The Great Events by 
 Famous Historians 
 
 is registered in the name of 
 
 G. C. De GARMO
 
 his Certifies that 
 
 "he Members 
 
 Edition 
 
 The Great Events by 
 Famous Historians 
 
 Consists of one thousand registered 
 copies of which this copy is 
 
 All of which is fully guaranteed 
 by the National Alumni, and in 
 evidence thereof it has caused its 
 Seal to be attached hereto, and the 
 Signature of its Secretary.
 
 BINDING 
 Vol. I 
 
 The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original on 
 exhibition in the British Museum. 
 
 It was executed by Eve, for Jacques Auguste de Thou, the 
 celebrated historian and collector, and Keeper of the Royal Library 
 under Henry IV. He had a most magnificent collection, con- 
 sisting of over a thousand manuscripts and about eight thousand 
 printed volumes. 
 
 The unrivalled specimen reproduced in the binding of Volume I 
 of THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS was presented to 
 him by Eve, the Royal Binder, in appreciation of his liberal pat- 
 ronage. 
 
 De Thou's literary treasures were left in perpetuity to his 
 family. Some of the manuscripts were acquired for the Koyal 
 Library. Part of the collection, including the present specimen, 
 was purchased by Cardinal de Pvohan, who paid 40,000 livres 
 for it. He bequeathed it to his nephew. Prince De Soubise, who, 
 in consequence of heavy losses, had it sold at a public auction 
 which was attended by lovers of art and letters from every 
 country of Europe. Many of De Thou's books are now owned 
 by wealthy American bibliophiles. 
 
 40657O


 
 THE GREAT 
 
 nx with Great and Second 
 Pyramids OT Guieh 
 
 From an original photogripr..

 
 THE GREAT EVENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 FAMOUS HISTORIANS 
 
 A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S 
 HISTORY, EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRE- 
 SENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER- WORDS 
 OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS 
 
 NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL 
 
 ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATH- 
 ERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA 
 AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS 
 TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. AR- 
 RANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOG- 
 RAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES. AND COURSES OF READING 
 
 SUPERVISING EDITOR 
 
 ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D. 
 
 LITERARY EDITORS 
 
 CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. 
 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. 
 
 DIRECTING EDITOR 
 
 WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M. 
 
 With a staff of specialists 
 VOLUME I 
 
 l)e Rational Alumni
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 
 BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919 
 
 BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI
 
 CONTENTS 
 VOLUME I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 General Introduction, ix 
 
 An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, . . . xxi 
 
 CHARLES F. HORNE 
 
 Dawn of Civilization (B.C. $86?}, . I 
 
 G. C. C. MASPERO 
 
 Compilation of the Earliest Code (B.C. 2250), . .14 
 
 HAMMURABI 
 
 Theseus Founds Athens (B.C. 1235), * . 45 
 
 PLUTARCH 
 
 The Formation of the Castes in India (B.C. I2OO) y . . 52 
 
 GUSTAVE LE BON 
 W. W. HUNTER 
 
 Fall of Troy (B.C. 1184), ... ... 7 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Accession of Solomon 
 
 Building of the Temple at Jerusalem (B.C. IOIf), 92 
 
 HENRY HART MILMAN 
 
 Rise and Fall of Assyria 
 
 Destruction of Nineveh (B.C. j8q), 105 
 
 F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER 
 
 The Foundation of Rome (B.C. J 53), . . .116 
 
 BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR 
 
 Prince Jimmu Founds Japans Capital (B.C. 660), . .140 
 
 SIR EDWARD REED 
 
 THE "NEHONGI"
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Foundation of Buddhism (B.C. 623), . . 160 
 
 THOMAS W. RHYS-DAVIDS 
 
 Pythian Games at Delphi (B.C. $8 $), . . 181 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Soton's Early Greek Legislation (B.C. 594), . . . 203 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Conquests of Cyrus the Great (B.C. 550), . . .250 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Rise of Confucius, the Chinese Sage (B.C. 550), . . 270 
 
 R. K. DOUGLAS 
 
 Rome Established as a Republic 
 
 Institution of Tribunes (B.C. 510-494), . . 300 
 
 HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL 
 
 The Battle of Marathon (B.C. 490), . . 3 22 
 
 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY 
 
 Invasion of Greece by Persians under Xerxes 
 
 Defence of Thermopylae (B.C. 480}, 354 
 
 HERODOTUS 
 
 Universal Chronology (B.C. 5867-451), .... 373 
 
 JOHN RUDD
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sphinx, with Great and Second Pyramids of Gizeh 
 
 (page 12), ... . Frontispiece 
 
 From an original photograph. 
 
 The Rosetta Stone, and Description, .... I 
 Facsimile of original in the British Museum. 
 
 The Sabine Women now mothers suing for peace be- 
 tween the combatants (their Roman husbands and 
 their Sabine relations), . . . . . .125 
 
 Painting by Jacques L. David. 
 
 Leonidas and his three hundred immortal Spartans pre- 
 paring for the defence of Thermopylce against the 
 Persian hosts, .... . 356 
 
 Painting by Jacques L. David.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 FAMOUS HISTORIANS 
 
 General Introduction 
 
 HE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS 
 is the answer to a problem which has long 
 been agitating the learned world. How 
 shall real history, the ablest and profound- 
 est work of the greatest historians, be res- 
 cued from its present oblivion on the dusty 
 shelves of scholars, and made welcome to the homes of the 
 people ? 
 
 THE NATIONAL ALUMNI, an association of college men, 
 having given this question long and earnest discussion among 
 themselves, sought finally the views of a carefully elaborated 
 list of authorities throughout America and Europe. They 
 consulted the foremost living historians and professors of 
 history, successful writers in other fields, statesmen, university 
 and college presidents, and prominent business men. From 
 this widely gathered consensus of opinions, after much com- 
 parison and sifting of ideas, was evolved the following practical, 
 and it would seem incontrovertible, series of plain facts. And 
 these all pointed toward " THE GREAT EVENTS." 
 
 In the first place, the entire American public, from top to 
 bottom of the social ladder, are at this moment anxious to read 
 history. Its predominant importance among the varied forms 
 of literature is fully recognized. To understand the past is to 
 understand the future. The successful men in every line of 
 life are those who look ahead, whose keen foresight enables
 
 x GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 them to probe into the future, not by magic, but by patiently 
 acquired knowledge. To see clearly what the world has done, 
 and why, is to see at least vaguely what the world will do, and 
 when. 
 
 Moreover, no man can understand himself unless he under- 
 stands others ; and he cannot do that without some idea of the 
 past, which has produced both him and them. To know his 
 neighbors, he must know something of the country from which 
 they came, the conditions under which they formerly lived. He 
 cannot do his own simple duty by his own country if he does 
 not know through what tribulations that country has passed. 
 He cannot be a good citizen, he cannot even vote honestly, 
 much less intelligently, unless he has read history. Fortu- 
 nately the point needs little urging. It is almost an imperti- 
 nence to refer to it. We are all anxious, more than anxious to 
 learn if only the path of study be made easy. 
 
 Can this be accomplished ? Can the vanishing pictures of the 
 past be made as simply obvious as mathematics, as fascinating as 
 a breezy novel of adventure ? Genius has already answered, yes. 
 Hand to a mere boy Macaulay's sketch of Warren Hastings in 
 India, and the lad will see as easily as if laid out upon a map 
 the host of interwoven and elaborate problems that perplexed 
 the great administrator. Offer to the youngest lass the tale 
 told by Guizot of King Robert of France and his struggle to 
 retain his beloved wife Bertha. Its vivid reality will draw from 
 the girl's heart far deeper and truer tears than the most pa- 
 thetic romance. 
 
 We begin to realize that in very truth History has been one 
 vast stupendous drama, world-embracing in its splendor, ma- 
 jestic, awful, irresistible in the insistence of its pointing ringer 
 of fate. It has indeed its comic interludes, a Prussian king 
 befuddling ambassadors in his "Tobacco Parliament"; its 
 pauses of intense and cumulative suspense, Queen Louise 
 pleading to Napoleon for her country's life ; but it has also its 
 magnificent pageants, its gorgeous culminating spectacles of 
 wonder. Kings and emperors are but the supernumeraries 
 upon its boards ; its hero is the common man, its plot his tri- 
 umph over ignorance, his struggle upward out of the slime of 
 earth.
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION x i 
 
 Yet the great historians are not being widely read. The 
 ablest and most convincing stories of his own development 
 seem closed against the ordinary man. Why ? In the first 
 place, the works of the masters are too voluminous. Grote's 
 unrivalled history of Greece fills ten large and forbidding vol- 
 umes. Guizot takes thirty-one to tell a portion of the story of 
 France. Freeman won credit in the professorial world by 
 devoting five to the detailing of a single episode, the Norman 
 Conquest. Surely no busy man can gather a general historic 
 knowledge, if he must read such works as these ! We are told 
 that the great library of Paris contains over four hundred thou- 
 sand volumes and pamphlets on French history alone. The 
 output of historic works in all languages approaches ten thou- 
 sand volumes every year. No scholar, even, can peruse more 
 than the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. 
 Herodotus is forgotten, Livy remains to most of us but a rec- 
 ollection of our school-days, and Thucydides has become an ex- 
 ercise in Greek. 
 
 There is yet another difficulty. Even the honest man who 
 tries, who takes down his Grote or Freeman, heroically resolved 
 to struggle through it at all speed, fails often in his purpose. 
 He discovers that the greatest masters nod. Sometimes in 
 their slow advance they come upon a point that rouses their 
 enthusiasm ; they become vigorous, passionate, sarcastic, fasci- 
 nating, they are masters indeed. But the fire soon dies, the in- 
 spiration flags, " no man can be always on the heights," and 
 the unhappy reader drowses in the company of his guide. 
 
 This leads us then to one clear point. From these justly 
 famous works a selection should be made. Their length should 
 be avoided, their prosy passages eliminated ; the one picture, or 
 perhaps the many pictures, which each master has painted bet- 
 ter than any rival before or since, that and that alone should 
 be preserved. 
 
 Read in this way, history may be sought with genuine pleas- 
 ure. It is only pedantry has made it dreary, only blindness has 
 left it dull. The story of man is the most wonderful ever con- 
 ceived. It can be made the most fascinating ever written. 
 
 With this idea firmly established in mind, we seek another 
 line of thought. The world grows smaller every day. Russia
 
 xii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 fights huge battles five thousand miles from her capital. Eng- 
 land governs India. Spain and the United States contend for 
 empire in the antipodes. Our rapidly improving means of com- 
 munication, electric trains, and, it may be, flying machines, ca- 
 bles, and wireless telegraphy, link lands so close together that 
 no man lives to-day the subject of an isolated state. Rather, 
 indeed, do all the kingdoms seem to shrink, to become but dis- 
 tricts in one world-including commonwealth. 
 
 To tell the story of one nation by itself is thus no longer 
 possible. Great movements of the human race do not stop for 
 imaginary boundary lines thrown across a map. It was not 
 the German students, nor the Parisian mob, nor the Italian 
 peasants who rebelled in 1848; it was the "people of Europe" 
 who arose against their oppressors. To read the history of 
 one's own country only is to get distorted views, to exaggerate 
 our own importance, to remain often in densest ignorance of 
 the real meaning of what we read. The ideas American school- 
 boys get of the Revolution are in many cases simply absurd, 
 until they have been modified by wider reading. 
 
