in so artful a 
 way that the ends were undiscoverable ; and 
 the oracle declared that the fates had decreed 
 the empire of the world to him who should 
 untie the knot. Albeit, here was an oppor- 
 tunity which Alexander must not let pass 
 unimproved. On arriving at the city he was 
 shown into the temple, and there beheld tlie 
 fateful relics, secured, as of old, by their fas- 
 tenings. As to how he succeeded in loosing 
 the knot, there are two trad'tions — the one 
 reciting that he drew out the pin which fas- 
 tened the yoke to the beam and thus detached 
 the yoke itself, while the other says that he 
 severed the knot with his sword. 
 
 A matter of much more hi.storical impor- 
 tance was the arrival at Gordium of an Athe- 
 nian embassy. Tlie commissioners came to 
 
 request that Alexander would liberate those 
 citizens of Athens whom he had taken as 
 prisoners on the banks of the Granicus, fight- 
 ing for the Persian king. These, with two 
 thousand others, were stUl detained in Mace- 
 donia, and their countrymen had undertaken 
 to procure their release. The king listened 
 attentively to what the envoys had to say, 
 but declined to grant their request. He told 
 the embassy, however, to inform their coun- 
 trymen of his kindly feelings towards the 
 Athenians, and of his purpose, so soon as the 
 Persian war could be brought to a successful 
 issue, to set their fellow-citizens at liberty. 
 
 In the mean time, Darius had completed 
 the organization of his army, and was already 
 on his march to the West. Hi" intention was 
 to cross the Great Desert and attack Alexan- 
 der before the latter could pass the confines 
 of Asia Minor. It was equally important for 
 the Macedonian to complete the conquest of 
 the lesser Asia, and to secure the mountain- 
 passes on its eastern borders before the coming 
 of the Persian avalanche. At this time there 
 remained three satrapies uncouquered ■ Cap* 
 padocia, Paplilagonia, and Cilicia. It was of 
 the utmost importance to Alexander to expe- 
 dite the conquest of these provinces. He ac- 
 cordingly hurried in the direction of Paphla- 
 gonia, but before entering the satrapy he had 
 the good fortune to receive therefrom a friendly 
 embassy, proffering the submission of tliat im- 
 portant country. 
 
 Thus relieved from the necessity of a 
 conquest, he hastened into Cappadocia, and 
 there too was received without resistance. 
 Having ajipoiutcd Macedonian governors over 
 these two leading provinces, and taken 
 their pledge of allegiance to himself as gen- 
 eralissimo of the Greeks, he turned into 
 Cilicia. But in attempting to make his way 
 thither through a ^mountain-pass called the 
 Gate of Taurus, he was suddenly confronted 
 by the Persians, who had preoccupied the de- 
 files to prevent his passage. Such, however, 
 was the terror of the conqueror's name that 
 the enemy did not, even in their advantageous 
 position, dare to give him battle. On the 
 contrary, they abandoned the pass and fled. 
 Alexander then pressed on to Tarsus, the
 
 642 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Cilician capital. Arsaues, the governor, hastily 
 decamped with the garrison, and fled to Da- 
 rius. The city authorities thereupon opened 
 the gates, and Alexander was admitted with- 
 out opposition. It was the last act in the 
 conquest of Asia Minor. In all the rich and 
 beautiful regions of the western division of 
 the Persian Empire, not a foot of territory 
 remained to Darius. 
 
 The exertions and anxieties of the ambi- 
 tious young king now began to tell upon his 
 constitution. In tlie long marches from Cap- 
 padocia into Cilicia, he had suffered the ex- 
 tremes of fatigue. It is likely, moreover, 
 that some of the districts through which he 
 passed were miasmatic, and that some of the 
 towns were 'nfected with contagion. Soon 
 after his capture of Tarsus, Alexander was 
 attacked with a fever which came near ending 
 his life. The severity of his illness was 
 heightened by his own indiscretion. Just be- 
 fore he was prostrated, oppressed with fatigue 
 and the summer heat, he plunged into the 
 river Cydnus, noted for the icy coldness of 
 its waters, and amused himself as a swimmer. 
 On coming forth he was presently prostrated, 
 and rapidly brought so low that his life was 
 despaired of by all except Philip, the Acar- 
 nanian, his favorite physician. The latter 
 continued to attend and encourage his master. 
 While Philip was engaged in preparing a 
 draught for his royal patient, the king re- 
 ceived a secret dispatch from his old general, 
 Parmenio, informing him that Philip was a 
 traitor and had been bribed by Darius to 
 poison his king. While the letter was yet in 
 Alexander's hands, the cup containing the 
 draught was handed him by Philip. The 
 king received the potion, and at the same 
 time handed the dispatch to the physician. 
 Observing no change in Philip's countenance 
 as he read, Alexander without a word drank 
 the potion, and the loyal attendant was soon 
 gratified with a favorable change in his pa- 
 tient. For once the faithful Parmenio had 
 been misled by false information, which had 
 weU-nigh proved fatal both to the king and 
 his physician. 
 
 As soon as Alexander had sufficiently re- 
 novered from his illness to resume the direc- 
 
 tion of affairs, he sent forward Parmenio to 
 occupy the pass which led into Syria. This 
 order was issued with the double view of pre- 
 venting a like action on the part of Darius 
 and of securing to himself an easy route into 
 the Greater Asia. He himself made a brief 
 campaign into the mountainous district of 
 Cilicia. On his march thither he was sur- 
 prised on coming to the city of Auchialus to 
 observe the extent and magnificence of its 
 fortifications and public buildings. It was 
 here that the statue of Sardanapalus, the re- 
 puted founder of the city, was found, still 
 bearing that famous old Assyrian inscription, 
 which the Greek scholars accompanying Alex- 
 ander interpreted as follows: " 8/Vedanapa- 
 
 LUS, THE SON OF AnACYNDARAXES, IN ONE 
 DAY FOUNDED AnCHIALUS AND TarSUS. EaT, 
 DRINK, play; all OTHER HUMAN JOYS ARE 
 NOT WORTH A FILLIP." 
 
 Leaving this place the conqueror proceeded 
 to Sali, upon which he imposed a tribute of 
 forty thousand pounds. Thence he made his 
 way to Megarsus and Mallus. At the former 
 place he made sacrifices in honor of Pallas 
 Athene ; and at the latter he won the people 
 over to his cause by freeing them from the 
 Persian tribute. Nor were the inhabitant* 
 less ready to join his standard on account of 
 their nationality, Mallus having been origi- 
 nally founded by a colony of Argive Greeks. 
 
 While Alexander tarried at Mallus intelli- 
 gence arrived of the movements of Darius. 
 The Great King had already crossed the Syr- 
 ian plain, and was but two days' march from 
 that mountain pass which the jMacedonians 
 had already seized. The soldiers of the con- 
 queror were eager to meet the enemy, and he 
 quickly moved forward to the gateway lead- 
 ing from Cilicia into Syria. It is related that 
 at this juncture Darius was perplexed with 
 contradictory counsels. The Greek officers in 
 his army advised him to tarry in the plain 
 near where he was, and there receive the 
 Macedonian onset, but the Persian generals 
 urged the king to press forward to the foot- 
 hills and drive his enemy back through the 
 passes. The monarch followed the advice of 
 neither implicitly, and of both in part. In- 
 stead of going forward to the Syrian Gate,
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDEB THE GREAT. 
 
 64a 
 
 now held by Alexander, he made a side 
 movement to the right, and occupied another 
 pass, known as the Amanic Gate. Having 
 gained this entrance into Asia Minor, he 
 passed through with his army and advanced 
 as far as Issus, thus putting himself between 
 Alexander and those countries which he had 
 recently subdued. 
 
 The Macedonians were agitated not a little 
 on learning that the Great King was on the 
 line of their communications. It is reported 
 that Alexander was considerably exercised to 
 prevent the spread of alarm among his gen- 
 erals and soldiers; but he confidently asserted 
 that of all courses which Darius could have 
 taken the one chosen was to himself the most 
 plea.sing. He called the attention of his offi- 
 cers to the fact that in the rougher countr}' — 
 rougher as compared with the Syrian plain — 
 which the Persian had selected it would be 
 imp(issible to display his vast army in full 
 force or to use it efficiently. Here, said the 
 conqueror, the cavalry of the enemy would 
 be of no avail, and his light-armed troops, 
 with their showers of missiles, could not be 
 employed to advantage. As for himself, he 
 knew that the immortal gods, ever favorable 
 to the cause of the allied Greeks, must have 
 inspired the Persian king to put himself in a 
 position where he must be destroyed. Having 
 thus reii-ssured his soldiers, he began a retro 
 grade movement through the Syrian Gate. 
 
 The position now occupied by Darius was 
 eminently favorable. A short distance from 
 the western terminus of the pass out of which 
 the Macedonians must come, flows the river 
 Pinarus which, gathering its waters from the 
 highlands, descends to the west and then turns 
 southward in its course to the sea. Tlie 
 stream thus describes an arc the convexity of 
 whicii was towards the west. On this side 
 of tiic river the Persians were drawn up for 
 battle, while the Macedonians, making their 
 exit from the gate, must come up in the inner 
 curve of the Pinarus and cross the stream in 
 the face of the enemy. The one advantage 
 of Alexander was that his army occupied the 
 chord of an arc while the enemy was disposed 
 on the rim of the circle. 
 
 In arranging for battle the command cf 
 
 the Macedonian left, lying next to the sea, 
 was given to Parmenio. Opposed to him was- 
 the Persian cavalry. To face the Greeks in 
 the army of Darius the phalanx was set in 
 the center of the Macedonian line. The com- 
 mand of the right Alexander reserved for 
 himself. Opposite were the high grounds- 
 from which the Persians must be dislodged in 
 case they should not themselves be unwise 
 enough to descend into the plain for battle. 
 
 The number of soldiers in the army of 
 Darius has been variouslj' stated. The old 
 historians, with whom exaggeration — espe- 
 cially of the numerical force of an enetoy — 
 was a habit, computed the Persian host at a 
 half million of fighting men. More careful 
 authorities have reduced the number to one 
 hundred and forty thousand. Of these fully 
 thirty -five thousand were cavalry. To oppose 
 this tremendous array Alexander had in all 
 about forty thousand soldiers. 
 
 After considerable maneuvering, in whieb 
 both commanders appeared anxious lest b_v 
 some misstep an advantage might be gained 
 by the enemy, the battle began by the advance- 
 of the Persian right against Parmenio. Alex- 
 ander had contemj)lated beginning the fight 
 himself by assaulting the heights over against 
 him, but when he saw that the battle was 
 opening in another part of the field he dis- 
 patched thither the Thessalian hoi-se to assist- 
 bis veteran general. But though thus weak- 
 ened he forebore not to cross the stream and 
 assail the Persian left. On both wings the- 
 charge of the ^laccdonians, though stoutly 
 resisted, was successful, and the Persians were- 
 put to flight. In the center the phalanx 
 crossed the river, and was met on the other 
 bank by those old Ionian Greek soldiers whom 
 Memnon had trained in former years, and 
 who were in an unnatural way fighting under- 
 the Persian banners. 
 
 These men were of diflTerent mettle from 
 the barbarians with whom they fought. They 
 had the ancient valor of Greek soldiers, and 
 felt no doubt some mortification that the pres- 
 tige of their race was about to be transferred 
 to the Macedonians. The latter on their part 
 regarded their antagonists as traitoi-s to the 
 cause of the allied Greeks, and had, besides,.
 
 Si4 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 their own reputation to sustain as well as 
 wrongs to be avenged in the ranks of their 
 unnatural countrymen. Here, then, the bat- 
 tle was furious and bloody. Hardly could 
 the staggering jjhalaux make its way against 
 the stubborn resistance of the Greek soldiers; 
 nor is it certain which way victory in this 
 part of the field would have inclined but for 
 the overthrow of the Persian wings. 
 
 The success of Alexander and Parmenio 
 enabled them, especially the former, to fall 
 upon the flanks of the Persian center, and 
 "the valiant soldiers who confronted the 
 phalanx found themselves assailed from three 
 •directions. Under such assaults they began 
 to lose ground, but such was their valor that 
 they nearly all perished sooner than relinquish 
 the field. It was in this part of the battle 
 that Darius displayed conspicuous bravery. 
 He urged forward his chariot into the thickest 
 •of the fight and encouraged his soldiers both 
 by voice and example until his horses were 
 ■cut down and himself almost taken by the 
 Macedonians. Nothing but the courage of 
 his brother Oxathres saved the king from 
 •capture or destruction. In the critical mo- 
 ment the monarch was thrust into a fresh 
 •chariot and borne from the field. As usual 
 in the great battles of the East the flight of 
 the king was the signal for a universal rout. 
 The ranks everywhere broke and fled precip- 
 itately from the scene. Only the Persian 
 •cavalry on the right wing made a stand and 
 fought as if to sustain their old-time fame for 
 valor. Nor did they desist from their onsets 
 ■until some time after the rout had become 
 .general in all other parts of the field. 
 
 As soon as the flight began the Macedo- 
 nians pressed hard upon the fugitives. Thou- 
 sands were cut down in the panic and confu- 
 sion. Alexander himself at the head of the 
 cavalry bore down upon the flying foe and 
 -cut his broken ranks to pieces. His hope was 
 to overtake and capture the king and thus 
 end the business of the Empire. But Darius, 
 after fleeing as far as he could in his chariot, 
 mounted a horse and succeeded in escaping 
 through the Amanic Gate. But so hot was 
 the pursuit that the shield, bow, and cloak of 
 the king were secured by Alexander. 
 
 The losses of the Persians are diflferently 
 stated by diflerent authors. The lowest esti- 
 mate, which is perhaps nearest the truth, 
 places the number slain at about seventy thou- 
 sand, and of the captives at forty thousand. 
 Nor is there any trustworthy account of the 
 loss sustained by the Macedonians. There ap- 
 pears to have been an intent on the part of 
 the Greek writers to gloss over the matter or 
 to represent the list as insignificant. It is im- 
 possible, however, but that a severe loss must 
 have been inflicted on Alexander's army ; for 
 the battle was long and obstinate, and the 
 Ionian Greeks gave the phalanx blow for 
 blow. It is known that Ptolemy and several 
 other distinguished officers were slain. 
 
 The battle of Issus furnished several in- 
 cidents which posterity has been pleased to 
 preserve. When Alexander returned from 
 his pursuit of Darius he learned that the 
 family of that monarch, including his wife, 
 his daughters, and his mother, were prisoners 
 in the Macedonian camp. They were in the 
 greatest agitation, believing that the king had 
 been slain, and that they themselves would be 
 dishonored and sold as slaves. Hearing of 
 their distress, the conqueror at once sent his 
 friend Leonatus to quiet their alarm, and to 
 assure them that the king had made good his 
 escape. They were informed that they should 
 be treated not only with humanity, but with 
 tnat courtesy which befitted their rank. The 
 language attributed to Alexander sounds like 
 a phrase of chivalry ; for he is reported to 
 have said to the distracted princesses that 
 towards the Great King he had no personal 
 enmity at all — that he warred with him only 
 because they could not both be ruler of Asia. 
 
 On the following day the Macedonian, 
 accompanied by his intimate friend Hephses- 
 tion, called in person at the tent which had 
 been assigned to the captive women. When 
 they were ushered into the presence of the 
 royal household the princesses, mistaking the 
 stately Hephsestion for Alexander, prostrated 
 themselves before him and began to plead for 
 commiseration. Hephaestion at once drew 
 back and pointed to the king as the one to 
 whom they should address themselves. Alex- 
 ander at once relieved the embarrassment in
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 645 
 
 a manner that would have done honor to a 
 crusader. He told the queen that she had 
 made no mistake; that Hepha;stion was 
 anotiier Alexander, as worthy to be esteemed 
 as himself.' 
 
 In the mean time, one of the eunuchs in 
 attendance upon the royal household made 
 his escape and carried to Darius the story of 
 the treatment accorded to his family. To him 
 the thing seemed incredible. The great Orien- 
 tal, believing in the essential badness of 
 human nature, at once conjectured that his 
 beautiful queen had fascinated his adversary, 
 and that thxtt was the occasion of his clemency. 
 Jealousy seized him, and he was in a transpi 
 until his attendant informed him that the 
 Macedonian was in no sense his rival — that 
 hb conduct towards the queen had been a 
 sincere act of courtesy and consideration. 
 Then the mood of Darius changed, and in 
 great excitement he offered a prayer to the 
 gods that if the empire of Asia .should ever 
 depart from himself it might fall to Alexander. 
 
 Before he could follow up his victory, 
 Alexander deemed it prudent to complete the 
 conquest of Syria and Phienicia. These were 
 the only two provinces remaining unsubdued 
 in the western countries of the Greater Asia. 
 The king dispatched Parmenio with one di- 
 vision of the army again.st Damascus, the 
 capital of Syria, while he him.self with the 
 other division advanced into Phoenicia. The 
 first expedition was soon crowned with com- 
 plete success. Dama.scus was taken without 
 serious opposition. Parmenio also captured a 
 number of agents wlio were employed by 
 Darius in corresponding with the anti-Mace- 
 donian party in Greece. From these Alex- . 
 ander learned the exact nature of the intrigues 
 which were constantly hatched in Athens, 
 
 ' The comments of Arri;in upon this incident 
 are worthy to he repented. " I neither," says lie, 
 "rehite [this circumstance] as trntli nor condemn 
 [it] as tiction. If it be true, the pity shown by 
 Alexander to the women and the honor bestowed 
 on his friend deserve commendation ; whilst, if 
 we supposed them feigned and only related as 
 probabilities, it is honorable to him to have had 
 such speeclies and actions recorded by the writers 
 of his own times, not only as beini; (generally be- 
 lieved, but as consonant with the character which 
 he bore among his contemporaries " 
 
 Thebes, and Sparta, with a view to compass- 
 ing his overthrow. Upon these malcontent 
 elements in the Greek states the intelligence 
 of the battle of Issus and of the capture of 
 the Grreco-Persiau spies fell like a cold bath. 
 