 From this it becomes very evident that a good history now 
 must be, not a local, but a world history. The idea of such a 
 work is not new. Diodorus penned one two hundred years 
 before Christ. But even then the tale took forty books ; and 
 we have been making history rather rapidly since Diodorus' 
 time. Of the many who have more recently attempted his 
 task, few have improved upon his methods ; and the best of 
 these works only shows upon a larger scale the same dreari- 
 ness that we have found in other masters. 
 
 Let us then be frank and admit that no one man can make 
 a thoroughly good world history. No one man could be pos- 
 sessed of the almost infinite learning required; none could 
 have the infinite enthusiasm to delight equally in each separate 
 event, to dwell on all impartially and yet ecstatically. So once 
 more we are forced back upon the same conclusion. We will 
 take what we already have. We will appeal to each master for 
 the event in which he did delight, the one in which we find 
 him at his best. 
 
 This also has been attempted before, but perhaps in a man- 
 ner too lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular. The
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 aim has been to get in everything. Everything great or small 
 has been narrated, and so the real points of value have been 
 lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts, about which no ordinary 
 reader cares or needs to care. After all, what we want to 
 know and remember are the Great Events, the ones which 
 nave really changed and influenced humanity. How many of 
 us do really know about them ? or even know what they are ? 
 or one-twentieth part of them ? And until we know, is it not 
 a waste of time to pore over the lesser happenings between ? 
 
 Yet the connection between these events must somehow 
 be shown. They must not stand as separate, unrelated frag- 
 ments. If the story of the world is indeed one, it must be 
 shown as one, not even broken by arbitrary division into coun- 
 tries, those temporary political constructions, often separating 
 a single race, lines of imaginary demarcation, varying with the 
 centuries, invisible in earth's yesterday, sure to change if not 
 to perish in her to-morrow. Moreover, such a system of di- 
 vision necessitates endless repetition. Each really important 
 occurrence influences many countries, and so is told of again 
 and again with monotonous iteration and extravagant waste of 
 space. 
 
 It may, however, be fairly urged that the story should vary 
 according to the country for which it is designed. To our in- 
 dividual lives the events happening nearest prove most impor- 
 tant. Great though others be, their influence diminishes with 
 their increasing distance in space and time. For the people of 
 North America the story of the world should have the part 
 taken by America written large across the pages. 
 
 From all these lines of reasoning arose the present work, 
 which the National Alumni believe has solved the problem. It 
 tells the story of the world, tells it in the most famous words of 
 the most famous writers, makes of it a single, continued story, 
 giving the results of the most recent research. Yet all dry 
 detail has been deliberately eliminated ; the tale runs rapidly 
 and brightly. Whatever else may happen, the reader shall not 
 yawn. Only important points are dwelt on, and their relative 
 value is made clear. 
 
 Each volume of THE GREAT EVENTS opens with a brief 
 survey of the period with which it deals. The broad world
 
 xiv GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 uiovements of the time are pointed out, their importance is em- 
 phasized, their mutual relationship made clear. If the reader 
 finds his interest specially roused in one of these events, and he 
 would learn more of it, he is aided by a directing note, which, 
 in each case, tells him where in the body of the volume the sub- 
 ject is further treated. Turning thither he may plunge at once 
 into the fuller account which he desires, sure that it will be both 
 vivid and authoritative ; in short, the best-known treatment of 
 the subject. 
 
 Meanwhile the general survey, being thus relieved from the 
 necessity of constant explanation, expansion, and digression, 
 is enabled to flow straight onward with its story, rapidly, sim- 
 ply, entertainingly. Indeed, these opening sketches, written es- 
 pecially for this series, and in a popular style, may be read on 
 from volume to volume, forming a book in themselves, present- 
 ing a bird's-eye view of the whole course of earth, an ideal 
 world history which leaves the details to be filled in by the 
 reader at his pleasure. It is thus, we believe, and thus only, 
 that world history can be made plain and popular. The great 
 lessons of history can thus be clearly grasped. And by their 
 light all life takes on a deeper meaning. 
 
 The body of each volume, then, contains the Great Events 
 of the period, ranged in chronological order. Of each event 
 there are given one, perhaps two, or even three complete ac- 
 counts, not chosen hap-hazard, but selected after conference 
 with many scholars, accounts the most accurate and most cele- 
 brated in existence, gathered from all languages and all times. 
 Where the event itself is under dispute, the editors do not pre- 
 sume to judge for the reader ; they present the authorities upon 
 both sides. The Reformation is thus portrayed from the Cath- 
 olic as well as the Protestant standpoint. The American Rev- 
 olution is shown in part as England saw it ; and in the Ameri- 
 can Civil War, and the causes which produced it, the North 
 and the South speak for themselves in the words of their best 
 historians. 
 
 To each of these accounts is prefixed a brief introduction, 
 prepared for this work by a specialist in the field of history of 
 which it treats. This introduction serves a double purpose. 
 In the first place, it explains whatever is necessary for the un-
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 derstanding and appreciation of the story that follows. Un^ 
 fortunately, many a striking bit of historic writing has become 
 antiquated in the present day. Scholars have discovered that 
 it blunders here and there, perhaps is prejudiced, perhaps ex- 
 travagant. Newer writers, therefore, base a new book upon 
 the old one, not changing much, but paraphrasing it into deadly 
 dulness by their efforts after accuracy. Thanks to our intro- 
 duction we can revive the more spirited account, and, while 
 pointing out its value to the reader, can warn him of its errors. 
 Thus he secures in briefest form the results of the most recent 
 research. 
 
 Another purpose of the introduction is to link each event 
 with the preceding ones in whatever countries it affects. Thus 
 if one chooses he may read by countries after all, and get a 
 completed story of a single nation. That is, he may peruse the 
 account of the battle of Hastings and then turn onward to the 
 making of the Domesday Book, where he will find a few brief 
 lines to cover the intervening space in England's history. From 
 the struggles of Stephen and Matilda he is led to the quarrel 
 of her son, King Henry, with Thomas Becket, and so onward 
 step by step. 
 
 Starting with this ground plan of the design in mind, the 
 reader will see that its compilation was a work of enormous 
 labor. This has been undertaken seriously, patiently, and with 
 earnest purpose. The first problem to be confronted was, 
 What were the Great Events that should be told ? Almost 
 every writer and teacher of history, every well-known author- 
 ity, was appealed to ; many lists of events were compiled, re- 
 vised, collated, and compared ; and so at last our final list was 
 evolved, fitted to bear the brunt of every criticism. 
 
 Then came the heavier problem of what authorities to quote 
 for each event. And here also the editors owe much to the 
 capable aid of many generous, unremunerated advisers. Thus, 
 for instance, they sought and obtained from the Hon. Joseph 
 Chamberlain his advice as to the authorities to be used for the 
 Jameson raid and the Boer war. The account presented may 
 therefore be fairly regarded as England's own authoritative 
 presentment of those events. Several little known and wholly 
 unused Russian sources were pointed out by Professor Ram-
 
 xvi GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 baud, the French Academician. But this is mentioned only to 
 illustrate the impartiality with which the editors have endeav- 
 ored to cover all fields. If, under the plea of expressing gratitude 
 to all those who have lent us courteous assistance, we were to 
 spread across these pages the long roll of their distinguished 
 names, it would sound too much like boasting of their conde- 
 scension. 
 
 The work of selecting the accounts has been one of time 
 and careful thought. Many thousands of books have been read 
 and read again. The cardinal points of consideration in the 
 choice have been: (i) Interest, that is, vividness of narration; 
 (2) simplicity, for we aim to reach the people, to make a book 
 fit even for a child ; (3) the fame of the author, for everyone 
 is pleased to be thus easily introduced to some long-heard-of 
 celebrity, distantly revered, but dreaded ; and (4) accuracy, a 
 point set last because its defects could be so easily remedied 
 by the specialist's introduction to each event. 
 
 These considerations have led occasionally to the selection 
 of very ancient documents, the original " sources " of history 
 themselves, as, for instance, Columbus' own story of his voy- 
 age, rather than any later account built up on this; Pliny's 
 picture of the destruction of Pompeii, for Pliny was there and 
 saw the heavens rain down fire, and told of it as no man has 
 done since. So, too, we give a literal translation of the earliest 
 known code of laws, antedating those of Moses by more than 
 a thousand years, rather than some modern commentary on 
 them. At other times the same principles have led to the 
 other extreme, and on modern events, where there seemed no 
 wholly satisfactory or standard accounts, we have had them writ- 
 ten for us by the specialists best acquainted with the field. 
 
 As the work thus grew in hand, it became manifest that it 
 would be, in truth, far more than a mere story of events. 
 With each event was connected the man who embodied it. 
 Often his life was handled quite as fully as the event, and so 
 we had biography. Lands had to be described geography. 
 Peoples and customs sociology. Laws and the arguments 
 concerning them political economy. In short, our history 
 proved a universal cyclopaedia as well. 
 
 To give it its full value, therefore, an index became obvi-
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 ously necessary and no ordinary index. Its aim must be to 
 anticipate every possible question with which a reader might 
 approach the past, and direct him to the answer. Even, it 
 might be, he would want details more elaborate than we give. 
 If so, we must direct him where to find them. 
 
 Professional index-makers were therefore summoned to our 
 help, a complete and readable chronology was appended to 
 each volume, and the final volume of the series was turned 
 over to the indexers entirely. We believe their work will prove 
 not the least valuable feature of the whole. Briefly, the 
 Index Volume contains: 
 
 1. A complete list of the Great Events of the world's 
 history. Opposite each event are given the date, the name of 
 the author and standard work from which our account is se- 
 lected, and a number of references to other works and to a 
 short discussion of these in our Bibliography. Thus the reader 
 may pursue an extended course of study on each particular 
 event. 
 
 2. A bibliography of the best general histories of ancient, 
 mediaeval, and modern times, and of important political, relig- 
 ious, and educational movements; also a bibliography of the 
 best historical works dealing with each nation, and arranged 
 under the following subdivisions: (a) The general history of 
 the nation; (7>) special periods in its career; (c) the descrip- 
 tions of the people, their civilization and institutions. On each 
 work thus mentioned there is a critical comment with sugges- 
 tions to readers. This bibliography is designed chiefly for 
 those who desire to pursue more extended courses of reading, 
 and it offers them the experience and guidance of those who 
 have preceded them on their special field. 
 
 3. A general index covering every reference in the series 
 to dates, events, persons, and places of historic importance. 
 These are made easily accessible by a careful and elaborate 
 system of cross-references. 
 
 4. A biographical dictionary incorporated in the general 
 index. As each noted person is listed in the general index, 
 the dates and main facts of his life are briefly stated. This 
 outline is followed by references to all the noted events in the 
 hero's career as described throughout. Thus a complete
 
 xviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 biography of any famous personage may be read by merely 
 following the references given under his name in the general 
 index. 
 
 5. A list of the famous writings of great men on important 
 events. This also is incorporated in the general index. Our 
 volumes contain so many celebrated documents that some of 
 them might easily be lost to the casual reader. Hence after 
 each great leader's name we insert not only the references to 
 his deeds, but also a list of such of his own writings describing 
 great events as we have included in our volumes. 
 
 6. A separate and complete chronology of each nation of 
 ancient, mediaeval, and modern times, so that the history of 
 any one nation may be read in its logical order and in the 
 language of its best historians. 
 
 Such, as the National Alumni regard it, are the general 
 character, wide scope, and earnest purpose of THE GREAT 
 EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS. Let us end by saying, in 
 the friendly fashion of the old days when bookmakers and their 
 readers were more ultimate than now: "Kind reader, if this 
 our performance doth in aught fall short of promise, blame not 
 our good intent, but our unperfect wit." 
 
 THE NATIONAL ALUMNI.
 
 AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE 
 
 TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS OF THE 
 HUMAN RACE, ITS ADVANCE IN KNOWLEDGE 
 AND CIVILIZATION, AND THE BROAD WORLD- 
 MOVEMENTS WHICH HAVE SHAPED ITS DESTINY 
 
 CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. 
 
 CONTINUED THROUGH THE SUCCESSIVE VOLUMES 
 AND COVERING THE SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF 
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS
 
 AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE 
 
 TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CON- 
 NECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF 
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS 
 
 (FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSIANS) 
 CHARLES F. HORNE 
 
 LJISTORY, if we define it as the mere transcription of the 
 written records of former generations, can go no farther 
 back than the time such records were first made, no farther than 
 the art of writing. But now that we have come to recognize 
 the great earth itself as a story-book, as a keeper of records 
 buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, 
 yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian 
 may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day. 
 
 For unmeasured and immeasurable centuries man lived on 
 earth a creature so little removed from " the beasts that die," 
 so little superior to them, that he has left no clearer record 
 tnan they of his presence here. From the dry bones of an ex- 
 tinct mammoth or a plesiosaur, Cuvier reconstructed the en- 
 tire animal and described its habits and its home. So, too, 
 looking on an ancient, strange, scarce human skull, dug from 
 the deeper strata beneath our feet, anatomists tell us that the 
 owner was a man indeed, but one little better than an ape. A 
 few aeons later this creature leaves among his bones chipped 
 flints that narrow to a point ; and the archaeologist, taking up 
 the tale, explains that man has become tool-using, he has be- 
 come intelligent beyond all the other animals of earth. Phys- 
 ically he is but a mite amid the beast monsters that surround 
 him, but by value of his brain he conquers them. He has be- 
 gun his career of mastery. 
 
 a
 
 xxii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 If we delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weap- 
 ons have become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle 
 a ductile metal, to draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. 
 Later still he has discovered how to melt the harder and more 
 useful iron. We say roughly, therefore, that man passed 
 through a stone age, a bronze age, and then an iron age. 
 
 Somewhere, perhaps in the earliest of these, he began to 
 build rude houses. In the next, he drew pictures. During 
 the latest, his pictures grew into an alphabet of signs, his 
 structures developed into vast and enduring piles of brick or 
 stone. Buildings and inscriptions became his relics, more like 
 to our own, more fully understandable, giving us a sense of 
 closer kinship with his race. 
 
 SOURCES OF EARLY KNOWLEDGE 
 
 There are three different lines along which we have suc- 
 ceeded in securing some knowledge of these our distant ances- 
 tors, three telephones from the past, over which they send to 
 us confused and feeble murmurings, whose fascination makes 
 only more maddening the vagueness of their speech. 
 
 First, we have the picture-writings, whether of Central 
 America, of Egypt, of Babylonia, or of other lands. These when 
 translatable bring us nearest of all to the heart of the great 
 past. It is the mind, the thought, the spoken word, of man 
 that is most intimately he ; not his face, nor his figure, nor his 
 clothes. Unfortunately, the translation of these writings is no 
 easy task. Those of Central America are still an unsolved rid- 
 dle. Those of Babylon have been slowly pieced together like 
 a puzzle, a puzzle to which the learned world has given its 
 most able thought. Yet they are not fully understood. In 
 Egypt we have had the luck to stumble on a clew, the Rosetta 
 Stone, which makes the ancient writing fairly clear. 1 
 
 Where this mode of communication fails, we turn to another 
 which carries us even farther into the past. The records which 
 
 1 See page i for an engraving and account of this famous stone. It 
 was found over a century ago and its value was instantly recognized, but 
 many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. It contains an in- 
 scription repeated in three forms of writing : the early Egyptian of the 
 hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian (the demotic), and Greek.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxiii 
 
 have been less intentionally preserved, not only the buildings 
 themselves, but their decorations, the personal ornaments of 
 men, idols, coins, every imaginable fragment, chance escaped 
 from the maw of time, has its own story for our reading. In 
 Egypt we have found deep-hidden, secret tombs, and, intruding 
 on their many centuries of silence, have reaped rich harvests 
 of knowledge from the garnered wealth. In Babylonia the 
 rank vegetation had covered whole cities underneath green hil- 
 locks, and preserved them till our modern curiosity delved them 
 out. To-day, he who wills, may walk amid the halls of Sennach- 
 erib, may tread the streets whence Abraham fled, ay, he may 
 gaze upon the handiwork of men who lived perhaps as far be- 
 fore Abraham as we ourselves do after him. 
 
 Nor are our means of penetrating the past even thus ex- 
 hausted. A third chain yet more subtle and more marvellous 
 has been found to link us to an ancestry immeasurably remote. 
 This unbroken chain consists of the words from our own 
 mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke ; and they did but fol- 
 low the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have 
 altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten ; 
 but some basal sounds of names, some root-thoughts of the 
 heart, have proved as immutable as the superficial elegancies 
 are changeful. " Father " and " mother " mean what they have 
 meant for uncounted ages. 
 
 Comparative philology, the science which compares one lan- 
 guage with another to note the points of similarity between 
 them, has discovered that many of these root-sounds are alike 
 in almost all the varied tongues of Europe. The resemblance 
 is too common to be the result of coincidence, too deep-seated 
 to be accounted for by mere communication between the na- 
 tions. We have gotten far beyond the possibility of such ex- 
 planations ; and science says now with positive confidence that 
 there must have been a time when all these nations were but 
 one, that their languages are all but variations of the tongue 
 their distant ancestors once held in common. 
 
 Study has progressed beyond this point, can tell us far 
 more intricate and fainter facts. It argues that one by one the 
 various tribes left their common home and became completely 
 separated ; and that each root-sound still used by all the na-
 
 xxiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 tions represents an idea, an object, they already possessed be- 
 fore their dispersal. Thus we can vaguely reconstruct that an- 
 cient, aboriginal civilization. We can even guess which tribes 
 first broke away, and where again these wanderers subdivided, 
 and at what stage of progress. Surely a fascinating science 
 this ! And in its infancy ! If its later development shall justify 
 present promise, it has still strange tales to tell us in the future. 
 
 THE RACES OF MAN 
 
 Turn now from this tracing of our means of knowledge, to 
 speak of the facts they tell us. When our humankind first be- 
 come clearly visible they are already divided into races, which 
 for convenience we speak of as white, yellow, and black. Of 
 these the whites had apparently advanced farthest on the road 
 to civilization ; and the white race itself had become divided 
 into at least three varieties, so clearly marked as to have per- 
 sisted through all the modern centuries of communication and 
 intermarriage. Science is not even able to say positively that 
 these varieties or families had a common origin. She inclines 
 to think so; but when all these later ages have failed to oblit- 
 erate the marks of difference, what far longer period of separa- 
 tion must have been required to establish them ! 
 
 These three clearly outlined families of the whites are the 
 Hamites, of whom the Egyptians are the best-known type; 
 the Semites, as represented by ancient Babylonians and modern 
 Jews and Arabs; and the great Aryan or Indo-European fam- 
 ily, once called the Japhites, and including Hindus, Persians, 
 Greeks, Latins, the modern Celtic and Germanic races, and even 
 the Slavs or Russians. 
 
 The Egyptians, when we first see them, are already well 
 advanced toward civilization. 1 To say that they were the first 
 people to emerge from barbarism is going much further than 
 we dare. Their records are the most ancient that have come 
 clearly down to us ; but there may easily have been other social 
 organisms, other races, to whom the chances of time and nature 
 have been less gentle. Cataclysms may have engulfed more than 
 one Atlantis ; and few climates are so fitted for the preserva- 
 tion of man's buildings as is the rainless valley of the Nile. 
 1 See the Dawn of Civilization, page i.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxv 
 
 Moreover, the Egyptians may not have been the earliest in- 
 habitants even of their own rich valley. We find hints that they 
 were wanderers, invaders, coming from the East, and that 
 with the land they appropriated also the ideas, the inventions, 
 of an earlier negroid race. But whatever they took they added 
 to, they improved on. The idea of futurity, of man's existence 
 beyond the grave, became prominent among them ; and in the 
 absence of clearer knowledge we may well take this idea as the 
 groundwork, the starting-point, of all man's later and more strik- 
 ing progress. 
 
 Since the Egyptians believed in a future life they strove to 
 preserve the body for it, 'and built ever stronger and more 
 gigantic tombs. They strove to fit the mind for it, and culti- 
 vated virtues, not wholly animal such as physical strength, nor 
 wholly commercial such as cunning. They even carved around 
 the sepulchre of the departed a record of his doings, lest they 
 and perhaps he too in that next life forget. There were 
 elements of intellectual growth in all this, conditions to stimu- 
 late the mind beyond the body. 
 
 And the Egyptians did develop. If one reads the tales, the 
 romances, that have survived from their remoter periods, he 
 finds few emotions higher than childish curiosity or mere ani- 
 mal rage and fear. Amid their latest stories, on the contrary, 
 we encounter touches of sentiment, of pity and self-sacrifice, 
 such as would even now be not unworthy of praise. But, alas ! 
 the improvement seems most marked where it was most distant. 
 Perhaps the material prosperity of the land was too great, the 
 conditions of life too easy ; there was no stimulus to effort, to 
 endeavor. By about the year 2200 B.C. we find Egypt fallen into 
 the grip of a cold and lifeless formalism. Everything was fixed 
 by law ; even pictures must be drawn in a certain way, thoughts 
 must be expressed by stated and un variable symbols. Advance 
 became wellnigh impossible. Everything lay in the hands of 
 a priestly caste the completeness of whose dominion has per- 
 haps never been matched in history. The leaders lived lives 
 of luxurious pleasure enlightened by scientific study; but the 
 people scarce existed except as automatons. The race was 
 dead ; its true life, the vigor of its masses, was exhausted, and 
 the land soon fell an easy prey to every spirited invader.
 
 xxvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 Meanwhile a rougher, stronger civilization was growing in 
 the river valleys eastward from the Nile. The Semitic tribes, 
 who seem to have had their early seat and centre of dispersion 
 somewhere in this region, were coalescing into nations, Baby- 
 lonians along the lower Tigris and Euphrates, Assyrians later 
 along the upper rivers, Hebrews under David and Solomon 1 by 
 the Jordan, Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast. 
 
 The early Babylonian civilization may antedate even the 
 Egyptian ; but its monuments were less permanent, its rulers 
 less anxious for the future. The "appeal to posterity," the 
 desire for a posthumous fame, seems with them to have been 
 slower of conception. True, the first Babylonian monarchs of 
 whom we have any record, in an era perhaps over five thou- 
 sand years before Christianity, stamped the royal signet on 
 every brick of their walls and temples. But common-sense sug- 
 gests that this was less to preserve their fame than to preserve 
 their bricks. Theft is no modern innovation. 
 
 They were a mathematical race, these Babylonians. In fact, 
 Semite and mathematician are names that have been closely 
 allied through all the course of history, and one cannot help 
 but wish our Aryan race had somewhere lived through an ex- 
 perience which would produce in them the exactitude in bal- 
 ance and measurement of facts that has distinguished the 
 Arabs and the Jews. The Babylonians founded astronomy and 
 chronology ; they recorded the movements of the stars, and 
 divided their year according to the sun and moon. They built 
 a vast and intricate network of canals to fertilize their land ; 
 and they arranged the earliest system of legal government, the 
 earliest code of laws, that has come down to us." 
 