 The knowledge that Alexander was abso- 
 lutely master of the situation in all the western 
 parts of Asia was disagreeable news to the re- 
 actionists, who were endeavoring to sow the 
 seeds of insurrection in the West. Nor was 
 the success of Parmenio at Damascus limited 
 to the capture of the city and the emissaries. 
 He likewise secured po.ssession of the money- 
 chest of Darius, out of whose abundant 
 coffers the Western Greeks were to be per- 
 suaded to favor the interests of Persia. With 
 this sinew of war in the hands of the Mace- 
 donians it was not likely that the lonians and 
 continental Greeks would any longer so greatly 
 prefer a Persiau to a Macedonian ruler. 
 
 In no part was the effect of the battle of 
 Issus more distinctly felt than in Sj)arta. 
 Agis, the Lacedsemonian king, still continued, 
 even after the death of Jlemnon, to agitate 
 measures unfavorable to Alexander. To sup- 
 port this movement and disposition of the 
 Spartans Darius had, on setting out with his 
 army to meet the Macedonian, dispatched a 
 fleet under Pharnabazus and Antophradates 
 to sail into the jEgean and coojjerate with the 
 Pelopounesians in a proposed expedition 
 against Macedonia. The squadron reached 
 the shores of Southern Greece, and Agis was 
 busily engaged in prejjaring for the northern 
 invasion when the news came of the victory 
 of Alexander at Issus. Of a sudden the Per- 
 sian commanders came to the conclusion that 
 there was need for them in Asia. They ac- 
 cordingly dropped away its quickly as possible, 
 and returned with the fleet to Persian waters. 
 Great was the relief of Alexander wiien be 
 learned of the collajise of the proposed (lescent 
 on the coasts of ^Macedonia. 
 
 In the mean time the conqueror was pro- 
 ceeding to lay siege to Tyre. It was consid- 
 ered of the first inqjortance that this great 
 maritime city, from which the fleets of Persia 
 were supplied with whatever gave them 
 strength and efficiency, should be converted 
 into a Macedonian dependency. While Alex-
 
 646 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 ander was on his way thither, he was met at 
 the town of Marathus by ambassadors from 
 Darius. These came to propose in the name 
 of their master that he and the Macedonian 
 should become friends and allies, and to re- 
 quest that the Persian princesses should be 
 permitted to return to 8usa. At this time 
 Alexander was emboldened by success, and 
 also angered at the treacherous relations re- 
 cently unearthed between the Persian court 
 and the anti-Macedonians in Greece. He 
 therefore answered with much haughtiness. 
 He accused the Persian monarch of having 
 been privy to the assassination of King Philip. 
 He brought home the charge of having in- 
 trigued with the Greeks to compass the down- 
 fall of Macedonia. He recited various injuries 
 done to himself and his country by the court 
 of Susa. He announced that he himself and 
 not Darius was now monarch of Asia, and 
 that any further communications must be ad- 
 dressed to him, not as king to king, but as 
 vassal to lord. Finally, Darius was invited, 
 if he desired further intercourse, to come to 
 Alexander in person, and in that event he 
 should be treated as a subject, but with proper 
 consideration. The conclusion of the Mace- 
 donian's message, addressed as it was by a 
 youth of twenty-three to the representative of 
 Cyrus the Great, is worthy to be repeated : 
 " If you have any fears for your personal 
 safety, send some friends to receive my 
 pledged faith. On coming to me ask for 
 your wife and childreu, and whatever else you 
 may wish, and receive them, for every reason- 
 able request shall be granted. Henceforth, 
 if you have any communication to make, ad- 
 dress me as the King of Asia; and pretend 
 not to treat with me on equal terms, but pe- 
 tition me as the master of your fate. If not, 
 I shall regard it as an insult and take meas- 
 ures accordingly. If, however, you propose 
 still to dispute the sovereignty with me, do 
 not fly, but stand your ground, as I will 
 march and attack you wherever you may be." 
 A memorable dispatch ! Not worded after 
 the manner of modern diplomacy, but never- 
 theless intelligible. Perhaps the king of Per- 
 sia was able to understand it. As soon as 
 these negotiations were ended, Alexander 
 
 pressed forward to Tyre. Before reaching 
 the city he was met by a deputation, headed 
 by the son of the governor, who came to 
 proffer the allegiance of their city, but at the 
 same time refused to permit the conqueror to 
 enter within their walls. The proposal was so 
 little satisfactory to the king that he demanded 
 unconditional submission, and in case of re- 
 fusal threatened to storm the town. The 
 Tyrians would not comply, and Alexander at 
 once proceeded to invest the city. Then fol- 
 lowed a memorable siege of seven months' 
 duration, in which it were difficult to say 
 '"'hether the besieged or the besiegers exhib- 
 »ed greater heroism. Tyre was built on an 
 island, at the distance of a half-mile from the ' 
 shore. Her seamen were the most expert and 
 daring in the world. Before the IMacedonian 
 could bring his engines to bear on the ram^ 
 parts, he must build a mole sufficiently broad 
 to bear them, and extending from the shore 
 to the city. This done, and the battering- 
 rams being brought into position, the Tyrians 
 succeeded in burning them before they could 
 be made effective. Alexander now saw that 
 he must meet the enemy on their own ele' 
 ment. He accordingly began to train a force 
 of sailors, and not until this work was accom- 
 plished did he find himself in a condition to 
 assault the city with fair prospects of success. 
 At last, however, he made the attack, and Tyre 
 was taken by storm. The jieople who had so 
 long defied him now paid dearly for their ob- 
 stinacy. The enraged Macedonian soldiery 
 was turned loose upon them, and eight thou- 
 sand were put to the sword. Besides this 
 tremendous butchery, thirty thousand of the 
 inhabitants were sold into slavery. 
 
 Before the siege of Tyre was brought to a 
 close a second embassy arrived from Darius. 
 This time the Great King made the trial of 
 money as a means of relaxing the temper of 
 the Macedonian. He offered for the ransom 
 of his family and as the basis of peace and 
 friendship a sum equivalent to ten millions of 
 dollars. As a further inducement he proposed 
 to give his daughter in marriage and to cede 
 to Alexander all the country in Asia west of 
 the Euphrates. It must be confessed that the 
 offer was highly flattering, and most warriors
 
 MACEDOXIA.—ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 647 
 
 ALEXANDliR BEFORE TVUE 
 I>rewii by H. \'"gcl.
 
 648 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 ■would liave been glad to accept so vast an 
 empire at the hand of a vanquished foe. But 
 the son of Philip would be all or nothing. 
 When the proposal was, according to his man- 
 ner in such matters, laid before a councU of 
 his generals, the sage Parmenio, when asked 
 for his opinion, reijlied: "If I were Alexander 
 I would accept the terms." "And I, too," 
 said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio!" It 
 ■was e\-ident that the king of Macedon had his 
 eye fixed on the big game of the East, and 
 that all attempts either of friends or foes to 
 divert him from his purpose woidd prove in 
 vain. A message so harsh as to be hardly in 
 accordance with the magnanimous temper 
 ■which he had so many times displayed was 
 prepared and forwarded to Darius. The de- 
 spatch was couched in the following terms: 
 "I want no money from you, nor wiU I 
 receive a part of the empire for the whole ; 
 for Asia and all its treasures belong to me. 
 If I wish to marry your daughter I can do so 
 without your consent. If you wish to obtain 
 any favor from me, come in person and ask 
 for it." Here was an end of controversy. Of 
 a certainty Darius must yield ar.d become a 
 vassal, or else take the field and — lose it. 
 
 After the capture of Tyre, Alexander next 
 turned his attention to Gaza. This strongly 
 fortified town, situated in the midst of vast 
 sands, was the only remaining obstacle between 
 the conqueror and the gateway of Egyjit. It 
 was a part of his general policy to leave behind 
 him no fortress occupied by an enemy. Gaza 
 was garrisoned by a large force of Arabians 
 well provided with every thing which fore- 
 thought could furnish against the emergencies 
 of a siege. The persistency of the Macedoni- 
 ans in their investment and final capture of 
 TjTe had forewarned BatLs, the governor of 
 Gaza, of what he in his turn might expect. 
 A gallant defense was made, but the town 
 was finally carried by assault. When the 
 Macedonians had scaled the ramparts the in- 
 habitants with desperate courage gathered in a 
 group and fought till the last man was killed. 
 The town was sacked. The women and chil- 
 aren were sold into slavery, and a Macedonian 
 colony was founded in the ruins of the city. 
 The incident of the siege was a severe wound 
 
 received by Alexander, whose life thereby was 
 thought for the time to be endangered. 
 
 By the fall of Tyre and Gaza the whole of 
 Phoenicia, Samaria, and Judsea was given up 
 to the conqueror. Having no longer any cause 
 to fear insurrections behind him he now pressed 
 forward toward Egypt. Arriving at Pelu- 
 sium he demanded a surrender of the fortress, 
 which was immediately given into his posses- 
 sion. The Pereian governor of Egypt was next 
 summoned to renounce his authority in favor 
 of Alexander. Unable to resist the demand 
 and finding that the Egyptians, long burdened 
 with the oppressions of Persia, were in sym- 
 pathy with the Macedonian, the satrap pelded 
 without striking a blow. Thus within a week 
 and without the shedding of blood was the 
 sovereignty of the whole of Egypt transferred 
 to Alexander. 
 
 It rarely happens in a case of genius such 
 as that possessed by the son of Philip, that 
 the exhaustless energies of the mind are able 
 to be appeased with a single line of activity. 
 The reaUy great warriors of the world have gen- 
 erally been great statesman. Alexander, Caesar, 
 Cliarlemagne, Kapoleon — each like the other — 
 was but poorly satisfied — perhaps not satisfied 
 at all — with the bloody work of destroying 
 his fellow-men. In each case the ambition to 
 bring order into the world, to regulate, to civ- 
 ilize the nations, rose with a larger and brighter 
 disk than the mere ambition of war presented. 
 
 As soon as Egypt was fairly in his posses- 
 sion, and the conquest thus completed of all the 
 countries west of the Euphrates, the Macedo- 
 nian hero began to excogitate such measures 
 as seemed best adapted to promote the inter- 
 ests of the peoples whom he had brought under 
 his sway. One of the first schemes produced 
 by his fertile brain was a method by which 
 intercourse might be rendered easy and rapid 
 between India and the states of the West. A 
 principal feature of the plans which now oc- 
 cupied his mind was the establishment in 
 Egypt of a great emporium of commerce. 
 He first by surveys familiarized himself with 
 the valley of the Nile as far south as Heliop- 
 olis. In the course of his examination of 
 the country, he availed himself of every means 
 and opportunity to win the admiration and
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 64» 
 
 affections of the people. Returning by way 
 of Memphis, he carefully exaniiued the several 
 mouths of the Nile. Having rejected both 
 Pelusium and Canopus as unsuited in situa- 
 tion for the contemplated city, he passed to 
 the western side of that branch of the river on 
 which the latter town was located, and there 
 selected a site for the proposed metropolis. 
 To Dinocrates he assigned the work of laying 
 out and founding the city; and as if to trust 
 his fame to an enterprise of peace rather than 
 to the Jiavoc of war, he ordered that the new 
 
 Possibly, however, the impulse which urged 
 him thither was the ambition to do what Cam- 
 byses had failed to accomplish. Nor is it un- 
 reasonable to suppose that the Macedonian wa» 
 willing to avail himself of this means to 
 heighten his reputation among the African 
 races by consulting the oracle of their great 
 deity in the desert. 
 
 Of course the journey to Amun was ac- 
 companied with miraculous indications of the 
 favnrof heaven. When the Macedonians were 
 well-nigh dying of thirst, rain poured down 
 
 ALEXANDER \T TIIK TEMPI.E 01' AMCN. 
 
 Egyptian capital should bear his name — Alex- 
 andria. 
 
 It will be remembcro<I that the fomily of 
 Philip of Macedon, not without pride, traced 
 its mythical origin to the great heroes, Per- 
 seus and Hercules. It appears that Alexander 
 was not above the half superstitious vanity 
 of claiming these fabulous personages as his 
 ancestors. Such an element nf vainglory in 
 his nature it may have been wliicii induced 
 him, while still tarrying in Egypt, to under- 
 take a ])ilgrimage across the desert to the 
 Btirine of Ka or Jove, in the oasis of Amun. 
 
 in torrents. When the band of pilgrims had 
 lost its way in the desert, two tremendous ser- 
 |H'nts suddenly a]>|)earcd and marshaled them 
 toward the oasis. Kavcns likewise Hew i)efore 
 tlie pilgrims. Bo they came to the beautiful 
 site of the shrine of Jove. The ^Macedoniun was 
 received with every mark of distinction by the 
 obsequious priests who, after the manner of 
 their kind in all ages, were willing — 
 
 "To bend the pregnant hinges of the knee 
 That thrift might follow fawning." 
 
 0.«tensibly, Alexander had visited the oasis 
 to consult the oracle of Amun as to the var
 
 €50 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY. — THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 liditv of his own claims to be regarded as the 
 sou of Zeus. To his inquiry on this question, 
 if we may trust the credulous fable-writers of 
 antiquity, a favorable answer was returned by 
 the auspicious spirit of the place ; and the son 
 of Philip was enabled to return into Egypt 
 bearing, the unequivocal honors of deity.' 
 
 In arriving at Memphis, Alexander at once 
 proceeded to reorganize the Egyptian govern- 
 ment. He also reviewed and modified, in 
 some particulars, the governments which he 
 had previously established in the provinces sub- 
 dued by his arms. In the early spring of 
 B. C. 331, having completed the civil arrange- 
 ments to which he had devoted his time since 
 the jjreceding autumn, he .set out for Tjtc, 
 which place he had appointed as a rendezvous 
 for both his fleets aud armies. Here he met 
 amba.ssadors from Athens and other cities of 
 the Greek confederacy, with whom he con- 
 ferred respecting the prosecution of his Asiatic 
 campaign. He then began his movement to 
 the East, aud in the first days of summer 
 reached the Euphrates. At Thapsacus he 
 found the bridge across the river broken down, 
 and the enemy in considerable force on the 
 opposite bank; but they quickly decamped, 
 without attempting to hinder his passage. 
 
 Alexander effected his crossing without de- 
 lay, and proceeded eastward along the north- 
 ern confines of Mesopotamia. He had not 
 advanced far, however, in this direction untU 
 he was informed by deserters and scouts that 
 Darius had led his army up the eastern bank 
 of the Tigris, and, as if to await his antag- 
 onist, had selected a strong position on the 
 margin of that broad and rajjid stream. It is 
 probable that this intelligence occasioned a 
 change in the plans of the conqueror. It had 
 been his purpose to make his way into Lower 
 
 ' A half humorous incident of Alexander's in- 
 terview with the priest of Amun has been pre- 
 served by PKitarch. It appears that the oracle, 
 not quite willing to vouch for the divine paternity 
 of the Macedonian, indulged in the usual trick of 
 ambiguity. The old priest, on coming out to de- 
 liver the response of the god, is said, as if blun- 
 dering in his Greek, to have addressed Alexander 
 as Pai Dios (son of Jovel, when as a matter of 
 fact he was merely intending to saj' Paidion (my 
 son); Of course Alexander's courtiers preferred 
 Pai Dios to Paidion. 
 
 Mesopotamia, aud, having captured Babylon, 
 to press forward to Susa. But learning the 
 whereabouts of Darius, and perceiving the in- 
 tentions of the Great King to offer battle in 
 his chosen position, he rapidly advanced in 
 that direction. On the fourth day of his 
 march he came in sight of the Persian host; 
 but on the appearance of the Macedonian 
 Darius began to recede towards the south, 
 with the evident intention of drawing Alex- 
 ander further and further into the enemy's 
 country. But the latter pressed upon him 
 with so much eagerness and audacity that the 
 Persian was compelled to make a stand for 
 battle. He accordingly selected a suitable 
 field on the banks of the Bumadus, a small 
 eastern tributary of the Tigris. The king 
 made his head-quarters six miles distant from 
 the plain selected for the fight, at the town 
 of Aebela, where the Persian baggage and 
 military chests were deposited. 
 
 If we may trust the ancient authors, Darius 
 brought to the battle-field, on which his own 
 and the destinies of his empire were now 
 staked, an army of foot-soldiers numbering at 
 least a miUion, while the cavalry amounted to 
 forty thousand, the scythe-bearing chariots to 
 two hundred, and the elephants to fifteen. To 
 oppose this limitless host, Alexander had forty 
 thousand foot and seven thousand horse. It 
 is not improbable, however, that this incredi- 
 ble disparity in numbers aro.se not from the 
 facts in the premises, but from the disposition 
 of the Greek writers to glorify the achieve- 
 ments of their countrymen. 
 
 Alexander at this great crisis behaved with 
 more than his usual caution. He spent four 
 days in fortifying his camp, and at the second 
 watch of the fifth night drew out his forces 
 for battle. While advancing upon the enemy, 
 he perceived on reaching the summit of a hill 
 the evidence of such unusual preparation on 
 the part of Darius that it was deemed prudent 
 to hold a council of war. Most of the Mace- 
 donian generals gave their vote for an imme- 
 diate attack, but the veteran Parmenio ad« 
 vised that the ground w'hich they were to 
 traverse aud the general disposition of the 
 Persian forces should be carefully scanned 
 before incurring the hazard of battle. With
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 651 
 
 this view Alexander, whose judgment seems to 
 have been cooled by the tremendous stake at 
 issue in the conflict, I'ully coincided, and a 
 whole day was accordingly spent in reconnoit- 
 •ering the field. 
 