 The sciences, then, arise more truly here than with the 
 Egyptians. Man here began to take notice, to record and to 
 classify the facts of nature. We may count this the second 
 sible step in his great progress. Never again shall we find 
 him in a childish attitude of idle wonder Always is his brain 
 alert, striving to understand, self-conscious of its own power 
 over nature. 
 
 It may have been wealth and luxury that enfeebled the Bab- 
 1 See Accession of Solomon, page 92. 
 'See Compilation of the Earliest Code, page 14.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxvii 
 
 ylonians as it did the Egyptians. At any rate, their em- 
 pire was overturned by a border colony of their own, the As- 
 syrians, a rough and hardy folk who had maintained them- 
 selves for centuries battling against tribes from the surrounding 
 mountains. It was like a return to barbarism when about B.C. 
 880 the Assyrians swept over the various Semite lands. Loud 
 were the laments of the Hebrews ; terrible the tales of cruelty ; 
 deep the scorn with which the Babylonians submitted to the 
 rude conquerors.' We approach here a clearer historic period ; 
 we can trace with plainness the devastating track of war ; ' we 
 can read the boastful triumph of the Assyrian chiefs, can 
 watch them step by step as they adopt the culture and the 
 vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and 
 more enfeebled, until they too are overthrown by a new and 
 hardier race, the Persians, an Aryan folk. 
 
 Before turning to this last and most prominent family of 
 humankind, let us look for a moment at the other, darker races, 
 seen vaguely as they come in contact with the whites. The 
 negroes, set sharply by themselves in Africa, never seem to 
 have created any progressive civilization of their own, never 
 seem to have advanced further than we find the wild tribes in 
 the interior of the country to-day. But the yellow or Turanian 
 races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, 
 did not linger so helplessly behind. The Chinese, at least, es- 
 tablished a social world of their own, widely different from that 
 of the whites, in some respects perhaps superior to it. But 
 the fatal weakness of the yellow civilization was that it was 
 not ennobling like the Egyptian, not scientific like the Baby- 
 lonian, not adventurous and progressive as we shall find the 
 Aryan. 
 
 This, of course, is speaking in general terms. Something 
 somewhat ennobling there may be in the contemplations of 
 Confucius ; a but no man can favorably compare the Chinese 
 character to-day with the European, whether we regard either 
 intensity of feeling, or variety, range, subtlety, and beauty of 
 emotion. So, also, the Chinese made scientific discoveries 
 but knew not how to apply them or improve them. So also 
 
 1 See Rise and Fall of Assyria, page 105. 
 * See Rise of Confucius, page 270.
 
 xxviii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 they made conquests-and abandoned them; toiled and sank 
 
 back into inertia. 
 
 The Japanese present a separate problem, as yet little under- 
 stood in its earlier stages. 1 As to the Tartars, wild and hardy 
 horsemen roaming over Northern Asia, they kept for ages their 
 independent animal strength and fierceness. They appear and 
 disappear like flashes. They seem to seek no civilization of 
 their own; they threaten again and again to destroy that of all 
 the other races of the globe. Fitly, indeed, was their leader 
 Attila once termed " the Scourge of God." 
 
 THE ARYANS 
 
 Of our own progressive Aryan race, we have no monuments 
 nor inscriptions so old as those of the Hamites and the Semites. 
 What comparative philology tells is this : An early, if not the 
 original, home of the Aryans was in Asia, to the eastward of 
 the Semites, probably in the mountain district back of modern 
 Persia. That is, they were not, like the other whites, a people 
 of the marsh lands and river valleys. They lived in a higher, 
 hardier, and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it was here 
 that their minds took a freer bent, their spirits caught a bolder 
 tone. Wherever they moved they came as conquerors among 
 other races. 
 
 In their primeval home and probably before the year B.C. 
 3000, they had already acquired a fair degree of civilization. 
 They built houses, ploughed the land, and ground grain into 
 flour for their baking. The family relations were established 
 among them ; they had some social organization and simple form 
 of government ; they had learned to worship a god, and to see 
 in him a counterpart of their tribal ruler. 
 
 From their upland farms they must have looked eastward 
 upon yet higher mountains, rising impenetrable above the snow- 
 line; but to north and south and west they might turn to 
 lower regions ; and by degrees, perhaps as they grew too nu- 
 merous for comfort, a few families wandered off along the 
 more inviting routes. Whichever way they started, their ad- 
 venturous spirit led them on. We find no trace of a single case 
 where hearts failed or strength grew weary and the movement 
 ' See Prince Jimmu, page 140.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxix 
 
 became retrograde, back toward the ancient home. Spreading 
 out, radiating in all directions, it is they who have explored the 
 earth, who have measured it and marked its bounds and pene- 
 trated almost to its every corner. It is they who still pant to 
 complete the work so long ago begun. 
 
 Before B.C. 2000 one of these exuded swarms had penetrated 
 India, probably by way of the Indus River. In the course of 
 a thousand years or so, the intruders expanded and fought their 
 way slowly from the Indus to the Ganges. The earlier and 
 duskier inhabitants gave way before them or became incorpo- 
 rated in the stronger race. A mighty Aryan or Hindu empire 
 was formed in India and endured there until well within historic 
 times. 
 
 Yet its power faded. Life in the hot and languid tropics 
 tends to weaken, not invigorate, the sinews of a race. Then, 
 too, a formal religion, a system of castes 1 as arbitrary as among 
 the Egyptians, laid its paralyzing grip upon the land. About 
 B.C. 600 Buddhism, a new and beautiful religion, sought to re- 
 vive the despairing people ; but they were beyond its help. 2 
 Their slothful languor had become too deep. From having 
 been perhaps the first and foremost and most civilized of the 
 Aryan tribes, the Hindus sank to be degenerate members of 
 the race. We shall turn to look on them again in a later period ; 
 but they will be seen in no favorable light. 
 
 Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear 
 to the north and west. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an 
 Aryan race, much altered from long dwelling among the yel- 
 low peoples. One tribe, the Persians, moved directly west, and 
 became neighbors of the already noted Semitic group. After 
 long wars backward and forward, bringing us well within the 
 range of history, the Persians proved too powerful for the whole 
 Semite group. They helped destroy Assyria, 3 they overthrew 
 the second Babylonian empire which Nebuchadnezzar had built 
 up, and then, pressing on to the conquest of Egypt, they swept 
 the Hamites too from their place of sovereignty. 4 
 
 1 See The Formation of the Castes, page 52. 
 'See The Foundation of Buddhism, page 160. 
 
 3 See Destruction of Nineveh, page 105. 
 
 4 See Conquests of Cyrus, page 250.
 
 >xx AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on 
 each new savage horde of invaders from the hardy North. It 
 is not done in a generation, not in a century, perhaps. But 
 drop by drop the vigorous, tingling, Arctic blood is sapped 
 away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose pleasure, of 
 the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors. As 
 we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or become 
 effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for 
 them. We see the whole race visibly degenerate, until one 
 questions if Marathon ' were after all so marvellous a victory, 
 and suspects that at whatever point the Persians had begun 
 their advance on Europe they would have been easily hurled 
 back. 
 
 It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a 
 temperate climate, a region similar to that in which they had 
 been bred. Recent speculation has even suggested that Eu- 
 rope was their primeval home, from which they had strayed 
 toward Asia, and to which they now returned. Certainly it is 
 in Europe that the race has continued to develop. Earliest 
 of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modern heri- 
 tage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the Euro- 
 pean continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. 
 Then came the Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, repre- 
 senting possibly a single migration, that spread westward along 
 the islands and peninsulas of the Mediterranean. The Teutons 
 may have left Asia before B.C. 1000, for they seem to have 
 reached their German forests by three centuries beyond that 
 time, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. 
 The latest Aryan wave, that of the Slavs, came well within 
 historic times. We almost fancy we can see its movement. 
 Russian statesmen, indeed, have hopes that this is not yet 
 completed. They dream that they, the youngest of the peoples, 
 are yet to dominate the whole. 
 
 THE GREEKS AND LATINS 
 
 Of these European Aryans the only branches that come 
 vithin the limits of our present period, that become noteworthy 
 before B.C. 480, are the Greeks and Latins. 
 
 1 See The Battle of Marathon, page 322.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxxi 
 
 Their languages tell us that they formed but a single tribe 
 long after they became separated from the other peoples of 
 their race. Finally, however, the Latins, journeying onward, 
 lost sight of their friends, and it must have taken many cen- 
 turies of separation for the two tongues to grow so different as 
 they were when Greeks and Romans, each risen to a mighty 
 nation, met again. 
 
 The Greeks, or Hellenes as they called themselves, seem to 
 have been only one of a number of kindred tribes who occupied 
 not only the shores of the ./Egean, but Thrace, Macedonia, a con- 
 siderable part of Asia Minor, and other neighboring regions. 
 The Greeks developed in intellect more rapidly than their 
 neighbors, outdistanced them in the race for civilization, forgot 
 these poor relations, and grouped them with the rest of out- 
 side mankind under the scornful name "barbarians." 
 
 Why it was that the Greeks were thus specially stimulated 
 beyond their brethren we do not know. It has long been one 
 of the commonplaces of history to declare them the result of 
 their environment. It is pointed out that in Greece they lived 
 amid precipitous mountains, where, as hunters, they became 
 strong and venturesome, independent and self-reliant. A sea 
 of islands lay all around ; and while an open ocean might only 
 have awed and intimidated them, this ever-luring prospect of 
 shore beyond shore rising in turn on the horizon made them 
 sailors, made them friendly traffickers among themselves. Al- 
 ways meeting new faces, driving new bargains, they became 
 alert, quick-witted, progressive, the foremost race of all the an- 
 cient world. 
 
 They do not seem to have been a creative folk. They only 
 adapted and carried to a higher point what they learned from 
 the older nations with whom they now came in contact. Phoe- 
 nicia supplied them with an alphabet, and they began the writ- 
 ing of books. Egypt showed them her records, and, improv- 
 ing on her idea, they became historians. So far as we know, 
 the earliest real " histories " were written in Greece; that is, 
 the earliest accounts of a whole people, an entire series of 
 events, as opposed to the merely individual statements on the 
 Egyptian monuments, the personal, boastful clamor of some 
 king,
 
 xxxii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF 
 
 Before we reach this period of written history we know that 
 the Greeks had long been civilized. Their own legends scarce 
 reach back farther than the first founding of Athens, 1 which 
 they place about B.C. 1500. Yet recent excavations in Crete 
 have revealed the remains of a civilization which must have 
 antedated that by several centuries. 
 
 But we grope in darkness ! The most ancient Greek book 
 that has come down to us is the Iliad, with its tale of the great 
 war against Troy.' Critics will not permit us to call the Iliad 
 a history, because it was not composed, or at least not written 
 down, until some centuries after the events of which it tells. 
 Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless enlarges its pictures, 
 brings gods and goddesses before our eyes, instead of severely 
 excluding everything except what the blind bard perchance 
 could personally vouch for. 
 
 Still both the Iliad and the Odyssey are good enough history 
 for most of us, in that they give a full outline of Grecian life 
 and society as Homer knew it. We see the little, petty states, 
 with their chiefs all-powerful, and the people quite ignored. 
 We see the heroes driving to battle in their chariots, guarded 
 by shield and helmet, flourishing sword and spear. We learn 
 what Ulysses did not know of foreign lands. We hear Achilles' 
 famed lament amid the dead, and note the vague glimmering 
 idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught perhaps from 
 the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams. 
 