 In the early nmrning of the seventh day, 
 all the picliniinaiies having been arranged, 
 the two armie.i cautiously advanced towards 
 each other, and then grapjjled in a struggle 
 which was to decide the fate of Asia. The 
 battle began with an action of the cavalry and 
 chariots. Soon, however, the lines of infantry 
 became involved, and the figlit raged along 
 the whole front of the field. Nor were the 
 Oreeks at first able to drive the heavy masses 
 of the enemy before them. On no previous 
 field had the Persians displaye<l .so much 
 bravery and steadv discipline. The Scythian 
 cavalry had well-nigli [iniycd a match for the 
 famous hiirsciuen of Thessaly. In ^mw. j)arts 
 of the field, under the tremendous pressure of 
 numbers, the allied forces actually wavered 
 and lost some ground. But the Macedonian 
 phalan.K, irresistible as hitherto, made its 
 steady way, like some huge engine of destruc- 
 tion, upon the heavy ma.s.ses of the enemy, and 
 before its iiorrible forest of spears, the barba- 
 rians vt'ere forced into flight. Darius Jiiin- 
 «elf — whether by his own will or by the con- 
 fused tides of the rout which swelled around 
 him is not certainly known — was borne away 
 with the roaring ma.ss of fugitives. 
 
 Discovering the flight of tliC king, and eager 
 to possess himself of the royal person, Alexan- 
 der, with the cavalry, pressed forward with ex- 
 treme audacity, and the Macc<lonian loft, un- 
 der command of Parnienio, wiio was charged 
 with the protection of the canij), was almost 
 fatally weakened. It happened, moreover, 
 that the Pei-sian cavalry on the right, opposite 
 to Parmenio, was commanded by Mazreus, one 
 of the al)lest of the Great King's generals. 
 This daring officer succeeded in l)reaking 
 through the Macedonian lines, and captured 
 the cami). Messenger were hastily sent to 
 Alexander, who on the right wa,s far in ad- 
 vance in pursuit of the king. With the ut- 
 most speed the conqueror wheeled and came 
 back to the support of Parmenio. The bat- 
 tle on the left was renewed with desperate 
 N. — Vol. I — 40 
 
 bravery until the Persian horse was finally put 
 to flight. 
 
 The camp was regained, and Alexander 
 again pressed forward in the hope of capturing 
 the fugitive king. On arriving at the river 
 Lycus, he found that Darius liad ah-eady crossed 
 to the other side. The pursuit was therefore 
 given over, and, after a brief rest, the con- 
 (pieror turned iuside in the night, and before 
 morning entered the town of Arbela without 
 opposition. Here he secured the rich treas- 
 ures which the Persian king, pending tlie bat- 
 tli', had lliere deposited. The chariot, shield, 
 and bow of Darius were found among the 
 captured sjjoils. 
 
 Of the uuMd)er slain in the battle of Arbela' 
 no authentic account can be given. The cred- 
 ulous Arrian .says that the Persians lost three 
 hundred tlwiusand in killed and a still greater 
 number in j)risoners, while the whole loss of 
 the Greeks is stated at not more than a hun- 
 dred. Such a statement, however, is so glar- 
 ingly improbable as to be entirely unworthy of 
 respect. In general it may be said that the 
 old authorities are of but little value in deter- 
 mining the numbers composing armies or the 
 losses in battle. 
 
 After his overthrow at Arbela, Darius at- 
 tempted to make a stand in Jledia. Around 
 him here were gathered the scattered fragments 
 of his army. But Alexander, knowing that 
 the king could never again offer him any 
 effectual resistance, now turned his course in 
 the direction of Babylon. No serious opposi- 
 tion, however, was to l)e anticipated from the 
 great cities of the Cliaidiean plain. On arriv- 
 ing in the vicinity of the great metropolis a vast 
 jii'ocession of people with i)riests and nobles at 
 tlie head came out to surrender the city of 
 Nebuchadnezzar to the .son of Philip. The 
 gates were oj>ened and the citadel and treas- 
 ury given u]) witliout tlie slightest attempt to 
 save them from the clutch of the conqueror. 
 Within the Babylonian vaults and treasure- 
 houses, so vast a wealth of stores and money 
 wa.s found as never before had greeted the 
 eyes of the Macedonian soldiery. Nor did 
 Alexander lose the o])portunity to establish 
 
 ' For the true name of this great battle see 
 Book Sixth, p. 376.
 
 652 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 himself in popular esteem by flattering the 
 national superstitions. Careful respect was 
 shown to the religious rites of the Babylonians, 
 and the conqueror himself disdained not to 
 enter the great temple of the city and offer 
 sacrifices to Belus. 
 
 Remaiuiug for a while in Babylon, Alex- 
 ander received a deputation from the Arme- 
 nians of the North, who professed their desire 
 to be included as subjects of his Empire. Soon 
 afterwards a delegation arrived from Susa, 
 the Persian capital, and he was informed of 
 the wish of that great city to put her keys in 
 his hands. The ambassadors expressed their 
 dislike of the Persian dynasty, and the wish of 
 the Susianiaus to share their destinies with the 
 House of Macedon. This was important in- 
 telligence, and Alexander immediately availecj 
 himself of it by marching in the direction of 
 the Persian capital. Before arriving at Susa, 
 however, he was met by a son of the satrap, 
 who came out to assure him of a hospitable 
 reception. He was informed that the city, 
 with all its defenses and treasures, would be sur- 
 rendered without delay or opposition. Within 
 twenty days after his departure from Babylon 
 he reached his destination. Susa was given 
 up, and the Macedonian found himself in j)os- 
 session of a sum equal to fifty millions of dol- 
 lars. In the royal palace wei'e found many 
 of the treasures which Xerxes had taken from 
 the Greeks. Among the rest were two bronze 
 statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, those 
 famous popular heroes who slew the tyrant 
 Hipparchus. These venerated relics were at 
 once returned by Alexander to the Athenians, 
 though the conqueror could hardly have been 
 in sympathy with the caijse of which they 
 were the symbols. 
 
 While tarrying at Susa, Alexander rein- 
 stated the wives and daughters of Darius in 
 the royal palace. He also, in reorganizing the 
 government, intrusted the satrapy to a native 
 Persian, thus exhibiting a conciliatory disposi- 
 tion towards the traditions of the people. 
 Meanwhile a large reenforcement, sent out by 
 Antipater, arrived from Macedonia. . With 
 them came fifty youths from the most distin- 
 guished families, who were recommended to 
 the king as proper additions to his body-guard. 
 
 The time had now come to begin the in- 
 vasion of the original seat of the Persian Em- 
 pire. Between Susiana and Persia Propef 
 were ranges of high mountains, the passes of 
 which must be traversed by the Macedonians 
 on their way from Susa to Persepolis. These 
 heights were inhabited by a race of warlike 
 barbarians who, even in the palmy days of 
 Persian ascendency, had maintained their in- 
 dependence, and were in the habit, with sin- 
 gular impudence, of obliging the subjects of 
 the Great King to pay toll for the privilege 
 of passing through the mountains. It was 
 the program of these half-savages, on the ap- 
 proach of the conqueror, to occupy the cliffs, 
 and compel the king of IMacedon to pay the 
 usual tribute. But the buccaneers of the hills 
 were soon taught auoth(;r lesson. The light> 
 armed IMacedonians, agile as the mountaineers 
 themselves, hastily preoccupied the heights, 
 and the barbarians wen^ glad to escape with 
 their lives. It was not the custom of Alex- 
 ander the Great to pay for the privilege of 
 going where he would. 
 
 At a further stage of his progress through 
 the hill-country, the Macedonian encountered 
 a still more serious obstacle. The Persian 
 Gate, through which he must descend from 
 the highland into the plain, had been seized 
 by the satrap, Ariobarzanes, who, with forty 
 thousand picked soldiers, had chosen this fa- 
 vorable position with the determination to 
 stop the progress of Alexander toward the 
 East. In attempting to force the pass, the* 
 Macedonians were not only checked but actu- 
 ally repelled, until what time Alexander, 
 having discovered another defile through the 
 mountains, passed through with one division 
 of his army, and fell upon the Persian 
 rear. The discomfiture of Ariobarzanes was 
 complete. 
 
 It was now no longer any concern of the 
 Macedonian what should become of the satrap 
 who had attempted to bar his progress, but 
 whether he himself could reach Persepolis 
 before the fugitives from the recent overthrow 
 should bear thither the news of his coming. 
 He had been informed of the purpose of the 
 Persepolitan authorities to destroy the treas- 
 ures and records of the city rather than per-
 
 MACEDONIA— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 653 
 
 mit them to fall into the hands of the ravage r 
 of Asia. It wa.s, therefore, of great impor- 
 tance to Alexauder, by becoming the herald 
 of his own victory, to prevent the contem- 
 plated destruction. So rapid was his march 
 that he dashed upon the city gates unau- 
 aounced: nor could those in authority, anx- 
 ious a.s they were to save themselves by flight, 
 interfere to prevent the pillage of the capital. 
 Persepolis went down, like the other great 
 cities of Asia, before the trampler of the 
 Orient. 
 
 Once safely established in the capital of 
 the Empire, Alexander again found time to 
 pause for a season from the anxieties of war. 
 Both he and his soldiers gave themselves up 
 to festivities not wholly free from excess and 
 rioting. At this juncture occurred one of the 
 least creditable transactions of Alexander's 
 life — the burning of the magnificent palace 
 of the Persian kings. It appears that a cer- 
 tain Thais, an Athenian Hetcera, celebrated 
 for her Ijcauty and accomplishments, was in- 
 vited by Alexander to a banquet given by 
 him to his generals. Wine flowed freely, and 
 the Macedonian, in common with the rest, was 
 under the influence of the inebriating cup. 
 In the midst of the feast, Thais recalling to 
 mind the demolition of her native city by the 
 Persians, and feeling towards them that burn- 
 ing hatred of which a woman only is capable, 
 proposed that, as a measure of retaliation and 
 revenge, the torch should now be applied to 
 the royal palace of Persepolis. It is related 
 that the Greek generals, having recently no- 
 ticed on the part of Alexander a certain in- 
 clination to look with favor on the luxurious 
 and effeminating manners of the Persians, and 
 fearing, as is believed lest lie should, in re- 
 organizing the Empire, conclude to establish 
 his cajjital in the E:i.st, and seeing in the great 
 palace of the Persepolitan kings a temptation 
 to such a course, interposed no objection to 
 the revengeful freak of the Athenian woman. 
 Alexander, perceiving that his generals did not 
 object to the incendiary proposition, not only 
 gave his own as.-ent to the wish of his favor- 
 ite, but himself rushed forth with a torch and 
 fired the royal dwelling. The progress of the 
 flames, however, soon sobered the temporary 
 
 madman, and in sudden repentance for his 
 crime, he endeavored to save the palace from 
 destruction ; but the conflagration had already 
 proceeded so far that only a part of the royal 
 house could be rescued from the flames. 
 
 For four months after his entrance into 
 Persepolis, Alexander remained in the city. 
 Darius, meanwhile, had established himself in 
 Ecbatiin<t, and was there rallying such forces 
 as he could command, in the hope of saving 
 the northern provinces of his em[)ire. He 
 also busied himself with that business which 
 had now become a part of the traditional 
 policy of the Persian kings, namely, the in- 
 stigation of a revolt among the states of 
 Greece. In collusion with Agis, king of the 
 Lacedaemonians, Darius succeeded, in the 
 winter of B. C. 331-330, in organizing a for- 
 midable rebellion among the confederated 
 powers of the West. An army was raised in 
 Southern Greece, and an expedition planned 
 against Macedonia. Antipater, who was stUl 
 regent of the hereditary dominions of Alex 
 ander, prepared resistance, and even antici- 
 pated the movements of the enemy by march- 
 ing into Peloponnesus. The war was thus 
 precipitated upon the Spartans and their 
 allies, and the whole issue was soon decided 
 by a decisive battle, in which Antipater was 
 completely victorious. The insurgents wer^ 
 dispersed and Agis slain. So complete was 
 the triumph of the ilacedonian cause that 
 even in Sparta the friends of ^Vlexandcr se- 
 cured control of atfaii-s, and a contingent of 
 Lacedaemonian troops was sent forward to the 
 king at Persepolis. 
 
 With the opening of spring the conqueror 
 left the Pei-sian capital and set out into 
 Media. On his ajiproach to Ecbataua, Darius, 
 having heard of the failure of the movement 
 in his favor in Greece, and finding Iiimself 
 unable to confront his antagonist in tlie field, 
 gathered together his treasures, and with a 
 guard of ten thousand men, left the city to 
 become a fugitive in the earth. The city 
 was taken without a blow, and the whole of 
 Media was added to the new empire of the 
 Macedonian. 
 
 With the latter it now became a primn 
 ambition — a passion — to gain possession of tt-?
 
 654 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Persian king. Accordingly, having selected 
 a body of his best troops, he started in pur- 
 suit of the royal refugee, and, after a march 
 of incredible rapidity, arrived in eleven days 
 at the city of Rhagse, near the great pass of 
 the Caucasus, called the Caspian Gate. Here 
 he learned that Darius had abandoned the 
 hill-country and was continuing his flight 
 across the Parthian plains. AVhile making a 
 temporary pause to procure supplies and rest 
 his men, intelligence was brought to Alexan- 
 der that Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, to- 
 gether with two others, one of whom was a 
 cavalry officer in the body-guard of the king, 
 had conspired against Darius, seized his per- 
 son, and were now dragging him back to be 
 delivered to the conqueror. It was their pur- 
 pose, however, after the manner of Asiatics, 
 to hold possession of their captive, and thus 
 be able to extort terms favorable to them- 
 selves — perhaps to sell the prisoner at an 
 enormous price in money and preferments. 
 
 Setting out in the night, Alexander again 
 pressed forward with great rapidity, and on 
 the morrow arrived at a village which had 
 just been occupied by Bessus and his confed- 
 erates. Again hurrying forward across the 
 desert, he soon came in sight of the fugitives. 
 A brief and feeble resistance was offered to 
 the pursuers, and then the captors of the 
 king, fearing that Darius, when taken, might 
 induce Alexander to punish them for their 
 perfidy, plunged their swords into the royal 
 captive and left him in his chariot hj the 
 road-side to die. In a few moments the con- 
 queror was on the spot, but not until the last 
 king of the Persian Empire had breathed out 
 his life. Only the bleeding, lifeless body of 
 him who had once swayed the millions re- 
 mained as a trophy to the conqueror. It is 
 not often that the history of the world has 
 presented a scene so dramatic as that of the 
 son of Philip standing before the dead body 
 of his adversary. It was greatly to the honor 
 of Alexander that he behaved with the ut- 
 most humanity in the presence of his fallen 
 foe. The royal corpse was carefully conveyed 
 to Persepolis, and splendidly buried in the 
 tombs of the Persian kings. 
 
 With the death of Darius, the empire 
 
 founded by Cyrus the Great was extinguished. 
 The invasion of Xerxes, with its attendant 
 havoc and devastation to the states of Greece, 
 had, after a century and a-half of waiting, 
 been amply avenged by the Macedonian con- 
 queror. There was no longer any serious 
 opposition to the establishment of a new 
 dynasty on the ruins of the East. For a 
 brief season, Bessus, the treacherous satrap of 
 Bactria, assumed the title of Artaxerxes an'' 
 laid claim to the dominions of the Great King 
 
 It was, however, but an act of vaulting am- 
 bition which o'erleaped itself and fell on tht 
 other side. He was pursued by Alexander 
 into the province of iSogdiana, cooped up in 
 a fortress, and finally surrendered into the 
 hands of the Macedonians. After being muti- 
 lated according to the practice of the East, 
 he was cruelly put to death. The Bactrians, 
 however, for several months continued to op- 
 pose the authority of Alexander. It was 
 found necessary to make a campaign into the 
 country between the Caspian and the Jaxar- 
 tes. This river was crossed by the Macedo- 
 nian army — the furthest limit of its northward 
 progress. The satrap, Spitamenes, called to 
 his aid the people of Sogdiaua, and the fierce 
 Scythians, thus creating an army of formi- 
 dable proportions. But the general, Coenus, 
 soon overthrew them in battle, and Spitame- 
 nes was pursued into the desert and put to 
 death. Another insurgent, named Oxyartes, 
 took possession of a fortress, situated in an 
 almost inaccessible height, and, being well 
 supplied with provisions, bade defiance to the 
 jSIacedonians. When summoned to surrender, 
 they coolly aske:I Alexander if his men had 
 wings. This piece of bravado was answered 
 on the following day by a Macedonian storm- 
 ing party, who, with hands and feet, if not 
 with wings, ascended the cliff and carried the 
 fortress by storm. 
 
 Among the captives found in this strong- 
 hold of the enemy was the daughter of Ox- 
 yartes, the beautiful Roxana, whom Alex- 
 ander, against the half-suppressed protests of 
 his Greeks, chose for his wife. It appears 
 that the union was based on politics as well as 
 affection ; for it was now evident that the 
 Macedonian contemplated the organic consoli-
 
 MACEDOXrA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 655 
 
 MACEDONIANS CROSSING THE JAXAHTES.
 
 656 
 
 UNIVERSAL HlbTOBY.—THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 dation of tlie various uations subdued by his 
 arms, aud that he saw in intermarriage one 
 of the chief means by which this result was 
 to be accomplished. It was observed, more- 
 over, that his army had of late been recruited 
 from Asiatic sources, and notwithstanding the 
 jealousy which this measure created among 
 his Macedonian and Grecian subjects, Alexan- 
 der persisted in the course which seemed to 
 him most likely to conciliate the favor of the 
 recently subjugated peoples. 
 
 Thus it was that the banner and phalanx 
 of jNIacedonia were carried to the borders of 
 India. Nor was there any doubt of the ability 
 of the conqueror to press his way eastward 
 until the ocean and the Himalayas should im- 
 pede bis progress. His army was now an 
 army of veterans, inured in the campaigns of 
 four successive years to every species of hard- 
 ship incident to the camp and the field. Be- 
 sides the discipline which they had received 
 at the hands of the bravest and most expe- 
 rienced generals, the person and example of 
 Alexander himself, who shared with his sol- 
 diers all the hardships of the march and the 
 battle, had inspired them with enthusiasm for 
 their leader and confidence in their abilities 
 to conquer the world. 
 
 To these prospects of future achievement 
 a single circumstance seemed to oppose a 
 barrier. Of late there had arisen trouble not 
 a little between the Macedonian and some of 
 the officers of his army. In the first place he 
 •was led to suspect that Philotas, the son of 
 Parmenio, was engaged in a treacherous con- 
 spiracy against himself. The young general 
 was accordingly arrested, tried before a mili- 
 tary commission, condemned by his judges, 
 and put to death. This was a fatal blow to 
 Parmenio, who, though long the confidential 
 adviser of Philip and afterwards the ablest 
 general of Philip's son, soon fell under sus- 
 picion of disloyalty, and, whether guilty or 
 innocent, w-as speedily sent to his death. In 
 these proceedings it was evident that the mu- 
 tual trust of the king, and his officers, which 
 for many years had survived the ordeals of 
 privation and battle, was clouded with discon- 
 tent and suspicion. 
 
 The winter of B. C. 329 was passed by the 
 
 Persian army in Bactria. It was during this 
 interval that an event occurred from the 
 eflfects of which the king never wholly es- 
 caped. The Asiatic courtiers, who now con- 
 stituted a part of the retinue of Alexander, 
 began to exercise upon his character a dele- 
 terious influence. It is clear that his ear was 
 no longer oflTended with the base flatteries of 
 the East. This gradual alienation from the 
 severe manners of his father's court was 
 noticed with mortification by the austere 
 Macedonians, who still constituted the body 
 of his friends. On a certain occasion, in the 
 Bactrian winter-quarters, a banquet was given 
 in honor of Castor and Pollux. When all 
 were well heated with wine, some of th» 
 fawning puppies of the East began in theiy 
 usual obsequious way to flatter the king on 
 his great achievements and divine paternity. 
 Thereupon Clitus, the ablest of the Macedo- 
 nian generals after Parmenio, and the intimate 
 friend of the conqueror, rebuked the syco- 
 phants with all the hot words in his vocabulary. 
 
 Alexander, to his shame, interfered to stop 
 the reproaches of Clitus, who thereupon turned 
 on his master a torrent of well-deserved re- 
 bukes. The king, already excited with drink, 
 gave way to passion, and in a moment of un- 
 governable rage snatched a weapon from one 
 of his guards, and gave his faithful general a 
 death-thrust on the spot. With the quick re- 
 turn of reason, realizing the horrible crime 
 which he had committed, he fell into bitter 
 remorse, shut himself up in his chamber, 
 would not see his friends, and for three days 
 neither ate nor drank. Finally he was per- 
 suaded that the rash murder of his friend was 
 chargeable to Bacchus rather than to himself, 
 and with this miserable subterfuge he quieted 
 his conscience. 
 
 A short time afterwards an event occurred 
 which came near costing Alexander his life. 
 Among his retainers was a company of young 
 men known as the Band of Pages. Their 
 leader was a certain Hermolaiis. On an oc- 
 casion Alexander accompanied these youths 
 on a boar hunt in the Bactrian forests. 
 When the beast was brought to bay, Herma- 
 laiis, without waiting according to good man- 
 uers for the king- to strike down the game.
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 657 
 
 himself gave the death blow. Alexander, in 
 childish anger for the affront thus offered, fell 
 upon the young man in the presence of his 
 companions, beat him with a rod, and took 
 away his horse. Hermolaiis showed himself 
 capable of revenge. Taking four of his com- 
 panions into hid confidence, he made con- 
 spiracy witli them to kill the king that night 
 in his bed-clianiber ; for the pages were the 
 guardians of the royal sleeping apartments. It 
 chanced, however, that the plot was overheard 
 by the convenient old woman who was near 
 the chamber. She thereuj)on persuaded the 
 king not to retire that night; and on the fol- 
 lowing day, the young men being put to the 
 rack, confessed the particulars of their mur- 
 derous scheme. They,, also, declared that the 
 instigator of the plot was a certain Athenian 
 named Callisthenes, an arrogant philosopher 
 belonging to the court. He and the young 
 men were straightway condemned and exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 The time had now arrived to begin the 
 contemplated expedition into India. In the 
 spring of B. C. 327, Alexander set out across 
 the mountain range of Paropamisus, and 
 quickly j)enetrated the valley of the Indus. 
 His army was now swollen to more than one 
 hundred thousand men. This great force he 
 divided into two corps, reserving the conimaud 
 of one for himself, and giving the other to 
 Hephfestion. This general the king ordered 
 to press forward to the river Cophenes, while 
 he himself undertook the conquest of the bar- 
 barous tribes dwelling between that river and 
 the Indu.s. As soon as this work was accom- 
 plished, he crossed the great river, and made 
 his way into the eastern provinces. Several 
 districts were rapidly overrun, and a certain 
 Taxiles, the most important ruler of this re- 
 gion, made a voluntary suririHl( r (if his terri- 
 tories. He also sent to tlie conqueror a 
 present of seven thousand Indian horses, and 
 in iitlier ways testified his willingness to be 
 enrolled among the subjects of the king. 
 Alexander cordiallv acee])tcd the ])rincc as his 
 ally, and restored him to his ilnmiiiions. 
 
 Meanwhile, Pours, the most ])iiw('rful king 
 of South-eastern India, had gathered a vast 
 army of his subjects and advanced to the river 
 
 Hydiispes to oppose the passage of the Mace- 
 donians. For the third time in the course 
 of his campaigns, Alexander beheld on the 
 opposite bank of a stream the cohorts of an 
 innumerable enemy drawn up to hinder hia 
 progress. To the mind of the Macedonian, 
 the present emergency seemed more grave 
 than that which presented itself at the Gran- 
 icus or Issus. Instead, therefore, of dashing 
 into the river with the reckless audacity dis- 
 played in his first battle, he hesitated and 
 maneuvered. After making .«o many feints 
 as to throw Porus off ins guard, he finally suc- 
 ceeded in crossing in the night. A general 
 engagement ensued with the morning light, and 
 the Indians were completely routed. The two 
 sons of the king and twenty-three thousand 
 of his troops were killed. Porus himself, 
 flying on his great war elephant, was cap- 
 tured and brought into the presence of Alex- 
 ander. 
 
 It is narrated that the Indian prince was 
 of so goodly a person and manners that the 
 Macedonian, greatly impressed with the bear- 
 ing of his prisoner, asked him in what way 
 he could serve him. "By acting like a 
 king," was the reply. " I should do as much 
 for my own sake," said Alexander; "but 
 what shall I do for yours?" Porus answered, 
 "I have preferred my only request." So 
 greatly was Alexander pleased with the re- 
 sponse of the royal captive that he at once 
 reinstated him in authority ; and having 
 presently conquered thirty -seven cities on the 
 eastern frontier, he added them to tlie jjosses- 
 sion of his new friend and confederate.' 
 
 Having completed tlie conquest of India, 
 the conqueror sought recreation for himself 
 and his men by instituting on the bank of 
 the llydaspes a series of gymnastic and ecjues- 
 trian games like the Olympic festival of 
 Greece. AVheu the celebration was com- 
 pleted, he proceeded to found in honor of his 
 victories the city of Nicsea, and soon after- 
 
 ' The reader can but be struck witli the supe- 
 rior bearing of .Mexander in tlie field. War 
 brought out the better qualities of his character 
 and genius. It was in the times of surcease, when 
 his restless energies no longer found vent in the 
 excitement of campaign and liattle that his pas- 
 sions turned to meanness and depravity.
 
 658 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.-TEE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 DEFEAT OF POHUS BY THE MACEDONUNS.
 
 MACEDONIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 659. 
 
 wards he selected a site for Bucephalia, so 
 named in honor of his famous horse, Buceph- 
 alus. The conqueror then intrusted to Cra- 
 terus a division of his army, with instructions 
 to build and fortify the new cities. He him- 
 self witli the remaining division again set out 
 towards the east. He crossed first the river 
 Acesiues, and in the region beyond con- 
 quered a second prince named Porus. He 
 then passed the Hydraotes, and came into 
 a country inhabited by independent tribes, 
 which attempted in their half-barbarous way 
 to impede his progress. A battle was fought 
 with them and they were routed in confusion. 
 They tlien retired into their fortress of San- 
 gala, and having refused to capitulate, were 
 besieged by the Macedonian army. For a 
 brief period the town was obstinately de- 
 fended, but was presently carried by storm. 
 Seventeen thousand of the Indians were killed 
 in the assault, and seventy thousand liiore 
 were made prisoners. The city was leveled 
 to the ground, and the confederate tribes not 
 involved in its destruction fled beyond the 
 Hyphasis for safety. 
 
 All of the vast region known as the Pun- 
 jaub, or Land of the Five Rivers, was now 
 completely subjugated. Of the great streams, 
 by which this country was watered, the Hy- 
 phasis, just mentioned, was the most easterly. 
 This river, therefore, constituted the natural 
 limit of Upi)er India. But no corresponding 
 limit wa.s found to the ambition of Alexander. 
 He immediately began to prepare to cross the 
 Hyphasis, and to continue his progress to the 
 East. Hut here at last tiie fates had decreed 
 that the son of Philip should pause. The 
 arrow shot from strongest bow into highest 
 sky must turn somewhere and seek again the 
 earth in its flight. If the impulse of conquest 
 itill bore onward the conqueror himself, it 
 wa.s no longer felt in the breasts of his gen- 
 erals and men. On the banks of the Hy- 
 pha.sis they iiesitatod, wavered, refused to go 
 furtlier. In vain did the baffled Macedonian 
 attempt to persuade his commanders and .sol- 
 diers to accompany him to the (Txtreme of 
 Asia. In vain he pnmiised tliem an ea.^y and 
 circuitous route through victory and spoil to 
 the ocean of Inilia. Then thev should sail 
 
 homeward by a brief and ])leasaTit passage- 
 through the Persian Gulf But destiny was 
 fi.xed — they would go no further. So, to 
 conceal his defeat and mortification, the con- 
 queror consulted the gods and announced that 
 the divine oracles had indeed decreed a return 
 to Europe. Under the breastplate of Mara 
 api>eared the duplicity of the priest and the 
 shrewdness of the politician ! 
 
 So the Macedonian proceeded to build 
 twelve pillars on the bank of Hyphasis, and 
 left them there as monuments of his victory 
 and as limits of his progress towards the ris- 
 ing sun. To Porus he then intrusted the gov- 
 ernment of the seven provinces — with their 
 two thousand cities — which he had conquered 
 in his Indian campaign, and himself immedi- 
 ately pre])ared to descend the Hydaspes to the 
 Indus and the Indus to the sea. 
 
 As soon as the arrangements f<n- the return 
 to Europe could be completed, the conqueror 
 formed his army in three divisions, giving th& 
 first to Hei)hiestion, the second to Craterus, 
 and reserving the third for himself The 
 first two divisions were ordered to proceed 
 along the river bank, while the commander 
 himself, with his division, embarked on board 
 a fleet built for the purpose by the Phoenician 
 and Cypriot carpenters belonging to the army. 
 Frequently in his progress down the river the 
 conqueror was hindered by the hostility of 
 native tribes. In one instance a nation called 
 the -Malli so greatly retarded his movements 
 that he felt constrained to go on shore and 
 besiege their capital. This was defended with 
 much spirit by the barbarians, until Alexan- 
 der, vexed with the delay, ordered the place 
 to be carried by storm. The assault was at 
 once made, and every thing fell before the 
 charge of the Macedonians until they came to 
 the citadel. Here the ramjjarts ha<l to be 
 mounted with scaling-ladders. These the 
 king at once ordered to be Ijrought forward ; 
 but becoming angry at wliat to him seemed 
 unnecessary delay, he snatched a ladder him- 
 .self placed it against the wall, and in spite 
 of the vociferous remonstrances of liis com- 
 panions began rapidly mounting to the top. 
 
 In order to save their king from what seemed 
 certain destruction, tiie Macedonians pressed
 
 €60 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 after him; but just as he reached the summit 
 the ladder broke, and all the rest were pre- 
 cipitated to the ground. The son of Philip 
 was left alone on the top of the rampart, 
 where his brilliant armor flashing in the sun 
 made him a conspicuous mark for a hundred 
 javelins. Nothing but his audacity saved 
 him from certain death. Instead of attempt- 
 ing to escape he leaped boldly in the citadel, 
 placed his back to the wall, and cut down 
 the Mallian commander, with several others 
 who rushed upon him. In a few moments 
 three of his own trusted followers scaled the 
 rampart and sprang to the side of their king. 
 The first instantly fell, fatally wounded, but 
 the other two placed themselves between the 
 foe and the king, who had already received 
 an arrow in his breast, and beat back the as- 
 sailants until the Macedonians broke through 
 the walls and the place was carried. The 
 wound of the king was not such as to endan- 
 ger his life, but the peril to which his rash- 
 ness had exposed him was perhaps the great- 
 est which he had ever faced in the vicissitudes 
 of battle. 
 
 Having reached the sea, arrangements 
 were at once completed for the return of the 
 expedition, first to the capital of Persia, and 
 afterwards to Europe. The army was divided 
 into two parts, one of which was to embark 
 on the fleet and the other to proceed overland 
 across the Gedrosian desert ; for it was deemed 
 necessary that the two divisions by land and 
 sea should keep within supporting distance, 
 the land forces to supply the squadron from 
 time to time, and the squadron to furnish the 
 land forces with the means of embarkation 
 should the same be found desirable. 
 
 The fleet was under command of Nearchus, 
 and Alexander himself took charge of the di- 
 vision which was to proceed to Persia. March- 
 ing at the head of his columns, carrying full 
 armor, and claiming no exemption from the 
 hardships of the common soldier, the con- 
 queror plunged into the desert sands, and for 
 two months toiled on through the Gedrosian 
 waste. Not until the expedition reached the 
 province of Carmania were adequate supplies 
 obtained to meet the wants of the army. 
 
 During the two years' absence of Alexan- 
 
 der in the East, the governors of Babylon, 
 Persepolis, and Susa, behaving after the man- 
 ner of Orientals, had resumed the oppressive 
 methods of government to which both they 
 and the people had so long been accustomed. 
 Great abuses had prevailed, and the conqueror 
 found his subjects restless and discontented 
 under the exactions of their rulers. To regu- 
 late these disorders and to punish those of his 
 subordinates who had proved unworthy of 
 their trust were now the first duties of the 
 king. 
 
 More than ever he perceived the desira- 
 bility of unifying as far as practicable the 
 diverse nationalities over which he was called 
 to rule. He, therefore, redoubled his exer- 
 tions in the way of conciliating the various 
 peoples under his sway, and as a means of 
 doing so he again had recourse to intermar- 
 riages. It will be remembered that the fam- 
 ily of Darius had been left in the palace of 
 Susa about three years previously. On re- 
 turning to that place Alexander proceeded to 
 celebrate his marriage with the eldest daugh- 
 ter of the late king. To Hephisstion, his 
 favorite general, he gave a sister of the prin- 
 cess which he himself had chosen. To Near- 
 chus was assigned the daughter of Mentor, 
 the brother of that Memnon who had so ably 
 opposed the Macedonian at the beginning of 
 his career. Eighty of the leading commanders 
 of the army were rewarded with princesses 
 of Persia, and the nuptials were celebrated 
 with great magnificence after the style of the 
 country. By these means the aflfections of 
 the Persians were rapidly turned to him who 
 had scourged them ; but to the Greeks there 
 was much that was distasteful in the proceed- 
 ings- of their great leader. 
 
 Having remained for a time at Susa, busy 
 with plans and projects for the organization 
 and development of the Empire, Alexander 
 now set out for Babylon. He descended the 
 Eubseus and then ascended the Tigris, making 
 surveys and maps of the rivers with a view 
 to their future improvement. A corps of 
 competent engineers accompanied him, and 
 these were constantly consulted as to the best 
 means of opening the country to commerce 
 and an improved civilization. There is no
 
 MACEDOXIA.—ALEXAXDER THE GREAT. 
 
 66] 
 
 period in Alexander's life in wliicli lie appears 
 to a better advantaufe than iu this careful ex- 
 ploration of his dominions with a view to the 
 establishment of a reign of peace. Especially 
 were his energies judiciously employed on 
 arriving at Babylon. Hitherto it appeared 
 to have been the chief concern of the rulers 
 of that great city to protect it by some artificial 
 means from the hazard of capture by an 
 enemy. Fear had made a league with the 
 Euphrates. Dams had been l)iiilt across the 
 channel in such a way as to inundate those 
 parts before the city over which the Assyrian 
 might assail the gates. The natural uses of 
 the great river as a way of commerce and a 
 source of irrigation were thus destroyed. 
 