 With the year B.C. 776 we come in contact with a clear 
 marked chronology. The Greeks themselves reckoned from 
 that date by means of olympiads or intervals between the 
 Olympic games. The story becomes clear. The autocratic 
 little city kings, governing almost as they pleased, have every- 
 where been displaced by oligarchies. The few leading nobles 
 may name one of themselves to bear rule, but the real power 
 lies divided among the class. Then, with the growing promi- 
 nence of the Pythian games 3 we come upon a new stage of na- 
 tional development. The various cities begin to form alliances, 
 cognize the fact that they may be made safer and happier 
 
 1 See Theseus Founds Athens, page 45. 
 
 1 See Fall of Troy, page 70. 
 
 See Pythian Games at Delphi, page 181.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS xxxiii 
 
 by a larger national life. The sense of brotherhood begins to 
 extend beyond the circle of personal acquaintance. 
 
 This period was one of lawmaking, of experimenting. The 
 traditions, the simple customs of the old kingly days, were no 
 longer sufficient for the guidance of the larger cities, the more 
 complicated circles of society, which were growing up It was 
 no longer possible for a man who did not like his tribe to 
 abandon it and wander elsewhere with his family and herds. 
 The land was too fully peopled for that. The dissatisfied could 
 only endure and grumble and rebel. One system of law after 
 another was tried and thrown aside. The class on whom in 
 practice a rule bore most hard, would refuse longer assent to it. 
 There were uprisings, tumults, bloody frays. 
 
 Sparta, at this time the most prominent of the Greek cities, 
 evolved a code which made her in some ways the wonder of 
 ancient days. The state was made all-powerful ; it took entire 
 possession of the citizen, with the purpose of making him a 
 fighter, a strong defender of himself and of his country. His 
 home life was almost obliterated, or, if you like, the whole city 
 was made one huge family. All men ate in common ; youth 
 was severely restrained ; its training was all for physical hardi- 
 hood. Modern socialism, communism, have seldom ventured 
 further in theory than the Spartans went in practice. The re- 
 sult seems to have been the production of a race possessed of 
 tremendous bodily power and courage, but of stunted intellect- 
 ual growth. The great individual minds of Greece, the think- 
 ers, the creators, did not come from Sparta. 
 
 In Athens a different regime was meanwhile developing 
 Hellenes of another type. A realization of how superior the 
 Greeks were to earlier races, of what vast strides man was 
 making in intelligence and social organization, can in no way 
 be better gained than by comparing the law code of the Baby- 
 lonian Hammurabi with that of Solon in Athens. 1 A period 
 of perhaps sixteen hundred years separates the two, but the 
 difference in their mental power is wider still. 
 
 While the Greeks were thus forging rapidly ahead, their 
 ancient kindred, the Latins, were also progressing, though at a 
 
 1 See Solon's Legislation, page 203, and Compilation of the Earliest 
 Code, page 14.
 
 THE GREAT EVENTS 
 
 rate less dazzling. The true date of Rome's founding we do 
 not know. Her own legends give B.C. 753.' But recent exca- 
 vations on the Palatine hill show that it was already fortified at 
 a much earlier period. Rome, we believe, was originally a 
 frontier fortress erected by the Latins to protect them from 
 the attacks of the non-Aryan races among whom they had in- 
 truded. This stronghold became ever more numerously peo- 
 pled, until it grew into an individual state separate from the 
 other Latin cities. 
 
 The Romans passed through the vicissitudes which we have 
 already noted in Greece as characteristic of the Aryan devel- 
 opment. The early war leader became an absolute king, his 
 power tended to become hereditary, but its abuse roused the 
 more powerful citizens to rebellion, and the kingdom vanished 
 in an oligarchy.* This last change occurred in Rome about B.C. 
 510, and it was attended by such disasters that the city sank 
 back into a condition that was almost barbarous when compared 
 with her opulence under the Tarquin kings. 
 
 It was soon after this that the Persians, ignorant of their 
 own decadence, and dreaming still of world power, resolved to 
 conquer the remaining little states lying scarce known along 
 the boundaries of then- empire. They attacked the Greeks, 
 and at Marathon (B.C. 490) and Salamis (B.C. 480) were hurled 
 back and their power broken.* 
 
 This was a world event, one of the great turning points, 
 a decision that could not have been otherwise if man was really 
 to progress. The degenerate, enfeebled, half-Semitized Aryans 
 of Asia were not permitted to crush the higher type which was 
 developing in Europe. The more vigorous bodies and far abler 
 brains of the Greeks enabled them to triumph over all the 
 hordes of their opponents. The few conquered the many ; and 
 the following era became one of European progress, not of 
 Asiatic stagnation. 
 
 1 See The Foundation of Rome, page 116. 
 
 *See Rome Established as a Republic, page 300. 
 
 8 See Battle of Marathon, page 322, and Invasion ofGreece, page 354. 
 
 [FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME II.]
 
 THE ROSETTA STONE 
 
 Almost as interesting as the Rosetta Stone itself is the story of its discovery. During the French occupation 
 of Egypt soldiers were digging out the foundations of a fort, and in the trench the famous tablet was found. At the 
 peace of Alexandra the Rosetta Stone passed to the English, who (1801 ) housed it in the British Museum, where 
 it remains. The text when translated showed that the inscription is a "decree of the priests of Memphis, con- 
 ferring divine honors on Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195," on the occasion of his coronation. 
 Further it commands that the decree be inscribed in the sacred letters (hieroglyphics) ; the alphabet of the people 
 (enchorial or demotic) ; and Greek. 
 
 It wa recognized by the trustees of the British Museum that the problem of the Rosetta Stone was one 
 which would test the ingenuity of the scientists of the world to unfathom, and they promptly published a carefully 
 prepared copy of the entire inscription. Scholars of every nation exhausted their learning to unravel the riddle, but 
 beyond a few shrewd guesses (afterward proved to be quite incorrect) nothing was accomplished for a dozen years. 
 The key was there, but its application required the inspired insight of genius. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the vibratory nature of light, who had perhaps the m "t versatile 
 profundity of knowledge and the keenest scientific imagination of his generation, undertook the task. 
 
 Accident had called Young's attention to the Rosetta Stone, and his rapacity for knowledge led him to 
 (peculate as to the possible aid this trilingual inscription might offer in the solution of Egyptian problems. Having 
 an amazing faculty for the acquisition of languages, he, in one short year, had mastered Coptic, after having 
 assured himself that it was the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language, and had even made a 
 tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian scroll. This was the very beginning of our knowledge of the 
 meaning of hieroglyphics. 
 
 The specific discoveries that Dr. Young made were : I , That some of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand 
 for the names of the objects delineated; 2, that other pictures are at times only symbolic ; 3, that plural numbers 
 are represented by repetition; 4, that numerals are represented by dashes; 5, that hieroglyphics may read either 
 from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face ; 
 6, that a graven oval ring surrounds proper names, making a cartouche ; 7, that the cartouches of the Rosetta 
 Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; 8, that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches always 
 denotes the female sex ; 9, that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have an actual phonetic value, 
 either alphabetic or syllabic ; and 10, that several dissimilar characters may have the same phonetic value. 
 
 Kaharesapusaremkaherreait. 
 
 AN EGYPTIAN PROPER NAME SPELLED OUT IN FULL BY 
 MEANS OF ALPHABETICAL AND SYLLABIC SIGNS. 
 
 Dr. Young wa, certainly on the right track, and very near the complete discovery ; unfortunately he failea to 
 
 step which wa, to learn that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This grand 
 
 ,ung missed ;h French successor, Champollion, ferreted it out from the foundation he had laid. The 
 
 bmx was practically solved, and the secrets held by the monuments of Egypt for so many 
 
 scl^d to the world. Champollion proved that the Egyptians had developed an alphabet- 
 
 voweb a, d,d a,so the ear.y Semitic alphabet-centuries before the Ph.nicians were heard of 
 
 se p,ctures are purely alphabetical in character, some are otherwise symbolic. Some 
 
 jJabH others aga.n stand as representatives of sounds, and once again, as representatives of 
 
 lungs , hence the difficulties and complications it presented.
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 B.C. 5867 
 
 G. C. C. MASPERO 
 
 It is a far cry to hark back to 11,000 years before Christ, yet borings 
 in the valley of the Nile, whence comes the first recorded history of the 
 human race, have unveiled to the light pottery and other relics of civili- 
 zation that, at the rate of deposits of the Nile, must have taken at least 
 that number of years to cover. 
 
 Nature takes countless thousands of years to form and build up her 
 limestone hills, but buried deep in these we find evidences of a stone age 
 wherein man devised and made himself edged tools and weapons of 
 rudely chipped stone. These shaped, edged implements, we have 
 learned, were made by white-heating a suitable flint or stone and tracing 
 thereon with cold water the pattern desired, just as practised by the 
 Indians of the American continent, and in our day by the manufacturers 
 of ancient (sic) arrow-, spear-, and axe-heads. This shows a civilization 
 that has learned the method of artificially producing fire, and its uses. 
 
 Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the 
 monumental people of history. The first human monarch to reign over 
 all Egypt was Menes, the founder of Memphis. As the gate of Africa, 
 Egypt has always held an important position in world-politics. Its an- 
 cient wealth and power were enormous. Inclusive of the Soudan, its 
 population is now more than eight millions. Its present importance is 
 indicated by its relations to England. Historians vary in their compila- 
 tions of Egyptian chronology. The epoch of Menes is fixed by Bunsen 
 at B.C. 3643, by Lepsius at B.C. 3892, and by Poole at B.C. 2717. Before 
 Menes Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms. It has always 
 been a country of mysteries, with the mighty Nile, and its inundations, so 
 little understood by the ancients ; its trackless desert ; its camels and 
 caravans ; its tombs and temples ; its obelisks and pyramids, its groups 
 of gods: Ra, Osiris, Isis, Apis, Horus, Hathor the very names breathe 
 suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power. In the sciences and 
 in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much 
 Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and en- 
 tirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms. In art, how- 
 ever, Egypt may be placed next to Greece, particularly in architecture. 
 
 The age of the Pyramid-builders was a brilliant one. They prove 
 the magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at their 
 
 1 Champollion. 
 E., VOl.- X 1
 
 . 2 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 disposal. The regal power at that time was very strong. The reign of 
 Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great pyramid. The 
 pyramids were the tombs of kings, built in the necropolis of Memphis, 
 ten miles above the modem Cairo. Security was the object as well as 
 
 splendor. 
 
 As remarked by a great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian 
 was spent in the contemplation of death ; thus the tomb became the 
 concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so long 
 as his body remained intact so was his immortality ; whence arose the 
 embalming of the great and hence the immense structures of stone to 
 secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch. 
 
 HP HE monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events 
 which tended to unite Egypt under the rule of one man ; 
 we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually 
 been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a 
 separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief focus in the 
 north, from which civilization radiated over the wet plain and 
 the marshes of the Delta. 
 
 Its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged 
 the principal myths of the local regions ; the Ennead to which 
 it gave conception would never have obtained the popularity 
 which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exer- 
 cised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over the 
 neighboring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the king- 
 dom of Lower Egypt was organized; everything there bore 
 traces of Heliopolitan theories the protocol of the kings, their 
 supposed descent from Ra, and the enthusiastic worship which 
 they offered to the sun. 
 