 Alexander, on discovering the condition of 
 affiiirs, made haste to open the channel for 
 his fleet and the merchantmen of the world. 
 He hail the harbors repaired and enlarged 
 until they were able to accommodate a thou- 
 sand ships. He encouraged every enterprise 
 which promised to facilitate the opening 
 of commerce with distant regions, and to 
 stimulate the industrial energies of the vast 
 populations under Ids authority. He orderc<l 
 his engineers to construct new channels by 
 which the waters of the Euphrates might be 
 better distributed for purpo.ses of irrigation 
 and to drain the great marsiies to the west of 
 the river, where for ages this overflow had 
 gathered into stagnant pools, unfitting the 
 land for habitation. 
 
 When these grand enterprises were well 
 under way Alexander ascended the Tigris to 
 the city of Opis, where he caused to be cele- 
 brated the Olympic festival. It was on this 
 occasion that he had to face another mutiny 
 of his solilicrs. The veteran Greeks of his 
 army could not conceal their inherent dislike 
 for the manners and character of the Orien- 
 tals. With chagrin and mortification thej' 
 had seen their great leader more and more 
 assinnlated to the Persian mode of. life. Even 
 his dress wiis conformed to the style.-- of the 
 East. Unable to see in nil this any thing 
 but an alienation of the king from the .severe 
 habits and discipline of his native land, the 
 sturdy Macedonians became morose, melan- 
 choiy, mutinous. They denmnded tiie ])rivi- 
 
 lege of returning home. They refused longer 
 to participate in useless struggles with barba- 
 rians and camjiaigns which were endless. 
 
 In this peril the genius of Alexander stood 
 him well in hand. He made an address to 
 his soldiers in which he reviewed their won- 
 derful achievements, extolled their heroism, 
 depicted the rescue of Asia from barbarism 
 by their valor, and exhorted them not to tar- 
 nish their reputation and the glory of the 
 Greek name by yielding to bad pa.ssious and 
 pernicious counsels. Such was the power of 
 the appeal that the soldiers were overcome 
 with mingled remorse an(' admiration. A re- 
 action flashed along the ranks, and the mutiny 
 was at an end. The conqueror then availed 
 himself of the situation by sending to their 
 homes ten thousand of his veterans. He 
 loaded them with rewards and honors and 
 j)ut them in charge of the able Craterus, 
 whom he commissioned as regent of .Macedo- 
 nia in place of Antij)ater. Thus by prudence 
 and sound discretiori he converted an alarming 
 insurrection into an increase of power and 
 authority over his army. 
 
 In the mountainous district between Media 
 and Persia dwelt a tribe of warlike bari)ariaus 
 who during the whole ascendency of Achse- 
 menian dyna.sty had maintained their inde- 
 ])eiidence. Nor were they more inclined to 
 yield iibedience to Alexander. Unable to re- 
 duce them except by force the Macedonian 
 set out from Opis and crossed the Jlciliau 
 border. AVhilc on the way one of the satraps 
 sent to him a body-guard composed of a hun- 
 dred Amazons, perhaps the most novel con- 
 tingent ever added to his army. The famous 
 woman-warriors were mounted like troopers 
 and carried battle-axes and lances. 
 
 Before engaging the mduntaineei-s who 
 had defied his authority, Alexander had the 
 misfortune to lose his bosom friend and 
 trusteil general, Hephaestion. No previous 
 personal loss had so deeply aflected him. For 
 days together he would neither "at nor drink. 
 As usual when iu grief, he shut himself up, 
 and would not be ton.soled. At last he found 
 some comfort in gi -ing his friend a magnifi- 
 cent funeral, and chen his attention wjis dis- 
 tracted by the excitements of the campaign.
 
 662 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.~THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 In a short time the Cossees were subdued, 
 and the Macedonian, having for the moment 
 no other enemies with whom to contend, 
 found time for a civU enterprise more worthy 
 of his genius. This was the exploration of 
 the Caspian sea. Until now it had been be- 
 lieved that this great body of water was but 
 an arm of the Arctic Ocean. Alexander 
 gave instructions to Heraclides, commander 
 of the shipwrights, to go into the Hyrcaniau 
 forest, prepare a fleet, and determine the 
 geographical limits of the unknown sea. 
 He himself, when the work was well under 
 way, departed for Babylon, having deter- 
 mined to make a foimal entry into the city, 
 and from that center direct the affairs of his 
 government. 
 
 After the battle of Arbela, Alexander 
 had intrusted the Babylonian government to 
 the priests of the temple of Belus. These 
 hierarchs had all the subtlety and double- 
 dealing habits of tlieir race. Knowing the 
 use to which they had put the king's reve- 
 nues, and dreading an examination of their 
 accounts with the royal treasury, they under- 
 took to prevent Alexander from visiting the 
 city. They sent out a deputation of sooth- 
 sayers to warn him that the omens were not 
 favorable for his present coming, and advising 
 delay. But the king easily penetrated their 
 hypocritic? . anxiety, and put them to confu- 
 sion by quoting a saying of Euripides that he 
 's the best propliet who makes the best guess! 
 
 Having established himself in the palace 
 at Babylon, he immediately resumed the great 
 works from which he had been distracted by 
 the campaign into Media. Further improve- 
 ments of the river were projected, and he 
 himself spent days together in an open boat, 
 under the burning sun, directing the work of 
 his engineers. He also planned an elaborate 
 survey of the coasts of Arabia and Eastern 
 Africa ; and at the same time his mind was 
 busy with future military operations, which 
 embraced, among other schemes, the conquest 
 of Western Europe. Nor was such an en- 
 largement of his empire beyond the possibili- 
 ties of his all-embracing genius. His fame as 
 a conqueror had already extended to the re- 
 motest parts of the civilized world ; and the 
 
 dream of universal empire was less visionary 
 with him than with any other character of 
 history. ^V^hile tarrying at Babylon, embas- 
 sies came from Libya and Carthage, and from 
 the Italian states of Lucania and Tuscany ; 
 and it is alleged that envoys were received 
 from European Scythia as well as from Gaul 
 and Spain. 
 
 His first actual campaign was planned 
 against Africa, but before entering upon an 
 enterprise so vast and of such uncertain 
 duration, he ordered a magnificent sacrifice 
 to the gods and a feast to his army. The 
 day was one of the most famous in the history 
 of the great festivals of Babylon. The king 
 himself entered most heartily into the cere- 
 monies, participating with his officers in the 
 banquet with which the pageant was con- 
 cluded. Whether the momentous event which 
 followed hard after the festivities was trace- 
 able to the excesses of which the king was 
 guilty, or whether his exposure in the marsh- 
 lands about Babylon had poisoned his system 
 with malaria, or whether his constitution was 
 broken by the hardships and fatigues of so 
 many campaigns, or whether all of these cir- 
 cumstances combined at this crisis to bring 
 the great Macedonian to his bed — is not cer- 
 tainly known. At any rate, on tiie day after 
 the festival he was seized with a violent fever. 
 For several days, however, he continued to 
 attend to his duties, bathing, ofl'eriug sacrifi- 
 ces, and receiving embassies ; but on the eighth 
 day his condition became serious ; on , the 
 ninth, critical; and on the tenth, his life was 
 despaired of. 
 
 As soon as the intelligence was carried to 
 the army, the soldiers were thrown into the 
 greatest agitation. They distrusted the com- 
 manders who were near the person of their 
 king, and broke out with violent threats un- 
 less they should at once be admitted to his 
 presence. Certain of their number were ac- 
 cordingly brought into the chamber where tho 
 son of Pliilip was breathing his last. He ex- 
 changed a look of sympathy with his veterans, 
 and held out his hand, but was unable to 
 speak. He lived till the following morning 
 and expired in the midst of his generali. 
 
 Many stories were set afloat to account for
 
 AIACEDOXIA.— ALEXANDER THE GREAT. 
 
 663 
 
 his sudden death, one of wliich was that Aris- 
 totle had prepared for Antipater, the deposed 
 regent of Macedonia, a subtle poison, which 
 the latter forwarded to Babylon to be used 
 against the person of the kinji:. But subsequent 
 investigations dispelled such riiiiiors, and left it 
 clear that Alexander had died from natural 
 causes. The great event which left the em- 
 pire of Asia without a master occurred in 
 B. C. 323. 
 
 Alexander the Great, who.se remarkable ca- 
 reer has been summarized in the preceding 
 pages was at the time of his death but thirty- 
 two years and eight months of age. In person 
 he was handsome and well-proportioned, though 
 not sufficiently tall to make his presence espe- 
 cially commanding. The discipline of his boy- 
 hood iiad been such as to give him symmetry 
 ef body and soundness of constitution. Be- 
 ginning the military life before he reached liis 
 majority, he became inured to every sjiecies 
 of hardship and exposure. It was, however, 
 in the quality of his mind that he .surpassed 
 all the heroes of his times. His ambition was 
 as great as the arena, and the arena was the 
 world. His courage was equal to his ambi- 
 tion, and his genius to his courage. His sa- 
 gacity in the council was as great as his abili- 
 ties in the field ; and his skill in discerning the 
 motives of men, in exposing intrigue, and in 
 outwitting the craft of an enemy, was preem- 
 inent above all his contemporaries. Of his 
 vices the most conspicuous were the inordinate 
 passion of which he was sometimes guilty, 
 and the strong appetite which he too frequently 
 indulged. His chief follies were vanity and 
 superstition — the former manifested in the 
 pleasure which he e\ndently took in those who 
 praised him and his deeds, and the latter in 
 such supreme nonsense as claiming his pater- 
 nity from Jupiter. As in the case of other 
 conquerors, it has been the fate of the Mace- 
 donian to have his name used as a synonym 
 for cruelty, heartlessness, tjTanny. The su- 
 perficial gaze of mankind has been fixed on 
 the turmoil and destruction of his great battles. 
 The bloody field strewn with the mangled 
 bodies of thousands has shut from sight the 
 
 better qualities of the man. In humanity and 
 magnanimity he was i)reeminent above all 
 the great men of his age. It may be said 
 that by him and his father a new code of war 
 was instituted among the nations — a code 
 which had a method in its cruelty, and which 
 had an end and aim beyond the mere fact of 
 spoliation and con(juest. 
 
 The consequences of Alexander's career and 
 works were in the highest measure salutary. 
 Before his day Asia was effete. For centuries 
 the great consolidated despotisms of the East — 
 Assyria, Babylonia, Persia — had hung like a 
 pall en the si)irit of man. Alexander dis- 
 jielled the cloud and liberated from bondage. 
 He drew across the fertile plains of Asia Minor 
 and Mesopotamia the tremendous plowshare of 
 reform. He stirred the nations to their pro- 
 foundest depths. He broke up and trampled 
 on the traditions and precedents of the Asi- 
 atics. He cleft the high walls which barba- 
 rism, owl-lLke, had reared between herself and 
 the light; and the light streamed through. 
 He came as a harbinger out of the young and 
 resolute West. He and his generals were 
 scholars and statesmen. They spoke Greek. 
 The beautiful speech of the Hellenes flowed 
 like quicksilver through the dirt and linguistic 
 dtiris of the East. It carried on its liquid 
 tide the most .splendid literature of the ancient 
 world. Art grew like a hyacinth from the 
 mire of his battles. Letters flourished in his 
 capitals. The barbarians heard the sound 
 thereof and were glad. The date-palms of 
 the Euphrates quivered with the agitation of 
 a new life. Commerce put on new robes and 
 walked like a queen over the long-abandoned 
 quays of Babylon. In the course of his con- 
 quests, civilization gained a victory over dark- 
 ness, and the sky brightened from east to 'vest 
 over half the world. Though anarchy came 
 by his death, the results of his great activities 
 had taken so firm hold on the soil of Asia as 
 never to be uprooted. For men having once 
 arisen to a better estate and felt the blessing 
 i)f the sunlight do not willingl)' go back to 
 darkness, or lie again contented in the wallow 
 of barbarism.
 
 664 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 Chapter lt.— Successors ok Alexander. 
 
 HE death of Alexander 
 the Great left the world 
 without a master. Nor 
 had the work of organ- 
 izing and consolidating the 
 great empires, subdued by 
 yi his arms, proceeded suffi- 
 ciently far to give promise of succesfful com- 
 pletion. He left no successor who could right- 
 fully claim the scepter. The children born 
 of his Asiatic wives were not regarded as legit- 
 imate claimants of the throne. His oldest son, 
 born of Barcina, the widow of Memuon, was 
 but five years of age. It was not to be sup- 
 posed that the burdens and responsibilities of 
 a great military empire would be devolved 
 upon such a child, even under a regency. 
 Eoxana, his Bactrian queen, had not yet be- 
 come a mother. Of all who might with some 
 show of reason lay claim to the succession, 
 Arrhidseus, the half-brother of Alexander, son 
 'of Philip and Philiue, held the first place, and 
 to him the Greek and ]\Iacedonian leaders first 
 looked as to a possible successor. But Arrhi- 
 dffius had neither intellect nor ambition. His 
 education had not been directed to the conduct 
 of affairs, and his native force was so feeble 
 as to make him even an inefficient tool in the 
 hands of others. It was evident, therefore, 
 that the strong hand of military power must 
 be stretched out over the chaos occasioned by 
 the death of Alexander. 
 
 As soon as the son of Philip was no more, 
 eight of the leading generals of the army, to- 
 gether with Perdiccas, to whom Alexander had 
 given his ring and signet, assembled in Baby- 
 lon to consider the condition of the Empire 
 and to devise means for its government. These 
 eight commanders were Leonatus, Lysimachus, 
 Aristonous, Python, Seleucus, Eumenes, Me- 
 leager, and Nearchus. Meanwhile the phalanx, 
 being Macedonian and more concerned in the 
 afl^airs of the home kingdom than in the man- 
 agement of the vast realms which tbey had 
 helped to conquer, had, out of deference to 
 
 the House of Philip, named Arrhidseus aa 
 successor to Alexander. This action soon led 
 to a rupture between the infantry and cavalry 
 wings of the army. The latter desired some 
 able military chieftain, who could lead them 
 against an enemy and sustain their fame as 
 soldiers. The former, headed by the phalanx, 
 preferred a legitimate sovereign, under whom 
 Macedonia should still be and remain the cen- 
 tral fact in the Empire. The eight leaders 
 just referred to took sides with the cavalry, 
 and Perdiccas was forced, partly by expedi- 
 ency and partly by an attempt made upon his 
 life, to join his fortunes with the other gen- 
 erals. The cavalry, under such leadership, 
 assembled without the city, and threatened to 
 cut ofi" supplies and starve into compliance all 
 who opposed their views. 
 
 The great council assembled in the palace 
 of Babylon. After a variety of projects had 
 been discussed, it was proposed by Aristonous 
 ! that the general afl^airs of the Empire should 
 be intrusted to Perdiccas, with the title of 
 Regent. The measui-e was carried ; and he 
 on whom the dangerous honor was imposed 
 was thus set in direct antagonism with Arrhi- 
 dfeus, who had received the sufii-ages of the 
 infantry. Meleager, the general of that wing 
 of the army, found himself in a serious pre- 
 dicament : he must break either with his sol- 
 diers or with the Regent. He sided with the 
 soldiers, and became their leader. This party 
 undertook to uphold Arrhidseus, and thus a 
 conflict was brought on which came near 
 ending in bloody work. The forces were al- 
 ready drawn out for battle, the phalanx on 
 one side and the cavalry on the other, when 
 the catasti'ophe was avoided by the mingled 
 fear and magnanimity of Arrhidjeus himself. 
 When battle was about to begin he threw him- 
 self among the soldiers, and besought them to 
 refrain from such an act as would prove an 
 everlasting stain upon their reputation. He 
 publicly renounced all claim to the crown. 
 "If this diadem," said he, "can be possessed
 
 MACEDONIA.— SUCCESSOBS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 665 
 
 only by the wounds and death of Macedo- 
 nians, I will instantly divest myself of the 
 pernicious ornament. Take back the fatal 
 present. Give it to some one worthier than 
 I am, if he can preserve the splendid gift un- 
 stained by the blood of his countrymen." The 
 effect of this appeal was such that the phal- 
 anx receded from its attitude, and gave in its 
 allegiance to the regency under Perdiccas. 
 With him, however, in a short time Leouatus 
 was associated in the government, and soon 
 afterwards Meleager as a colleague. 
 
 Soon after the completion of these arrange- 
 ments Queen Roxana gave birth to a son. 
 The event was hailed as a glad omen, and the 
 child was honored with his father's name. It 
 was ordered that the infant should be nurtured 
 with the greatest care and treated as the heir 
 expectant of the Empire. The next thing de- 
 manding the attention of the leaders was the 
 division of the provinces. Ptolemy, son of 
 Lagus, chose for his portion the Nile valley, 
 and thus became the founder of the Grteco- 
 Egyptiau dynasty. By this choice he was 
 removed somewhat from the broils into which 
 he foresaw that his colleagues would in all 
 likelihood be plunged. Antipater received 
 Macedonia, but with him was associated the 
 veteran Craterus, whom it will he remembered 
 Alexander had sent thither as regent. The 
 Thracian states fell to Lysimachus, and Cappa- 
 docia to Eumenes. The Greater Phrygia was 
 assigned to Antigonus, and the Lesser to 
 Leonatus. The home provinces of Persia were 
 allotted to Pencestes, and the kingdom of Me- 
 dia to Python. Perdiccas received Babylonia 
 and retained as his lieutenants in the govern- 
 ment Aristonous and Seleucus. Thus was the 
 world parcele-I out among the generals of the 
 conqueror. 
 