 The Delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was 
 aptly suited for government from one centre ; the Nile valley 
 proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either 
 bank of the river, did not lend itself to so complete a unity. 
 It, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed and the 
 lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more 
 loosely united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked 
 a well-placed city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. 
 Hermopolis contained schools of theologians who certainly 
 played an important part in the development of myths and dog- 
 mas ; but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt. 
 
 In the south, Siut disputed their supremacy, and Heracle-
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 3 
 
 npolis stopped their road to the north. These three cities 
 thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever 
 succeeded in obtaining a lasting authority over Upper Egypt. 
 Each of the two kingdoms had its own natural advantages and 
 its system of government, which gave to it a peculiar character, 
 and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct personality down to 
 its latest days. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more power- 
 ful, richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by 
 more active and enterprising rulers. It is to one of the latter, 
 Mini or Menes of Thinis, that tradition ascribes the honor of 
 having fused the two Egypts into a single empire, and of hav- 
 ing inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. 
 
 Thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least of 
 Egyptian cities. It barely maintained an existence on the left 
 bank of the Nile, if not on the exact spot now occupied by 
 Girgeh, at least only a short distance from it. The principality 
 of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it was the metropolis, occu- 
 pied the valley from one mountain to the other, and gradually 
 extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban Oasis. 
 Its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhuri, or rather two 
 twin gods, Anhuri-shu, who were speedily amalgamated with 
 the solar deities and became a warlike personification of Ra. 
 
 Anhuri-shu, like all other solar manifestations, came to be 
 associated with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness 
 a Sokhit, who took for the occasion the epithet of Mihit, the 
 northern one. Some of the dead from this city are buried on 
 the other side of the Nile, near the modern village of Mesheikh, 
 at the foot of the Arabian chain, whose deep cliffs here ap- 
 proach somewhat near the river : the principal necropolis was at 
 some distance to the east, near the sacred town of Abydos. It 
 would appear that, at the outset, Abydos was the capital of the 
 country, for the entire nome bore the same name as the city, 
 and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reli- 
 quary in which the god reposed. 
 
 In very early times Abydos fell into decay, and resigned its 
 political rank to Thinis, but its religious importance remained 
 unimpaired. The city occupied a long and narrow strip between 
 the canal and the first slopes of the Libyan mountains. A 
 brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin,
 
 4 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked 
 walls. Here Anhuri, having passed from life to death, was 
 worshipped under the name of Khontamentit, the chief of that 
 western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth. 
 
 It is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by 
 what political combinations this Sun of the Night came to be 
 identified with Osiris of Mendes, since the fusion dates back to 
 a very remote antiquity ; it had become an established fact long 
 before the most ancient sacred books were compiled. Osiris 
 Khontamentit grew rapidly in popular favor, and his temple at- 
 tracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. The Great 
 Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious para- 
 dise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. 
 It was called Uit, the Sepulchre ; this name clung to it after it 
 had become an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance 
 of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so 
 that the " cleft," the gorge in the mountain through which the 
 doubles journeyed toward it, never ceased to be regarded as 
 one of the gates of the other world. 
 
 At the time of the New Year festivals, spirits flocked thither 
 from all parts of the valley ; they there awaited the coming of 
 the dying sun, in order to embark with him and enter safely the 
 dominions of Khontamentit. Abydos, even before the historic 
 period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose 
 worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them all with an 
 equal devotion. 
 
 Did this sort of moral conquest give rise, later on, to a belief 
 in a material conquest by the princes of Thinis and Abydos, or 
 is there an historical foundation for the tradition which ascribes 
 to them the establishment of a single monarchy? It is the 
 Thinite Menes, whom the Theban annalists point out as the 
 ancestor of the glorious Pharaohs of the XVIII dynasty: it is 
 he also who is inscribed in the Memphite chronicles, followed 
 by Manetho, at the head of their lists of human kings, and all 
 Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal ruler. 
 
 t is true that a chief of Thinis may well have borne such a 
 name, and may have accomplished feats which rendered him 
 .amous; but on closer examination his pretensions to reality 
 disappear, and his personality is reduced to a cipher.
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION $ 
 
 "This Menes, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis 
 with dikes. For the river formerly followed the sand-hills for 
 some distance on the Libyan side. Menes, having dammed up 
 the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of Memphis, 
 caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through 
 an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain 
 ranges. 
 
 " Then Menes, the first who was king, having enclosed a 
 space of ground with dikes, founded that town which is still 
 called Memphis : he then made a lake around it to the north 
 and west, fed by the river ; the city he bounded on the east by 
 the Nile." The history of Memphis, such as it can be gathered 
 from the monuments, differs considerably from the tradition 
 current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus. 
 
 It appears, indeed, that at the outset the site on which it 
 subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbu-hazu 
 the white wall which was dependent on Heliopolis and in 
 which Phtah possessed a sanctuary. After the " white wall " 
 was separated from the Heliopolitan principality to form a 
 nome by itself it assumed a certain importance, and furnished, 
 so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the Thinite. Its 
 prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sov- 
 ereigns of the V and VI dynasties fixed on it for their resi- 
 dence ; one of them, Papi I, there founded for himself and for 
 his " double " after him, a new town, which he called Minnofiru, 
 from his tomb. Minnofiru, which is the correct pronunciation 
 and the origin of Memphis, probably signified " the good ref- 
 uge," the haven of the good, the burying-place where the 
 blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris. 
 
 The people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably 
 it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales. They 
 rather despised, as a rule, to discover in the beginnings of his- 
 tory individuals from whom the countries or cities with which 
 they were familiar took their names : if no tradition supplied 
 them with this, they did not experience any scruples in invent- 
 ing one. The Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies, who 
 were guided in their philological speculations by the pronuncia- 
 tion in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their 
 city to a Princess Memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabu-
 
 6 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 lous Uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the name had 
 become altered thought to find in Minnofiru or " Mini Nofir," 
 or " Menes the Good," the reputed founder of the capital of the 
 Delta. Menes the Good, divested of his epithet, is none other 
 than Menes, the first king of all Egypt, and he owes his exist- 
 ence to a popular attempt at etymology. 
 
 The legend which identifies the establishment of the king- 
 dom with the construction of the city, must have originated at 
 a time when Memphis was still the residence of the kings and 
 the seat of government, at latest about the end of the Mem- 
 phite period. It must have been an old tradition at the time of 
 the Theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the 
 authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern 
 city so marked a superiority over their own country. When 
 the hero was once created and firmly established in his posi- 
 tion, there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him 
 which would portray him as a paragon and an ideal sovereign. 
 
 He was represented in turn as architect, warrior, and states- 
 man ; he had founded Memphis, he had begun the temple of 
 Phtah, written laws and regulated the worship of the gods, par- 
 ticularly that of Hapis, and he had conducted expeditions 
 against the Libyans. When he lost his only son in the flower 
 of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to con- 
 sole him the " Maneros " both the words and the tune of 
 which were handed down from generation to generation. 
 
 He did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for 
 he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating 
 it in a reclining posture. One day, while hunting, his dogs, ex- 
 cited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. He 
 escaped with difficulty and, pursued by them, fled to the shore 
 of Lake Mceris, and was there brought to bay ; he was on the 
 point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his 
 back and carried him across to the other side. In gratitude he 
 built a new town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and assigned 
 to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him ; he then 
 erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his 
 tomb. 
 
 Other traditions show him in a less favorable light. They 
 accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 7 
 
 the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty-two 
 years he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from 
 the Nile. They also relate that the Saite Tafnakhti, return- 
 ing from an expedition against the Arabs, during which he had 
 been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of life, had 
 solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be in- 
 scribed upon a " stele " ' set up in the temple of Amon at 
 Thebes. Nevertheless, in the memory that Egypt preserved 
 of its first Pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. He was 
 worshipped in Memphis, side by side with Phtah and Ramses 
 II. ; his name figured at the head of the royal lists, and his 
 cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies. 
 
 His immediate successors have only a semblance of reality, 
 such as he had. The lists give the order of succession, it is 
 true, with the years of their reigns almost to a day, sometimes 
 the length of their lives, but we may well ask whence the 
 chroniclers procured so much precise information. They were 
 in the same position as ourselves with regard to these ancient 
 kings : they knew them by a tradition of a later age, by a frag- 
 ment papyrus fortuitously preserved in a temple, by accident- 
 ally coming across some monument bearing their name, and 
 were reduced, as it were, to put together the few facts which 
 they possessed, or to supply such as were wanting by conjec- 
 tures, often in a very improbable manner. It is quite possible 
 that they were unable to gather from the memory of the past 
 the names of those individuals of which they made up the first 
 two dynasties. The forms of these names are curt and rugged, 
 and indicative of a rude and savage state, harmonizing with the 
 semi-barbaric period to which they are relegated: Ati the 
 Wrestler, Teti the Runner, Qeunqoni the Crusher, are suitable 
 rulers for a people the first duty of whose chief was to lead his 
 followers into battle, and to strike harder than any other man 
 in the thickest of the fight. 
 
 The inscriptions supply us with proofs that some of these 
 princes lived and reigned: Sondi, who is classed in the II 
 dynasty, received a continuous worship toward the end of the 
 III dynasty. But did all those who preceded him, and those 
 
 1 The burned tile showing the impression of the stylus, made on the 
 clay while plastic. ED.
 
 g DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 who followed him, exist as he did ? And if they existed, do the 
 order and relation agree with actual truth ? The different lists 
 do not contain the same names in the same position; certain 
 Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason. 
 Where Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables 
 of the time of Seti I give us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons 
 nine kings to the II dynasty, while they register only five. 
 The monuments, indeed, show us that Egypt in the past obeyed 
 princes whom her annalists were unable to classify : for instance, 
 they associated with Sondi a Pirsenu, who is not mentioned in 
 the annals. We must, therefore, take the record of all this open- 
 ing period of history for what it is namely, a system invented 
 at a much later date, by means of various artifices and combi- 
 nationsto be partially accepted in default of a better, but 
 without, according to it, that excessive confidence which it has 
 hitherto received. The two Thinite dynasties, in direct descent 
 from the fabulous Menes, furnish, like this hero himself, only 
 a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place 
 of history. A double-headed stork, which had appeared in the 
 first year of Teti, son of Menes, had foreshadowed to Egypt a 
 long prosperity, but a famine under Ouenephes, and a terrible 
 plague under Semempses, had depopulated the country; the 
 laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and 
 revolts had broken out. 
 
 During the reign of the Boethos a gulf had opened near 
 Bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the Nile had 
 flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, 
 and Sesochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature. A 
 few details about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodi- 
 gies. Teti had laid the foundation of the great palace of Mem- 
 phis, Ouenephes had built the pyramids of Ko-kome near Saq- 
 qara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had published books on 
 theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; 
 several had made laws called Kakou, the male of males, or the 
 bull of bulls. They explained his name by the statement that 
 he had concerned himself about the sacred animals; he had 
 proclaimed as gods, Hapis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, 
 and the goat of Mendes. 
 
 After him, Binothris had conferred the right of succession
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 9 
 
 upon all women of the blood-royal. The accession of the III 
 dynasty, a Memphite one according to Manetho, did not at first 
 change the miraculous character of this history. The Libyans 
 had revolted against Necherophes, and the two armies were en- 
 camped before each other, when one night the disk of the moon 
 became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the 
 rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger 
 of heaven, and yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the suc- 
 cessor of Necherophes, brought the hieroglyphs and the art of 
 stone-cutting to perfection. He composed, as Teti did, books 
 of medicine, a fact which caused him to be identified with the 
 healing god Imhotpu. The priests related these things serious- 
 ly, and the Greek writers took them down from their lips with 
 the respect which they offered to everything emanating from 
 the wise men of Egypt. 
 
 What they related of the human kings was not more detailed, 
 as we see, than their accounts of the gods. Whether the le- 
 gends dealt with deities or kings, all that we know took its 
 origin, not in popular imagination, but in sacerdotal dogma: 
 they were invented long after the times they dealt with, in the 
 recesses of the temples, with an intention and a method of 
 which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the monu- 
 ments. 
 
 Toward the middle of the third century before our era the 
 Greek troops stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at 
 the first cataract, developed a particular veneration for Isis of 
 Philae. Their devotion spread to the superior officers who 
 came to inspect them, then to the whole population of the The- 
 baid, and finally reached the court of the Macedonian kings. 
 The latter, carried away by force of example, gave every en- 
 couragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a 
 common sanctuary, and united in one cult two races over which 
 they ruled. They pulled down the meagre building of the 
 Saite period, which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of 
 Isis, constructed at great cost the temple which still remains 
 almost intact, and assigned to it considerable possessions in 
 Nubia, which, in addition to gifts from private individuals, made 
 the goddess the richest land-owner in Southern Egypt. Knumu 
 and his two wives, Anukit and Satit, who, before Isis, had been
 
 10 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 the undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jeal- 
 ousy their neighbor's prosperity : the civil wars and invasions 
 of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their tem- 
 ples, and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of 
 the new-comer. 
 
 The priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before 
 King Ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had 
 rendered and still continued to render to Egypt, and above all 
 to remind him of the generosity of the ancient Pharaohs, whose 
 example, owing to the poverty of the times, the recent Pharaohs 
 had been unable to follow. Doubtless authentic documents 
 were wanting in their archives to support their pretensions : 
 they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of Sehel, a 
 long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the III 
 dynasty. This sovereign had left behind him a vague reputa- 
 tion for greatness. As early as the XII dynasty Usirtasen 
 III had claimed him as "his father" his ancestor and had 
 erected a statue to him ; the priests knew that, by invoking him, 
 they had a chance of obtaining a hearing. 
 
 The inscription which they fabricated set forth that in the 
 eighteenth year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madir, lord of 
 Elephantine, a message couched in these terms : " I am over- 
 come with sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in 
 the palace, and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because 
 the Nile has not risen in my time, for the space of eight years 
 Corn is scarce, there is a lack of herbage, and nothing is left to 
 eat : when any one calls upon his neighbors for help, they take 
 pains not to go. The child weeps, the young man is uneasy, 
 the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent, 
 they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands ; the courtiers 
 have no further resources ; the shops formerly furnished with 
 rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was within them 
 has disappeared. My spirit also, mindful of the beginning of 
 things, seeks to call upon the savior who was here where I am, 
 during the centuries of the gods, upon Thot-Ibis, that great wise 
 one, upon Imhotpu, son of Phtah of Memphis. Where is the 
 place in which the Nile is born ? Who is the god or goddess 
 concealed there ? What is his likeness ? " 
 
 The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 11 
 
 described to the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the 
 situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract, the phe- 
 nomena of the inundation, the gods who presided over it, and 
 who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous plight. 
 
 Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered 
 the prescribed sacrifices ; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted, 
 and cried aloud, " I am Khnumu who created thee ! " and prom- 
 ised him a speedy return of a high Nile and the cessation of the 
 famine. 
 
 Pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine 
 father had shown him ; he forthwith made a decree by which 
 he ceded to the temple all his rights of suzerainty over the 
 neighboring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. 
 
 Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedress- 
 ers, fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their in- 
 come to the priests ; the quarries could not be worked without 
 the consent of Khnumu, and the payment of a suitable indem- 
 nity into his coffers ; finally, metals and precious woods, shipped 
 thence for Egypt, had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. 
 
 Did the Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests 
 attempted to deduce from this romantic tale ? and did the god 
 regain possession of the domains and dues which they declared 
 had been his right ? The stele shows us with what ease the 
 scribes could forge official documents when the exigencies of 
 daily life forced the necessity upon them ; it teaches us at the 
 same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose 
 remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every 
 prodigy, every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some 
 document analogous to the supposed inscription of Zosiri. 
 
 The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our 
 researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those 
 vicissitudes which Egypt passed through before being consoli- 
 dated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many 
 names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had sur- 
 vived in the memory of the people ; these were collected, classi- 
 fied, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the 
 people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the 
 names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced 
 to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives.
 
 12 
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot 
 have entirely disappeared: they existed in places where we 
 have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance ex- 
 cavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. 
 The few which we do possess barely go back beyond the III 
 dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and 
 Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the 
 Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of 
 Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of 
 whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a pre- 
 cedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai ; and 
 finally the step pyramid where this Pharaoh rests. It forms a 
 rectangular mass, incorrectly oriented, with a variation from 
 the true north of 4 35', 393 ft., 8 in. long from east to west, 
 and 352 ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. It is composed 
 of six cubes, with sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in 
 width than the one below it ; that nearest to the ground meas- 
 ures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the uppermost one 29 ft. 2 in. 
 
 It was entirely constructed of limestone from neighboring 
 mountains. The blocks are small and badly cut, the stone 
 courses being concave, to offer a better resistance to downward 
 thrust and to shocks of earthquake. When breaches in the 
 masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface 
 of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing 
 being carefully dressed. The body of the pyramid is solid, the 
 chambers being cut in the rock beneath. These chambers 
 have often been enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course 
 of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a per- 
 fect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a 
 guide. The columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to 
 a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect 
 had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the 
 more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until the be- 
 ginning of this century the vault had preserved its original lin- 
 ing of glazed pottery. Three quarters of the wall surface was 
 covered with green tiles, oblong and lightly convex on the outer 
 side, but flat on the inner: a square projection pierced with a 
 hole served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by 
 means of flexible wooden rods. Three bands which frame one
 
 DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 13 
 
 of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the Pharaoh. The 
 hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or yellow, on a 
 fawn-colored ground. 
 
 The towns, palaces, temples, all the buildings which princes 
 and kings had constructed to be witnesses of their power or 
 piety to future generations, have disappeared in the course of 
 ages, under the feet and before the triumphal blasts of many 
 invading hosts : the pyramid alone has survived, and the most 
 ancient of the historic monuments of Egypt is a tomb.
 
 COMPILATION OF THE EARLIEST CODE 
 
 B.C. 2250 
 
 HAMMURABI 
 
 The foundation of all law-making in Babylona from about the miodle 
 of the twenty-third century B.C. to the fall of the empire was the code of 
 Hammurabi, the first king of all Babylonia. He expelled invaders from 
 his dominions, cemented the union of north and south Babylonia, made 
 Babylon the capital, and thus consolidated an empire which endured for 
 almost twenty centuries. The code which he compiled is the oldest 
 known in history, older by nearly a thousand years than the Mosaic, and 
 of earlier date than the so-called Laws of Manu. It is one of the most 
 important historical landmarks in existence, a document which gives us 
 knowledge not otherwise furnished of the country and people, the civili- 
 zation and life of a great centre of human action hitherto almost hidden 
 in obscurity. Hammurabi, who is supposed to be identical with Amra 
 phel, a contemporary of Abraham, is regarded as having certainly contrib- 
 uted through his laws to the Hebrew traditions. The discovery of this 
 code has, therefore, a special value in relation to biblical studies, upon 
 which so many other important side-lights have recently been thrown. 
 
 The discovery was made at Susa, Persia, in December and January, 
 1901-2, by M. de Morgan's French excavating expedition. The monu- 
 ment on which the laws are inscribed, a stele of black diorite nearly 
 eight feet high, has been fully described by Assyriologists, and the in- 
 scription transcribed. It has been completely translated by Dr. Hugo 
 Winckler, whose translation (in Die Gesetze Hammurabis, Band IV, 
 Heft 4, of Der Alte Orient) furnishes the basis of the version herewith 
 presented. Following an autobiographic preface, the text of the code 
 contains two hundred and eighty edicts and an epilogue. To readers of 
 the code who are familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures many biblical 
 parallels will occur. 
 
 HEN Anu the Sublime, king of the Anunaki, and Bel 
 [god of the earth], the Lord of Heaven and earth, who 
 decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk [or Merodach, 
 the great god of Babylon] the over-ruling son of Ea [god of the 
 waters], God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and 
 made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his 
 
 4
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 15 
 
 illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an ever- 
 lasting kingdom in it [Babylon], whose foundations are laid so 
 solidly as those of heaven and earth ; then Anu and Bel called by 
 name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to 
 bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the 
 wicked and the evil-doers ; so that the strong should not harm 
 the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people 
 like Shamash [the sun-god], and enlighten the land, to further 
 the well-being of mankind, 
 
 Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I, making riches 
 and increase, enriching Nippur and Dur-ilu beyond compare, 
 sublime patron of E-kur [temple of Bel in Nippur, the seat of 
 Bel's worship] ; who reestablished Eridu and purified the wor- 
 ship of E-apsu [temple of Ea, at Eridu, the chief seat of Ea's 
 worship] ; who conquered the four quarters of the world, made 
 great the name of Babylon, rejoiced the heart of Marduk, his 
 lord who daily pays his devotions in Saggil [Marduk's temple 
 in Babylon] ; the royal scion whom Sin made ; who enriched Ur 
 [Abraham's birthplace, the seat of the worship of Sin, the 
 moon-god] ; the humble, the reverent, who brings wealth to 
 Gish-shir-gal ; the white king, heard of Shamash, the mighty, 
 who again laid the foundations of Sippana [seat of worship of 
 Shamash and his wife, Malkat] ; who clothed the gravestones 
 of Malkat with green [symbolizing the resurrection of nature] ; 
 who made E-babbar [temple of the sun in Sippara] great, which 
 is like the heavens ; the warrior who guarded Larsa and re- 
 newed E-babbar [temple of the sun in Larsa, biblical Elassar, 
 in Southern Babylonia], with Shamash as his helper; the lord 
 who granted new life to Uruk [biblical Erech], who brought 
 plenteous water to its inhabitants, raised the head of E-anna 
 [temple of Ishtar-Nana at Uruk], and perfected the beauty of 
 Anu and Nana; shield of the land, who reunited the scattered 
 inhabitants of Isin ; who richly endowed E-gal-mach [temple 
 of Isin] ; the protecting king of the city, brother of the god 
 Zamama [god of Kish] ; who firmly founded the farms of Kish, 
 crowned E-me-te-ursag [sister city of Kish] with glory, re- 
 doubled the great holy treasures of Nana, managed the temple 
 of Harsag-kalama [temple of Nergal at Cuthah] ; the grave of 
 the enemy, whose help brought about the victory; who in-
 