 During all these important transactions the 
 body of the great dead lay unburied in Baby- 
 lon. He had given directions that he should 
 be interred in the oasis of Amun, near the 
 shrine of Zeus. At length Pcrdicca.s under- 
 took to fulfdl the injunction of his master. 
 The bodv was embalmed and preparations 
 made for a grand pageant to the di.<tant jjlace 
 of burial. Two years, however, elapsed before 
 the funeral was actually completed ; and then 
 
 the plan was changed and Alexandria substi- 
 tuted for the Libyan oasis as the place of 
 sepulture. Nor could posterity complain that 
 the great city founded in his honor was se- 
 lected as the final resting-place of the son of 
 Philip rather than the green spot in the desert 
 which superstition more than rational prefer- 
 ence had suggested. 
 
 The first disturbance wliich demanded the 
 attention of the Kegent Perdiccas was the 
 revolt of the mercenary Greeks. These troopa 
 had been placed as garrisons and colonies in 
 the cities of northern and eastern Media, and 
 upon them was imposed the duty of maintain- 
 ing those borders of the Einpii'e intact from 
 the encroachments of barbarians. As soon, 
 however, as it w'as known that the king was- 
 dead, the Greeks, believing themselves now 
 free from. restraint, revolted, and placing them- 
 selves under a commander of their own began 
 their march for Greece. Perdiccas at once 
 dispatched his lieutenant. Python, to suppress- 
 the insurrection and turn back the insurgents 
 to the places from which they had issued. 
 This officer, however, proved treacherous and 
 formed a design of making Media indepen-- 
 dent, but Perdiccas sent after him j)ublic 
 orders to kill all the Greeks and divide their 
 property among the Macedonian soldiers. The 
 nature of the onlers being known in the army 
 Python durst not disobey, and the bloody 
 mandate was executed without mercy. 
 
 The next revolt was in the province of 
 Cappadocia. The people of this country, under 
 the lead of their native king, Ariathes, bade 
 defiance to the rule of the Macedonians, and 
 Perdiccas intrusted to Eumenes the task of 
 reducing them to obedience. The character 
 of these warlike barbarians was well known 
 to the Regent, and he accordingly ordered 
 Antigonus and Leonatus, governoi-s of the two- 
 Phrygias, to assist in the work of subjugation. 
 Both, however, refused to obey the order, and 
 Perdiccas himself was obliged to march to the 
 aid of his colleague. Notwithstanding the 
 valor of the Cappadocians, they were quickly 
 overthrown by the veteran ]\Iacedonian army, 
 and the authority of Eumenes reestablished 
 on a firm basis. 
 
 Soon afterwards an insurrection broke out
 
 «66 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 in Pisidia and Isauria. The former country was 
 quickly overrun, the capital taken by assault, 
 *nd the inhabitants put to the sword. The 
 
 mountaineers of Isauria, however, made a more 
 successful resistance. Being finally cooped up 
 in their principal town, they made a desperate
 
 MACEDOXIA.—SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 667 
 
 defense. When hope was lost they fired their 
 houses, burned their wives and children, drove 
 back tlie assailants from tiie ramparts, and 
 then, discovering the impossibility uf escape, 
 turned about and perished in the flames. The 
 Macedonians succeeded in taking a town of 
 bones and ashes. 
 
 The epoch that followed the death of Al- 
 exander is mostly filled with events growing 
 out of the quarrels and jealousies of those into 
 whose hands the Empire; had fallen. It was 
 not long until Ptolemy formed a scheme to 
 marry the daughter of Antipater. This action 
 of course contemplated the ultimate union of 
 Macedonia and Egypt. Perdiccas, whose craft 
 in the cabinet wa.s by no means eijual to his 
 generalship in the field, having heard of the 
 project of Ptolemy, claimed Aiitipater's daugh- 
 ter's daughter for himself; but he was soon 
 reminded that not even this politic marriage 
 was as advantageous as another which was 
 possible. For there was C leopatra, the sister 
 of Alexander, whom he might solicit, and thus 
 unite himself directly with the House of 
 Philip. So the marriage to the daughter of 
 Antipater was annulled in favor of that with 
 the princess. But meanwhile the friends of 
 Arrhiiheus.who was still noniinally the successor 
 to Alexander, urged him to seek an alliance 
 with Eurydice, also of the royal blood. This 
 princess, however, was presently put to death, 
 as was believed, by the influence of Perdiccas. 
 This event raised such a nnitiny that the Re- 
 gent was glad to recede from his position and 
 begin a policy of coiieiliation towards his 
 rivals. 
 
 As soon as affairs were again quieted Per- 
 diccas summoned Antigouus to repair to Bab- 
 ylon and defend himself against the charge 
 of insubordination in refusing to aid Eumenes 
 in the Cappadocian war. But the general 
 refused to obey the summons. In this course 
 he was encouraged by Antipater and Craterus 
 in Macedonia and Ptolemy in Egypt. These 
 rulers, alarmed at the assumptions cf the Re- 
 gent, who now blinked not at all his claim to 
 authority over all the dominions of Alexander, 
 made a league against him, and took up arms 
 to maintain it. In the matter of war, how- 
 ever, Perdiccas was perfectly at home. He at 
 -^ N. -Vol. I— .^ 
 
 once planned an invasion of Egypt, and has- 
 tened as a measure of preparatory revenge to 
 strip Antigouus of his government, conferring 
 the same on Eumenes. Nor were Antipater 
 and Craterus behindhand in preparations. By 
 the time that the Regent was ready to begin 
 his descent on Egypt they were on the march 
 into Asia. The defense of the country against 
 them was intrusted to Eumenes. With an 
 army of about twenty thou-^and men he met 
 the invaders near the plain of ancient Troy. 
 One of his officers, named Neoptolemus, de- 
 serted and went over to Craterus; and by his 
 counsel that able veteran was put off his guard, 
 considering the forces led by Eumenes no more 
 than a medley of barbarians. The battle soon 
 showed the mistake. Eumenes was completely 
 victorious. Craterus and Neoptolemus were 
 both slain, and even the phalanx was driven 
 to the niiiuntains. 
 
 In the mean time Perdiccas was making his 
 way towards Egypt. Once on the confines of 
 that country, he summoned Ptolemy to come 
 into his presence and answer a long li.st of 
 charges. This the Egyptian governor did io 
 a manner to exculpate himself; but the baf 
 fled Regent at last found a pretext in this — 
 that Ptolemy had assumed to arrest the funeral 
 cortege of Alexander, and to bury the body 
 of that hero in an Egy[)tian city instead of in 
 the oasis of Aniun. So the invasion was 
 continued to Pelusium. Ptolemy proved him- 
 self equal to the emergency. He ])lanned a 
 series of fortifications which the assailants were 
 unable to carry. A jiart of the forces of Per- 
 diccas were drowned in attem|)ting to cross the 
 Nile, and bis army, being divided by that 
 stream, was attacked in detail and utterly 
 routed. The Regent, availing hiin.self of the 
 protection of the survivors, was glad to with- 
 draw from the country. Soon afterwards, 
 B. C. 321, when he was preparing to renew 
 the contest with Ptolemy, he wa.s as.<assinated 
 in his tent by Python, that disloyal general 
 whom he had previously sent against the re- 
 volted Greeks in the Median cities. 
 
 Two years before this event a league had 
 been formed in Greece for the overthrow of 
 Macedonian authority. As usual, Athens 
 headed the confederacy. The command was
 
 668 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 intrusted to Leosthenes, ■^vho advanced at the 
 head of about twenty thousand men and took 
 possession of the pass of Thermopylge. From 
 this stronghold Antipater was unable to dis- 
 lodge him, and was himself so much worsted 
 in the battle that he fell back and defended 
 himself in the town of Lamia, near the Ma- 
 lian gulf. 
 
 Word was now sent to Asia Minor asking 
 Leonatus, the governor of Ph}Tgia, for reen- 
 forcement*. The latter made a rapid march 
 into Macedonia, and Leosthenes meanwhile, in 
 the attempt to prevent a junction of his ene- 
 mies, made several unsuccessful assaults on 
 Lamia, in one of which he was killed. His 
 successor, Antiphilus, hearing of the approach 
 'of Leonatus, went forth to meet him on the 
 northern confines of Thessaly. Here a bloody 
 battle was fought, in which victory remained 
 with the Greeks. Leonatus was slain and the 
 larger part of his army sought refuge in the 
 mountains. But Antipater soon succeeded in 
 rallying his forces and gained a complete vic- 
 tory over Antiphilus. The Greeks sued for 
 peace, but the Alacedonian would not treat 
 with them except as separate states. This put 
 Athens at his mercy. He dictated to the 
 Athenians a change of government and com- 
 pelled them to surrender Hyperides and De- 
 mosthenes, the two principal orators of the 
 democracy. The former, however, made good 
 his escape from the city, and the latter, rather 
 than fall into the hands of his enemies, ended 
 his life by poison. The Athenians perceived 
 that the magnanimity of Philip and Alexan- 
 der was no longer to be expected from the 
 court of Macedon. 
 
 After the overthrow of Perdiccas at Pelu- 
 sium, it was within the power of Ptolemy to 
 seize the regency for himself. Instead, how- 
 ever, of taking this ambitious course, he con- 
 tented himself with nominating for that im- 
 portant office his friend Arrhidffius, one of the 
 conqueror's generals not hitherto conspicuous. 
 He it was who, conducting the funeral pageant 
 of Alexander, by way of Egypt to the African 
 oasis, had been persuaded by Ptolemy to erect 
 the royal tomb in Alexandria instead of the 
 desert. 
 
 After the overthrow and death of Craterus 
 
 at the hands of Eumenes, the passions of the 
 Egyptian army were greatly inflamed. They 
 heard of the destruction of their old general 
 with mortification and rage. This was di- 
 rected first of all against Perdiccas as the cause 
 of the unseemly broil between friends. Afler 
 the death of the Regent they looked to Eu- 
 menes as the responsible representative of the 
 mischief, and so they resolved to exterminate 
 him and all his confederates. Fifty of the 
 leading adherents of the late Perdiccas, includ- 
 ing his brother Alcetas, were proscribed, and 
 the army at once set out through Syria to en- 
 force the edict. At Triparadus, however, they 
 were met by Eurydice, the wife of Arrhidseus, 
 and by her persuaded to abandon the enter- 
 prise. Her influence became, for the hour, 
 well-nigh omnipotent, and when Antipater, 
 who had been sent for, arrived at the scene, 
 he was amazed to find that not even his pres- 
 ence was sufficient to break the spell with 
 which the queen h d bound the soldiery. At- 
 tempting to bring his old soldiers to their 
 senses, they turned upon him and would have 
 put him to death, but for the timely interfer- 
 ence of Seleuces and Antigonus. Presently, 
 however, a reaction set in, such as could hardly 
 be looked for except in a mutiuous army, and 
 the veterans made haste to proclaim Antipater 
 regent! Accepting the trust at their hands, 
 he returned to ^Macedonia, in B. C. 322, and 
 assumed the duties of directing the aftau'S of 
 the dissolving Empire. 
 
 Several changes had n»w become necessary 
 in the provincial governments. Eumenes was 
 declared an outlaw, and his satrapy of Cap- 
 padocia conferred on Nicanor. Clytus was 
 appointed to the governorship of Lydia, and 
 Cilicia was conferred on Philoxenes. As yet, 
 however, all of these provinces lying within 
 the dominions of Eumenes, were under his 
 authority, and must be taken from him by 
 force of arms before these new governors 
 could gain possession of their respective terri- 
 tories. The regent Arrhidteus was now con- 
 fined in his authority to Hellespontine Phrygia. 
 Last and greatest of the provinces was Baby- 
 lonia, which was awarded to the young and 
 ambitious Seleuces. 
 
 These arrangements having been completed.
 
 MACEDONIA.— SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 CG3 
 
 Antipater undertook the subjugation of Eu- 
 meues. With him Antigoiuis joined his forces, 
 and the campaign against Cappadocia was 
 pressed with vigor. Nora, the strongest fort- 
 ress in that country, was besieged, and Eu- 
 menes was hard pressed to hold out against 
 his assailants. While the blockade was still 
 in force, the unscrupulous Antigouus made 
 overtures to Eumenes, and tried to induce 
 him to enter into a league against Antipater; 
 but Eumenes replied that he would enter into 
 00 alliance with any except a representative 
 of the House of Alexander. He then returned 
 into the fortress, and the siege was resumed. 
 
 Before the place could be taken Antipater 
 died, and Polysperchon was appointed to suc- 
 ceed him in the regency. In the mean time, 
 the son of Roxana was associated with Arrhi- 
 dseus, and both were put in charge of the 
 new Regent. It soon became apparent that 
 Antigonus had expected the general manage- 
 ment of affairs to devolve on himself, and 
 finding another preferred before him, he be- 
 gan to take counsel how he might obtain by 
 force or intrigue that which was denied him 
 by the free-will of others. He accorjlingly en- 
 tered into a conspiracy with Cassander, the 
 son of Antipater. This ambitious soldier had 
 succeeded in gaining the affections of Eu- 
 rydice, and hoped to gain not only her, but 
 with her the shadowy Empire, the crown of 
 which was worn by lier half-imbeeile husband. 
 
 For this piece of political gallantry Cassan- 
 der was disinherited by his father. The young 
 man had fled to Antigouus, and now became 
 his natural' ally. Hereupon Antigonus took 
 the field and attempted to win by open force, 
 while C'a.«sander, remaining in the sliadow, 
 continued to operate by subtlety. Ephesus 
 was presently seized, and some shi])-l<)ads of 
 money, amounting to .six hundred talenb', des- 
 tined to meet the expenses of the Imperial 
 government of the Ea.st, were captured by 
 Antigonvis. Eumenes was again tempted to 
 join him in an alliance against Polysperchon, 
 but could not be scduceil from his loyalty. 
 
 The faithful satraj) presently thereafter suc- 
 ceeded in making his escape from Nora, and 
 thus brnvight the siege to naught. He soon 
 xfterwards entered into an open alliance with 
 
 Polysperchon, who conferred upon him the 
 supreme command of all of the Asiatic armies 
 of the Empire. Another measure of the Re- 
 gent was his edict reestablishing democracy in 
 all the states of Greece. It was thought by 
 this means that the allegiance of the Hellenic 
 commonwealths would remain unshaken, not- 
 withstanding the temptiitious to which they 
 were subjected by Antigonus. The event, 
 however, was the introduction of a reign of 
 confusion such as not even the turbulent 
 Greeks could well endure. For a while the 
 popular distraction knew no bounds. The 
 worst elements of society became suddenly 
 predominant. At Athens the aged Phocion, 
 who had been forty-five times elected general 
 by the assembly, and was now eighty-five 
 years old, was condemned by the rabble to 
 drink the hemlock. During the year 318 
 B. C. a desultory warfare was carried on be- 
 tween Cassander and Polysperchon. A naval 
 battle was fought in the Bosphorus, in which 
 Nicauor, the admiral of Antigonus, was de- 
 feated with a loss of one-half of his ships; 
 but that satrap a few days afterward made a 
 sudden descent upon the victore while en- 
 camped on the coast of Thrace, and in the 
 battle of Bj'zantium inflicted on them a bloody 
 defeat. Athens thereupon surrendered to Cas- 
 sander, and the government was conferred on 
 Demetrius Phalereus. 
 
 Meanwhile Polysperchon, as a means of 
 strengthening his government, had brought 
 home to Pella, Olympias, the mother of Alex- 
 ander. That ambitious and passionate woman 
 became a powerful influence in the afl^airs of 
 state. Her favorite scheme was to secure the 
 united dominions of the conqueror for her 
 grandson Alexander, son of Roxana. The 
 ascendency of Eurydice over the supporters of 
 her husband, Arrhidieus, was equally marked. 
 It thus happened that the Macedonian world 
 was torn almost as much by the rivalries of 
 two women as by the arms of Cassander and 
 the Regent. The struggle, however, was brief 
 as it was fierce. Olympias, having gained 
 over the soldiery to her cause, compelled Eu- 
 rydice and her husband, the king, to fly for 
 their lives. Having soon afterwards obtained 
 possession of their persons, she caused them
 
 670 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIEXT WORLD. 
 
 both to be assassinated. Thus, after a nom- 
 inal reign of sis years, was extinguished the 
 spectral successor of Alexander the Great. 
 
 Cassander was greatly enraged at this atroc- 
 ity and hastened into Macedonia to avenge the 
 death of Eurydice. On his approach the aged 
 Olympian took counsel of discretion and es- 
 caped from the city. With her grandson, 
 Alexander JSgus, and his mother Roxaua, she 
 shut herself up in the strong fortress of Pydna, 
 and was there besieged by Cassander. At the 
 last, famine effected what arms had failed to 
 accomplish, and the relentless old queen sur- 
 rendered herself to her enemies. She was sub- 
 jected to the form of a trial and put to death. 
 While these events were happening in Eu- 
 rope the struggle continued between Eumenes 
 and Antigonus in Asia. The former, in addi- 
 tion to the conflict with his enemies in the 
 field, was troubled not a little in his civil 
 councils. The Macedonians, upon whom he 
 was compelled to rely for support, looked upon 
 him with disfavor, for he was a man of obscure 
 birth and foreign parentage. Meanwhile An- 
 tigonus, after his victory in the battle of 
 Byzantium, began a pursuit of Eumenes, who 
 was then with his army in Phoenicia. 
 
 The latter, unable to meet his foe in the 
 field, began retre,ating toward the east. He 
 called upon Seleucus, the Babylonian satrap, 
 to aid him with men and supplies; but that 
 prince, in.stead of complying, opened the sluices 
 of the Tigris and came near destroying Eu- 
 menes and his whole army. They escaped 
 from their peril, however, and made their way 
 as far east as the borders of Persia. Here, in 
 B. C. 316, they were overtaken by Antigonus, 
 and a battle was fought, with indecisive results. 
 In a second conflict, however, Eumenes was 
 defeated and taken prisoner. He was carried 
 through the Macedonian camp and begged the 
 soldiers to kill him, but they would not. But 
 soon afterwards he was secretly put to death 
 in prison. For twenty years he had fought 
 for the House of Philip ; and after every other 
 general of note had abandoned the cause of 
 Alexander and begun to contrive for himself, 
 he still continued to strive for the maintenance 
 of Macedonian supremacy. Among the many 
 who had y. :en free rein to selfishness and 
 
 treachery, Eumenes alone kept his honor 
 bright and went down to the grave without a 
 stain on his escutcheon. 
 
 Antigonus, having thus triumphed over all 
 opposition, assumed the regency. Polysper- 
 chon retired into Peloponnesus. Olympias 
 was dead. The young Alexander ^gus was 
 thus left naked to his enemies. Antigonus 
 gathered his forces and made a campaign 
 into Media. Having observed that of late the 
 veteran cohort known as the Argraspides, or 
 Silver-shields, had had too much to do in 
 settling difficulties appertaining to the govern- 
 ment, he dispatched them on arduous expedi- 
 tions to the frontier provinces for the purpose 
 of wearing them out with privations and 
 fatigue. A second measure was to get rid of 
 Python. That turbulent spirit was invited to 
 join Antigonus with the promise of preferment, 
 but was presently seized and put to death. 
 Then followed the overthrow of Peucestes, 
 satrap of Persia. Being jealous of this officer, 
 Antigonus followed him to his capital, Pasar- 
 gadse, and having driven him from authority 
 appointed one of his own tools as his successor. 
 
 The next object of the Regent's dislike was 
 Seleucus, governor of Babylonia. Dissem- 
 bling his purpose, he marched to the capital 
 and was royally entertained by Seleucus ; but 
 the latter, perceiving that he was destined to 
 fall by the same hand that had destroyed 
 Python and Peucestes, made his escape from 
 Babylon and fled to Egypt. He was cor- 
 dially received by Ptolemy, and the two im- 
 mediately sent proposals to Cassander and 
 Lysimachus to enter into a league against the 
 ambitious Antigonus. They were joined by 
 Asander, satrap of Caria, and the confederates 
 then made their demands of the Regent. 
 But he rejected the overtures with disdain. 
 Both parties made preparations for war, and 
 in B. C. 315 hostilities began. The struggle 
 continued for a period of twelve years, and 
 involved all the leading populations from the 
 Adriatic to the Indus. 
 
 In the beginning of the contest Antigonus 
 invaded Caria, and Asander, the governor, 
 was overthrown. The Regent next succeeded 
 in securing the favor of a strong party in 
 Peloponnesus, where Polysperchon still main-
 
 MACEDONIA.— SUCCESSOBS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 671 
 
 tained a shadowy authority. Having thus 
 gained a foothold, Autigonus made war on 
 Cassander and sitripped him of all his Grecian 
 dependencies. He next turned his arms 
 against Lysimaclius, governor of Thrace, and 
 him also he overthrew and drove from his 
 dominions. Syria was next conquered, chiefly 
 through the warlike abilities of Demetrius, 
 the .son of the Regent. The government of 
 Ptolemy still remained intact. 
 
 At this juncture the confederates made 
 known their desire for peace ; but the ambi- 
 tion of Antigouus had grown with what it 
 fed on, and he would listen to nothing. 
 Ptolemy thereupon took up arras and went 
 forth with a large army to Gaza. Here a 
 decisive battle was fought, in which the 
 Egyptian was completely victorious. The 
 fortunes of Antigonus were so badly shat- 
 tered that Seleucus was enabled to return to 
 Babylon and resume the duties of his satrapy. 
 The Syrian cities opened their gates to Ptol- 
 emy, who intrusted the defense of the con- 
 quered countries to Cilles and returned to 
 Alexandria. His lieutenant, however, was 
 soon defeated in two battles by Demetrius, 
 and all that Egypt had gained was as sud- 
 denly lost. Ptolemy was obliged to give up 
 Syria to the foe.' 
 
 After his return to Babylon, Seleucus was 
 obliged to defend himself against the satraps 
 of Media and Persia. It will be remembered 
 that these officers had been elevated to power 
 by Antigonus, and their continuance in au- 
 thority now depended upon their supjiorting 
 his cause. But Seleucus, collecting his forces, 
 went forth against them and they were over- 
 whelmingly defeated. Evagoras, the Persian 
 governor, was left dead on the field, and Ni- 
 canor of Media was obliged to save himself by 
 flight. This victory, B. C. 312, was decisive in 
 one part of the struggle. Seleucus was firndy 
 seated. A Greek kingdom in the East was 
 thus established, with its capital at Babylon. 
 The great dynasty of the SKi.Evcm.T; was 
 founded on the Euphrates, umKr whose be- 
 
 'It was in the withdrawal of Ptolemy from 
 Syria tliat he wa.s accompanied to Alexandria by 
 the Jews, who thenceforth constituted so impor- 
 tant nn element of iio|nil:itic.n in tliat city. 
 
 neficent government the eastern part of the 
 dominions conquered by Alexander were des- 
 tine<l for a long time to enjov a measure 
 of peace and prosperity. 
 
 The sudden success achieved by Seleucus 
 indu<-ed Autigonus to listen to propo.sals for 
 a general settlement. An important confer- 
 ence was accordingly held between himself 
 and the confederate leaders, and conditions 
 of peace were agreed upon. It was decided 
 that Egypt should be given to Ptolemy and 
 his successors. Thrace went to Lysiniachus; 
 and Macedonia, not including Greece, was 
 awarded to Cassander until such time as 
 Alexander ^gus, the son of the conqueror, 
 should arrive at his majority. Antigonus re- 
 served Asia for himself, thus refusing to 
 recognize the government of Seleucus at 
 Babylon. Thus by the successoi-s of Philip's 
 son was the world again parceled out into 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Scarcely had this settlement been effected 
 when Cassander opened the ball by the mur- 
 der of the young Alexander and his mother, 
 Roxana. Then followed soon afterwards the 
 destruction of Hercules, another son of the 
 conqueror, and Barcina, his mother. Thus 
 at last was the deck cleared of the legitimate 
 claimants to the crown of the Macedonian 
 Empire. The bloody conspirators now had 
 the game to themselves. 
 
 In a short time, Ptolemy, in disregard of 
 the terms of the treaty, made a campaign into 
 Syria and retook certain cities belonging to 
 Antigonus. He then opened a correspondence 
 with Cleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, 
 witii a view to marriage ; but^ Antigonus, 
 having discovered what was going on, sent a 
 dispatch to the satrap of Sardis, where Cleo- 
 patra resided, and liad the princessassassinated. 
 
 Soon after this event Demetrius raised a 
 large force and invaded Greece. By the 
 terms of the treaty the Grecian states were to 
 remain indejiendent ; but Ca.s.<ander had at 
 once seized tluni as a part of the spoils belong- 
 ing to him. With an armament of two hun- 
 dred and fifty galleys, and five thousand 
 talents in money, Demetrius now proceeded 
 to enforce the settlement. The Athenians 
 werrt wild over this ghastly restoration of
 
 ,672 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 PTOLEMY SOIEE. 
 
 their liberties. As soon as quiet was restored, 
 Demetrius proceeded to Cyprus, which was 
 now occupied by the forces and partisans of 
 Ptolemy, and laid siege to Salamis, the capital 
 of the island. The Egyptian ruler came out 
 with a large squadron to the relief of the city ; 
 but in a severe naval 
 battle be was so com- 
 pletely defeated that he 
 could offer no further 
 resistance to the prog- 
 ress of his enemy. 
 Salamis and the other 
 towns of the island sur- 
 rendered, and were 
 transferred to Antigouus, in whose name De- 
 metrius made the conquest. 
 
 The blow inflicted on Ptolemy in his un- 
 fortunate sea-fight suggested to Antigonus the 
 invasion of Egypt. With a powerful army 
 of ninety thousand men and eighty elephants 
 he marched through Syria to the coast, and 
 then embarked for the mouth of the NUe. A 
 storm, however, shattered the squadron, and 
 on arriving in Egypt he found a united people 
 and a country rendered almost impregnable 
 by the skill and energy of his adversary. 
 Such was the aspect of affairs that he was 
 obliged to adopt the humiliating expedient of 
 retreating without striking a blow. In order, 
 however, to redeem his reputation, he directed 
 his flotilla to the island of Rhodes, and under- 
 took the subjugation of the capital city. For 
 more than a year Demetrius beat about the 
 ramparts with every species of enginery 
 known to the military skill of the times ; but 
 the Rhodians, assisted by Ptolemy, held out 
 against him, until at last he was obliged (B. C. 
 305) to abandon the siege and grant to 
 Rhodes her independence.' 
 
 Notwithstanding these reverses to his arms, 
 Antigonus still indulged the ambitious project 
 of regaining all the dominions of the Empii'e. 
 He looked to the subjugation of Egypt, Mace- 
 donia, and the East. So aggressive were his 
 
 ' It was in commemoration of the aid given to 
 the Rhodians by Ptolemy in this memorable siege 
 that they conferred on him the title of Soter, or 
 Savior — a title more generous than just ; for it was 
 to their own heroism that they owed their deliver- 
 mce. 
 
 movements that the former league of Seleucua. 
 Ptolemy, and Lysimachus against him was re- 
 newed, and both parties prepared for war. 
 Seleucus entered Cappadocia with twenty 
 thousand men, and the leaders came from the 
 West to join his forces. It was now B. C. 
 301, and another crisis had arrived in the his- 
 tory of the nations subdued by Alexander. 
 Antigonus and Demetrius, at the head of 
 their army, met the allies at the little village 
 of Ipsus, and here the decisive battle was 
 fought. Antigonus was slain. His army vras 
 routed; and Demetrius barely escaped with 
 eight thousand men. A new division of ter- 
 ritory followed ; Coele-Svria and Palestine fell 
 to Ptolemy ; the larger part of Asia Jlinor to 
 Lysimachus: Antioch became the capital. 
 
 In this strait of his affairs, Demetrius was 
 suddenly relieved by fortune. Seleucus, now 
 jealous of the growing power of Lysimachus, 
 came to the rescue and formed an alliance 
 with Demetrius by marrjing his daughter 
 Stratonice. The father, whose political estate 
 was thus unexpectedly improved, at on^e re- 
 sumed the aggressive, retook Cilicia from 
 Lysimachus, and, in B. C. 295, made a suc- 
 cessful invasion of Greece. In the next year 
 he was declared king of ]\Iacedon, an incen- 
 tive thereto being his marriage with Phila, 
 the daughter of Antipater. 
 
 As soon as he was well seated in authority 
 Demetrius re- 
 newed those vis- 
 ionary schemes 
 which his father 
 had entertained 
 even to the day 
 of his death. The 
 son was equally 
 ambitious, and 
 would fain make 
 good his claims 
 to universal do- 
 minion. He ac- 
 cordingly organ- 
 ized a powerful 
 army with a view 
 career of conquest. 
 
 DEMETEIL'S POUOBCETES. 
 
 Museo Viscontl. 
 
 to entering upon a 
 At the outset he 
 was opposed by Lysimachus and Ptolemy. 
 While his attention was directed to these
 
 MACEDONIA.— SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 673 
 
 formidable antagonists, a foe still more to be 
 dreaded appeared iu Pyrrhus, kiiijr of Epirus. 
 With him he went to war, but on approaching 
 the borders of his adversary large bodies of 
 the troops of Demetrius went over to the ~ 
 enemy, and he was obliged not only to aban- 
 don the campaign, but also to leave his own 
 kingdom to the coml)iucd ravages of Pyrrhus 
 and Lysimachus. The Macedonian, however, 
 continued the war in Asia Minor, until he was 
 
 brilliant son Agathocles — an event wliich 
 made the king an oi)ject of execration in all 
 the West. His punisiiment was left to Seleu- 
 cus, who, in B. C. 281, marched into Asia 
 ISIinor, met Lysimachus on tlic tie]<l of CoRU- 
 PEDION and slew him iu battle. Before leav- 
 ing his capital, however, the now aged Seleu-i 
 cus had virtually abdicated the government' 
 in favor of his son, Antiochus, in whose 
 bands be placed his young wife Stratonice. 
 
 
 IMMi.i MV PHlI.ADKI.llii - i.iscl'ssINi; WITH THE ARCHITECTS THE PLANS FOR THE 
 
 ALKXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 betrayed by his son-in-law, Seleucus, surren- 
 dered to his enemy, cast into prison, and 
 brought to his death. 
 
 In the mean time Ptolemy Soter was suc- 
 ceeded in Egypt by his son, Ptolemy Phihi- 
 delphus — presumably so called because he did 
 not love his brother ; for Ptolemy Ceraunus, 
 the oldest son of Soter, was displaced by that 
 ruler in favor of the younger, who became 
 his successor. Arsinoe, the sister of Philadel- 
 phus, was married to Lysiniacluis, and Iiim 
 she is said to have instigate<l to murder his 
 
 In these acts the venerable monarch was 
 largely influenced by a desire wliidi had pos- 
 sessed him to revisit his native Macedonia. 
 As soon as the battle of Corujiedion had been 
 decided in his favor, he continued his course 
 to the West, and was presently rewarded 
 with a sight of his native hills, which he had 
 not beheld for ffty-iwo ijears. Soon after- 
 wards, while with an old man's curiosity he 
 was examining an ancient altar, Ptolemy 
 Ceraunus, wlio had accompanied him on his 
 return into Macedonia, stole behind and
 
 674 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— TEE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 stabbed liim to death. The murderer at 
 once repaired to Lysimachia, and announcing 
 himself as the avenger of their late king's 
 death, seized the throne and held it for the 
 space of three years. 
 
 From all this blood and violence it is a 
 grateful relief to turn to the court of Phila- 
 delphus. To him it is fair to accord the 
 praise of being the most enlightened sovereign 
 
 discussions, :nid witli a di.3cernment that 
 would have done credit to Francis Bacon 
 sought to draw them away from the region 
 of inane speculation and to limit their re- 
 searches to the things beneficial to men. The 
 great Pharos which had been begun by Ptol- 
 emy I. was completed in B. C. 280, and the 
 glare of its flaming torch was flung for more 
 than forty miles across the Mediterranean. 
 
 HAIiL IN THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 
 
 of his times. He made Egypt more glorious 
 than she had been since the days of the great 
 Pharaohs of antiquity. Alexandria became 
 under his munificent patronage the most 
 splendid seat of learning in the world. Men 
 of letters from all quarters of the world came 
 hither as to an asylum. He founded the 
 Alexandrian library, and invited to his court 
 the most distinguished scientists, poets, and 
 philosophers. He participated in their learned 
 
 Thus, in the city named after the conqueror 
 of Asia, the light and learning of Asia was 
 mingled with the enterprise of the West. 
 
 With the death of the aged Seleucus per- 
 ished the last of those remarkable military 
 chieftains who had followed the fortunes of 
 Alexander the Great. The personal strug- 
 gles of those who had heard the voice of that 
 mighty hero in battle ended with the battle 
 of Corupedion. Antiochus was left with the
 
 MACEDONIA.— SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 67& 
 
 Greek kingdom of Syria. Ptolemy PhUadel- 
 phus reigned iu Egypt ; Ceraunus in Mace- 
 donia. By him the sons of Lysimachus were 
 murdered, Arsinoe driven into Egypt, and 
 Antigonus, son of Demetrius, excluded from 
 the throne. 
 
 But the blind Nemesis, ever on the trail 
 of the butcher, soon 
 sent her avenging 
 ministers to balance 
 the disturbed scales 
 of justice. The Gauls 
 came. Having ac- 
 quired rather than 
 appeased an appetite 
 for plunder during 
 their recent invasion 
 of Italy, they now 
 poured into Thrace 
 and Macedonia. 
 Without proper prep- 
 aration or due cau- 
 tion in the presence 
 of such a foe, Cer- 
 aunus went forth and 
 gave them battle. 
 The result was that 
 his army was cut to 
 pieces by the barba- 
 rians and himself 
 slain iu the fight. 
 The invaders then 
 made their way into 
 Asia Minor, selected 
 their province, con- 
 quered it, and gave 
 it the name of 
 Galalia. 
 
 After a long strug- 
 gle with King Pyr- 
 rhus and the Gauls, 
 Antigonus, the son of 
 
 Demetrius, at length secured the throne of 
 Macedonia and took the title of Antigonus II. 
 In a reign of twenty -seven years (B. C. 269- 
 242) he embroiled himself but little with the 
 affairs of surrounding kingdoms. In an at- 
 tempt, however, which he made upon the lib- 
 erties of the Greek states, he stirred up so 
 much resentment that, under the lead of the 
 
 Achaians an alliance, known as the AcaEAir 
 League — hereafter to act a conspicuous part 
 in the concluding drama of Grecian history — ^ 
 was formed against him and his schemes. In. 
 B. C. 242 he died at the advanced age of 
 eighty, and left his crown to his son Deme- 
 trius II., whose reign of ten years was not 
 
 PHAROS OF ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 marked by any notable events. His ambi- 
 tions — such as they were — were successfully 
 resisted by the League, and his jietty wars 
 with the .(Etolians, lUyriaus, and Thracians 
 had no important results. At his death the- 
 crown descended to his sou Philip, then but 
 three years of age, who was placed under tne 
 regency of his uncle, Antigonus Doson.
 
 676 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 MeanwhUe, in B. C. 222, Cleomenes, the 
 young ' ' king " of Sj^arta — for that unchange- 
 able commonwealth still clung to its tradi- 
 tional names— not liking the growing ascend- 
 ency of the League, made war ou the 
 confederated states, and the latter called on 
 Antigonus Doson to aid them in resisting the 
 Lacedremonian aspirant. The two armies 
 which were brought into the field by the re- 
 spective parties met on the field of Sellasia, 
 and Cleomenes was overthrown and driven 
 into Egypt. That country, in the mean time, 
 had passed from the hands of the great Phil- 
 adelphus to his son Ptolemy Euergetes, from 
 whom the Spartan refugee now sought pro- 
 tection and vindication. 
 
 For fourteen years Antigonus Doson re- 
 mained as regent of Macedonia, and was then, 
 at death, succeeded in authority by his ward 
 Philip, who was destined in a short time to 
 be embroiled with the Romans, and to 
 become one of the actors in the complicated 
 drama in which the new Republic of the West 
 •stretched out her scepter over all of the con- 
 tending parties. 
 
 Soon after the accession of Philip to power 
 'the Achoean League made a rash invasion of 
 .S^tolia and were repulsed with great loss. 
 The JEtolians' pressed home their advantage, 
 tad the Achseans applied to Philip for aid. 
 The monarch repaired into Greece, and under- 
 took to settle all difficulties by conciliatory 
 Pleasures proposed in a general conference of 
 the states. But the business resulted in noth- 
 ing, and that conflict ensued known as the 
 •Second Social War. In this contest Philip 
 took the side of the League, and for four 
 years (B. C. 222-218) upheld the cause 
 against the iEtolians and their allies. At the 
 end of this time the Nemsean festival was 
 •celebrated, and while the festivities were on, 
 the news came of Hannibal's great victory 
 over the Romans on the field of Thrasimenus. 
 
 The effect of one violence was to counter- 
 act another. The Greek states were led 
 to consider the tremendous political powers 
 which had been developed in the West, and 
 how they themselves were thereby imminently 
 •exposed to conquest. This reflection led to a 
 -settlement. Even the ^tolians were able to 
 
 see that, unless all Greece should be united, she 
 would in the near future fall an easy prey to 
 one or other of the powers of the West. 
 
 Turning to the East, and resuming the 
 history of the Greek kingdom of Syria we find 
 on the throne as successor to Seleucus his son, 
 Antiochus Soter — a title conferred on account 
 of his victorious defense of the country against 
 the Gauls. He came to the throne in B. C. 
 280, and had a disturbed reign of eighteen 
 years. His first military operation was a cam- 
 paign against Bithynia, which for some time 
 had been in a state of insurrection. The ex- 
 pedition was intrusted by the king to his gen- 
 eral, Patroclus ; but the Bithyuians soon com- 
 pelled him to withdraw in disgrace. Nor was 
 the campaign which was undertaken in B. C. 
 280 against the kingdom of Pergamus more 
 successful. A few years later Antiochus was 
 induced to engage in a broil which proved to 
 be still more unfortunate to himself and king- 
 dom. A certain Magas, who had been ap- 
 pointed by Ptolemy Philadelphus, as governor 
 of Cyrene, raised the standard of revolt and 
 induced Antiochus, who was his father-in-law, 
 to espouse his cause. This injudicious action 
 cost the king of Syria dearly. The powerful 
 fleet of Ptolemy struck right and left at the 
 Syrian dependencies, and while Magas gained 
 nothing but defeat, his father-in-law was, in 
 the course of a four years' war, mulcted of 
 the fine provinces of Lycia, Pamphylia, Caria, 
 and Cilicia. 
 
 Soon afterwards, in B. C. 262, the barba- 
 rous Gauls, who were now firmly established 
 in Asia Minor, and had 
 received vast accessions 
 from their countrymen in 
 Europe, made such havoc 
 by their ravages that An- 
 tiochus resolved on then- 
 extermination. With a 
 large army, he met and 
 assaulted the barbarians 
 before the walls of Ephesus. The conflict was 
 one of the most bloody and desperate of the 
 century ; and such were the valor and deter- 
 mination of the Gauls that the SjTian army 
 was entirely routed and Antiochus killed. 
 The title of Soter, which he had borne for 
 
 ANTIOCHUS !•— Berlin.
 
 MACEDOXIA.— SUCCESSORS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 677 
 
 eighteen years as a successful defeuder of his 
 country against these identical marauders, was 
 suddenly annulled by them, and converted into 
 a theme of ridicule. 
 
 The late king of Syria was succeeded in 
 B. C. 261 by his son, Antiochus Theos. This 
 young prince, on hearing of his father's de- 
 feat at Ephesus, hastened thither with a new 
 army to mend, if possible, the fortunes of the 
 kingdom. But after a desultory war of sev- 
 eral years' duration, he was obliged to retire 
 before -the invincible barbarians, and leave 
 them in peaceable possession of their province. 
 In a struggle, however, with a chieftain who 
 had seized the governorship of Caria, Anti- 
 ochus was crowned with success; and it was 
 for this pitiful victory t}iat the base fools who 
 thronged his court conferred on him the title 
 of Them or the god. 
 
 About the same time the Syrian king be- 
 came involved in a war with Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus, from whom he gained, only to lose 
 them again, the provinces of Coele-Syria and 
 Phoenicia ; but before the contest was ended, 
 the attention of Antiochus was suddenly re- 
 called by the alarming condition of aflairs on 
 the north-eastern frontiers of his own kingdom. 
 In B. C. 254, both Bactria and Parthia, of. 
 fended at the exactions and inhumanity of 
 the royal governors, raised the standard of re- 
 volt and defied the power of the king. Theo- 
 dotus, the Bactrian satrap, was for the time 
 entirely successful. Agathocles, the Parthian 
 governor, was attacked by two patriot broth- 
 ers, Arsaces and Tiridates, and by them the 
 adherents of Antiochus were obliged to take 
 to flight. Startled at these outbreaks, the 
 Syrian monarch was glad to enter into nego- 
 tiations for peace with Ptolemy, between whom 
 and himself terms were soon agreed upon, and 
 the treaty confirmed by the marriage to Anti- 
 ochus of the Egyptian Princess Berenice. By 
 this act Laodice, whom the Syrian had previ- 
 ously married, and by whom he had two chil- 
 dren, was discarded ; but the queen soon sought 
 revenge by poisoning Antiochus, and securing 
 the succession to her son, Seleucus, suruamed 
 Callinicus. It wa-s in this year, B. C. 246, 
 that Ptolemy Euergetes succeeded his father 
 Philadelphus oc the throne of Egypt. 
 
 The first work which the new prince of 
 Alexandria felt constrained to undertake was 
 to visit retributive justice upon those who had 
 murdered his sister Berenice; for that prin- 
 cess had been hunted down by Laodite and 
 put to death within the sacred precinct.? of the 
 Daphnean temple. Seleucus thus stood as the 
 representative of the crime which had been 
 committed against the House of Ptolemy. The 
 latter raised an army and began an invasion 
 of his rival's dominions, and at the same time 
 the Parthian insurrection continued on the 
 eastern frontier of the Empire. The Egyptian 
 soon overran Syria and continued his victori- 
 ous career through Media and Babylonia even 
 to the banks of the Indus. But his conquest 
 was one rather of spoliation than political 
 aggrandizement. He returned to the AVest 
 with plunder amounting in value to forty 
 thou.sand talents of silver. In addition to this 
 vast booty he brought home to his country- 
 men the statues of more than two thousand 
 Egyptian gods which had been carried away 
 by Cambyses to Susiana and Persia ' 
 
 In the mean time the government of Seleu- 
 cus was still further distracted by a rebellion 
 in Syria, headed by his brother Antiochufe 
 Hierax, who induced the Gauls to join hi* 
 standard. AVhile these two were engaged in » 
 struggle for the mastery, Euergetes, who mighi 
 easily have reduced the whole country, with- 
 drew into Egypt, apparently satisfied with the 
 vengeance which he had taken on his enemy. 
 
 This aflbrdcd opportunity and motive to Se- 
 leucus and Hierax to come to an adjustment; 
 but a permanent peace between them was impos- 
 sible, and in B. C. 242, hostilities again broke 
 out with greater violence than ever. A severe 
 battle was fought at Ancyrse, in which Hierax 
 was victorious, but the Gauls, who had won 
 the battle, hearing that Seleucus was dead, 
 turned on their own conunander, by whose 
 destruction they thought to obtain the mastery 
 of Asia for themselves. Barely did Hierax 
 escape from their clutches. Two yeai-s after- 
 wards, with one hundred thousand Gauls, he 
 renewed the contest, marched against Babylon, 
 
 ' It was for this service that he was honored 
 by tlie Egypti.ins with the surname of Ecergetes, 
 the Popr of Good.
 
 678 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 and was utterly routed by the army of Seleu- 
 cus. The defeated insurgent fled to Egypt, 
 put himself under the protection of Ptolemy, 
 and by him was detained as a prisoner for 
 thirteen years. 
 
 Meanwhile the Parthians, having strength- 
 ened themselves by an alliance with the Bactri- 
 ans, held out against the Syrians. With them, 
 after the overthrow of Hierax, Seleucus at 
 once renewed the contest. In B. C. 239 a 
 decisive battle was fought with the rebel bar- 
 barians, in which they gained a great victory 
 over the Syrian army. Seleucus was taken 
 prisoner and sent into the wilds of Upper 
 Asia, where he was held a captive until his 
 death, ten years later. As soon as his cap- 
 tivity was known at Babylon the authorities 
 placed upon the throne his eldest son, Seleu- 
 cus III., who took the title of Ceraunus, or 
 Thunder — a name given in contempt by the 
 soldiers; for he was a despicable weakling 
 both in mind and body. He began his inglo- 
 rious reign of three years by attempting to 
 carry out the plans of his father. A conspir- 
 acy was presently made against him by Nicana, 
 one of kis generals, and a certain Gaul named 
 Apaturius, and he was assassinated in the 
 twentieth year of his age. The throne was 
 immediately conferred on his brother Anti- 
 ochus, surnamed the Great. 
 
 In the beginning of his reign the new mon- 
 arch was greatly aided in his government by 
 his cousin Achseus, one of the most distin- 
 guished soldiers of his times. Not so, how- 
 ever, was the king supported by the minister 
 Hermeias, who proved treacherous, and sowed 
 revolt in the provinces. Molon and Alexan- 
 der, governors of Media and Persia, headed 
 insurrections in their respective satrapies, and 
 the royal generals who were sent against them 
 were defeated. At length, in B. C. 222, An- 
 tiochus took the field in person, and the for- 
 tunes of the war were changed. When the 
 armies were drawn up for battle the soldiers 
 of the insurgent satraps deserted them and 
 went over to the king. Molon and Alexander 
 found refuge in suicide, and Hermeias was 
 condemned to death, not, however, until he 
 had produced a fatal breach between Achseus 
 and the king. 
 
 Euergetes was at length succeeded on the 
 throne of Egypt by Ptolemy Philopater — a 
 prince whose character illy accorded with that 
 of his illustrious predecessors. The kingdom 
 was neglected to the extent of inviting foreign 
 aggression. The ambitious Antiochus saw in 
 the situation an opportunity to recover Phoe- 
 nicia and Coele-Syria, nor was he slow in re- 
 taking these provinces from the Egyptians. 
 The latter, foreseeing that the Syrian king 
 would soon be knocking at their doors, fell 
 back before him, and destroyed all the wells 
 between Palestine and Egypt. Several able 
 generals opposed the progress of Antiochus, 
 and finally confronted him at Eaphia with a 
 powerful army. The two forces met in B. C. 
 218. Besides the immense array of infantry 
 and cavalry on each side, nearly two hundred 
 elephants were marshaled forth to influence 
 the result of the battle. The contest was long 
 and bloody. At the first, victory inclined to 
 the banner of Antiochus; but the tide pres- 
 ently turned, and he was subjected to a disas- 
 trous rout. More than fourteen thousand of 
 his dead were left on the field. So decisive 
 was the result that Phoenicia and Coele-Syria 
 were at once recovered, and Antiochus was 
 glad to conclude a peace on the basis of res- 
 titution. 
 
 While the attention of the king of Syria 
 was occupied with these events, Achjeus, justly 
 offended at the course of his master in treating 
 him as disloyal, secured for himself several 
 provinces in Asia Minor, and prepared to de- 
 fend them. Phrygia and Lydia were included 
 in his dominions. With Prusias, king of 
 Bithyuia, Attains, king of Pergamus, and 
 Mithridates, king of Pontus, he had made 
 successful alliances. Nevertheless he was unar 
 ble to stand before the arms of Antiochus. 
 Attains, who had been compelled rather than 
 persuaded to espouse the cause of Achseus, 
 went over to the Syrian king. The insurgent 
 general was driven into Sardis, and when the 
 city was taken he shut himself up in the cit- 
 adel. Ptolemy attempted through an emissary 
 to secure the escape of Achsseus, but the agent 
 proved treacherous, and the general, being 
 betrayed into the hands of his enemies, waa 
 wrapped in the skin of an ass and crucified.
 
 MACEDONIA. -SUCCESSOIiS OF ALEXANDER. 
 
 679 
 
 Antiochus next vindicated his title of Great 
 by doing what several of his predecessors liad 
 ingloriously failed to accomplish — subdue tiic 
 Parthiaus and Bactrians. In a campaign of 
 B. C. 214 he overran both of the revolted 
 provinces, gained decisive victories, and re- 
 duced to obedience the rebellious inhabitants, 
 
 any important benefits from the victorv sj 
 Khaphia. His conduct precipitated an epoch 
 of civil discord, and it was a good riddance 
 when his vicious indulgences brought his life 
 to a close. He was succeeded by his son, sur- 
 named Epiphanes, who was a mere child at 
 his father's death. This circumstance suggested. 
 
 TU' 
 
 iUI.NT.TIfS FLAMINIfS rUOCI. 
 Drawn by 
 
 who for thirty years had defied the authority 
 of the Syrian kings. Having achieved these 
 brilliant successes, Antiochus continued his 
 campaign to the banks of the Indus, and re- 
 turned to his capital with a great augmenta- 
 tion of wealth and honor. 
 
 So great were the vices of Ptolemy Philo- 
 pater that Egvpt was not permitted to reap 
 
 \IM1.\'., ■•LIBERTY" TO THE GKEliKS. 
 H. Vogel. 
 
 to Philip of Maccdon the feasibility of an 
 Egyptian invasictn. Accordingly, in B. C 202, 
 he set out through Asia Elinor, and captured 
 most of the cities therein belonging to the 
 House of Ptolemy. Several of the ^Egean 
 islands fell into his power, and still further 
 successes were promised to his arms; but the 
 Rhodians, alarmed at these aggressions, assisted
 
 680 
 
 UNIVERSAL HISTORY.— THE ANCIENT WORLD. 
 
 by Attains, king of Pergamus, sent out a fleet 
 against Philip, and the Romans, also interfer- 
 ing, compelled him to return to his own do- 
 minions. 
 
 For a year or two, however, he continued 
 to press the war in Asia Minor, and, among 
 otber successes, gained a decisive victory over 
 the ^toliau general Scopas, in a battle at the 
 foot of Mount Panius. His justification for 
 all these proceedings was that as the heir of 
 Seleucus Nicator he was the rightful ruler of 
 ail the countries of the Lesser Asia. In B. C. 
 197, he besieged the fortresses of Mysia and 
 Caria, and presently afterwards invested 
 Smyrna and Lampsacus. He then overran 
 Thrace, and began to rebuild the ruined city 
 of Lysimachia. All these measures indicated 
 that the Macedonian ruler was about to lay a 
 strong hand on the greater part of the Alex- 
 andrine Empire in the West. But a stronger 
 Hand now reached out of the shadows. The 
 outlines of the fingers of Rome were seen on 
 the wall of destiny. 
 
 In B. C. 196 the Isthmian games were in 
 progress at Corinth. The states were assem- 
 bled to witness the time-honored celebration. 
 Suddenly the Roman proconsul, Titus Quinc- 
 tiu? Flaminius, appeared in the midst and au- 
 Dounced that the great Republic of the West 
 
 assumed thenceforth the protectorate of the 
 commonwealths of Greece. He, as arbiter, 
 would hear the embassadors of the several 
 states at war, and settle without prejudice all 
 the points in controversy ! The announcement 
 was equivalent to saying that the empire of 
 the world had been suddenly transferred from 
 the banks of the Euphrates to the banks of 
 the Tiber, from Babylon to Rome ! 
 
 We have now pursued the course of events 
 from the death of Alexander the Great through 
 the turmoil of revolution and bloodshed down 
 to the time when the fragments of the colossal 
 empire established by the son of Philip began 
 to be absorbed by the Roman Republic. The 
 period occupied by the contentions of the suc- 
 cessors of Alexander B. C. 326-196 is one of 
 the darkest and most difficult passages in his- 
 tory. These times were the Middle Ages of 
 Antiquity. They stood chaotic between the 
 unity of Persia and Macedonia on the one 
 hand, and the greater unity of Rome on the 
 other. Not without a certain sense of re ief 
 may the reader turn from the heterogeneous 
 jumble of events presented by the annals of 
 the Grseco-Syrian, Grseco-Egyptian, and ^Slace- 
 donian kingdoms to the unique and singular 
 grandeur of Rome. To that great power of 
 the West our attention will now be directed.
 
 <3-
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■f University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return tliis material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 REC'D ID: 
 
 Uf 
 
 libc
 
 D 000 018 595 9 
 
 4 
 
 ■-.-/^-^ 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 -c 
 
 7 
 
 V
 
 ^ 
 
 fc