 16 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 creased the power of Cuthah; made all glorious in E-shidlam 
 [a temple], the black steer [title of Marduk] who gored the 
 enemy; beloved of the god Nebo, who rejoiced the inhabitants 
 of Borsippa, the Sublime ; who is indefatigable for E-zida [tem- 
 ple of Nebo in Babylon]; the divine king of the city; the 
 White, Wise; who broadened the fields of Dilbat, who heaped 
 up the harvests for Urash ; the Mighty, the lord to whom come 
 sceptre and crown, with which he clothes himself; the Elect 
 of Ma-ma; who fixed the temple bounds of Kesh, who made 
 rich the holy feasts of Nin-tu [goddess of Kesh] ; the provi- 
 dent, solicitous, who provided food and drink for Lagash and 
 Girsu, who provided large sacrificial offerings for the temple 
 of Ningirsu [at Lagash] ; who captured the enemy, the Elect 
 of the oracle who fulfilled the prediction of Hallab, who re- 
 joiced the heart of Anunit [whose oracle had predicted vic- 
 tory] ; the pure prince, whose prayer is accepted by Adad [god 
 of Hallab, with goddess Anunit] ; who satisfied the heart of 
 Adad, the warrior, in Karkar, who restored the vessels for 
 worship in E-ud-gal-gal ; the king who granted life to the city 
 of Adab ; the guide of E-mach ; the princely king of the city, 
 the irresistible warrior, who granted life to the inhabitants of 
 Mashkanshabri, and brought abundance to the temple of Shid- 
 lam ; the White, Potent, who penetrated the secret cave of the 
 bandits, saved the inhabitants of Malka from misfortune, and 
 fixed their home fast in wealth ; who established pure sacrifi- 
 cial gifts for Ea and Dam-gal-nun-na, who made his kingdom 
 everlastingly great; the princely king of the city, who sub- 
 jected the districts on the Ud-kib-nun-na Canal [Euphrates ?] 
 to the sway of Dagon, his Creator; who spared the inhabitants 
 of Mera and Tutul ; the sublime prince, who makes the face of 
 Ninni shine ; who presents holy meals to the divinity of Nin- 
 a-zu, who cared for its inhabitants in their need, provided a 
 portion for them in Babylon in peace ; the shepherd of the op- 
 pressed and of the slaves; whose deeds find favor before 
 Anunit, who provided for Anunit in the temple of Dumash in 
 the suburb of Agade; who recognizes the right, who rules by 
 law; who gave back to the city of Assur its protecting god; 
 who let the name of Istar of Nineveh remain in E-mish-mish; 
 the Sublime, who humbles himself before the great gods; sue-
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 17 
 
 cessor of Sumula-il ; the mighty son of Sin-muballit ; the royal 
 scion of Eternity ; the mighty monarch, the sun of Babylon, 
 whose rays shed light over the land of Sumer and Akkad ; the 
 king, obeyed by the four quarters of the world; Beloved of 
 Ninni, am I. 
 
 When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the pro- 
 tection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness 
 in , and brought about the well-being of the oppressed. 
 
 CODE OF LAWS 
 
 1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but 
 he cannot prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to 
 death. 
 
 2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the 
 accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in 
 the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But 
 if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape 
 unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put 
 to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take posses- 
 sion of the house that had belonged to his accuser. 
 
 3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the 
 elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it 
 be a capital offence charged, be put to death. 
 
 4. If he satisfy the elders to impose a fine of grain or 
 money, he shall receive the fine that the action produces. 
 
 5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision and present his 
 judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, 
 and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times 
 the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly re- 
 moved from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit 
 there to render judgment. 
 
 6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, 
 he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the 
 stolen thing from him shall be put to death 
 
 7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, 
 without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female 
 slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in 
 charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death. 
 
 E., VOL. i.
 
 18 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 8. If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a 
 goat, if it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay 
 thirtyfold therefor; if they belonged to a freed man (of the 
 king) he shall pay tenfold ; if the thief has nothing with which 
 to pay he shall be put to death. 
 
 9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession 
 of another : if the person in whose possession the thing is found 
 say "A merchant sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," 
 and if the owner of the thing say " I will bring witnesses who 
 know my property," then shall the purchaser bring the mer- 
 chant who sold it to him, and the witnesses before whom he 
 bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can iden- 
 tify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony 
 both of the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of 
 the witnesses who identify the lost article on oath. The mer- 
 chant is then proven to be a thief and shall be put to death. 
 The owner of the lost article receives his property, and he who 
 bought it receives the money he paid from the estate of the 
 merchant. 
 
 10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the 
 witnesses before whom he bought the article, but its owner 
 bring witnesses who identify it, then the buyer is the thief and 
 shall be put to death, and the owner receives the lost article. 
 
 11. If the owner do not bring witnesses to identify the lost 
 article, he is an evil-doer, he has traduced, and shall be put to 
 death. 
 
 12. If the witnesses be not at hand, then shall the judge 
 set a limit, at the expiration of six months. If his witnesses 
 have not appeared within the six months, he is an evil-doer, 
 and shall bear the fine of the pending case. 
 
 14. If any one steal the minor son of another, he shall be 
 put to death. 
 
 15. If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or 
 a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, 
 he shall be put to death. 
 
 16. If any one receive into his house a runaway male or 
 female slave of the court, or of a freedman, and does not bring 
 it out at the public proclamation of the major domus, the mas- 
 ter of the house shall be put to death.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 19 
 
 17. If any one find a runaway male or female slave in the 
 open country and bring them to their masters, the master of 
 the slaves shall pay him two shekels of silver. 
 
 1 8. If the slave will not give the name of the master, the 
 finder shall bring him to the palace ; a further investigation 
 must follow and the slave shall be returned to his master. 
 
 19. If he hold the slaves in his house, and they are caught 
 there, he shall be put to death. 
 
 20. If the slave that he caught run away from him, then 
 shall he swear to the owners of the slave, and he is free of all 
 blame. 
 
 21. If any one break a hole into a house [break in to steal], 
 he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried. 
 
 22. If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then 
 he shall be put to death. 
 
 23. If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was 
 robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss ; then shall the 
 
 community, and on whose ground and territory and in 
 
 whose domain it was compensate him for the goods stolen. 
 
 24. If persons are stolen, then shall the community and 
 .... pay one mina of silver to their relatives. 
 
 25 . If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes 
 to put it out, cast his eye upon the property of the owner of 
 the house, and take the property of the master of the house, 
 he shall be thrown into that self-same fire. 
 
 26. If a chieftain or a man [common soldier], who has been 
 ordered to go upon the king's highway [for war] does not go, 
 but hires a mercenary, if he withholds the compensation, then 
 shall this officer or man be put to death, and he who repre- 
 sented him shall take possession of his house. 
 
 27. If a chieftain or man be caught in the misfortune of the 
 king [captured in battle], and if his fields and garden be given 
 to another and he take possession, if he return and reaches 
 his place, his field and garden shall be returned to him, he shall 
 take it over again. 
 
 28. If a chieftain or a man be caught in the misfortune of 
 a king, if his son is able to enter into possession, then the field 
 and garden shall be given to him, he shall take over the fee of 
 his father.
 
 20 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 29. If his son is still young, and cannot take possession, a 
 third of the field and garden shall be given to his mother, and 
 she shall bring him up. 
 
 30. If a chieftain or a man leave his house, garden and field 
 and hires it out, and some one else takes possession of his 
 house, garden and field and uses it for three years : if the first 
 owner return and claims his house, garden and field, it shall 
 not be given to him, but he who has taken possession of it and 
 used it shall continue to use it. 
 
 31. If he hire it out for one year and then return, the house, 
 garden and field shall be given back to him, and he shall take 
 it over again. 
 
 32. If a chieftain or a man is captured on the " Way of the 
 King" [in war], and a merchant buy him free, and bring him 
 back to his place ; if he have the means in his house to buy his 
 freedom, he shall buy himself free : if he have nothing in his 
 house with which to buy himself free, he shall be bought free 
 by the temple of his community ; if there be nothing in the 
 temple with which to buy him free, the court shall buy his 
 freedom. His field, garden and house shall not be given for 
 the purchase of his freedom. 
 
 33. If a or a [from the connection, some 
 
 man higher in rank than a chieftain] enter himself as with- 
 drawn from the " Way of the King," and send a mercenary as 
 substitute, but withdraw him, then the ... . or . . . 
 shall be put to death. 
 
 34- If a [same as in 33] or a ... . . harm the 
 
 property of a captain, injure the captain, or take away from the 
 captain a gift presented to him by the king then the .... or 
 .... shall be put to death. 
 
 35. If any one buy the cattle or sheep which the king has 
 given to chieftains from him he loses his money. 
 
 35. The field, garden and house of a chieftain, of a man, or 
 of one subject to quit-rent, cannot be sold. 
 
 ^ 37. If any one buy the field, garden and house of a chief- 
 tain, man or one subject to quit-rent, his contract tablet of sale 
 shall be broken [declared invalid] and he loses his money. 
 The field, garden and house return to their owners. 
 
 38. A chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent cannot as-
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 21 
 
 sign his tenure of field, house and garden to his wife or daugh- 
 ter, nor can he assign it for a debt. 
 
 39. He may, however, assign a field, garden or house which 
 he has bought, and holds as property, to his wife or daughter 
 or give it for debt. 
 
 40. He may sell field, garden and house to a merchant 
 [royal agents] or to any other public official, the buyer holding 
 field, house and garden for its usufruct. 
 
 41. If any one fence in the field, garden and house of a 
 chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent, furnishing the pal- 
 ings therefor; if the chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent 
 return to field, garden and house, the palings which were given 
 to him become his property. 
 
 42. If any one take over a field to till it, and obtain no har- 
 vest therefrom, it must be proved that he did no work on the 
 field, and he must deliver grain, just as his neighbor raised, to 
 the owner of the field. 
 
 43. If he do not till the field, but let it lie fallow, he shall 
 give grain like his neighbor's to the owner of the field, and the 
 field which he let lie fallow he must plow and sow and return 
 to its owner. 
 
 44. If any one take over a waste-lying field to make it ara- 
 ble, but is lazy, and does not make it arable, he shall plow the 
 fallow field in the fourth year, harrow it and till it, and give it 
 back to its owner and for each ten gan [a measure of area] ten 
 gur [dry measure] of grain shall be paid. 
 
 45. If a man rent his field for tillage for a fixed rental, and 
 receive the rent of his field, but bad weather come and destroy 
 the harvest, the injury falls upon the tiller of the soil. 
 
 46. If he do not receive a fixed rental for his field, but lets 
 it on half or third shares of the harvest, the grain on the field 
 shall be divided proportionately between the tiller and the 
 owner. 
 
 47. If the tiller, because he did not succeed in the first 
 year, has had the soil tilled by others, the owner may raise no 
 objection; the field has been cultivated and he receives the 
 harvest according to agreement. 
 
 48. If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates 
 the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for
 
 22 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any 
 grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water [a symbolic action 
 indicating the inability to pay] and pays no rent for this 
 year. 
 
 49. If any one take money from a merchant, and give the 
 merchant a field tillable for corn or sesame and order him to 
 plant corn or sesame in the field, and to harvest the crop ; if 
 the cultivator plant corn or sesame in the field, at the harvest 
 the corn or sesame that is in the field shall belong to the owner 
 of the field and he shall pay corn as rent, for the money he re- 
 ceived from the merchant, and the livelihood of the cultivator 
 shall he give to the merchant. 
 
 50. If he give a cultivated corn-field or a cultivated sesame- 
 field, the corn or sesame in the field shall belong to the owner 
 of the field, and he shall return the money to the merchant as 
 rent. 
 
 51. If he have no money to repay, then he shall pay in corn 
 or sesame in place of the money as rent for what he received 
 from the merchant, according to the royal tariff. 
 
 52. If the cultivator do not plant corn or sesame in the 
 field, the debtor's contract is not weakened. 
 
 53. If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condi- 
 tion, and does not so keep it ; if then the dam break and all the 
 fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred 
 be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which 
 he has caused to be ruined. 
 
 54. If he be not able to replace the corn, then he and his 
 possessions shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he 
 has flooded. 
 
 55. If any one open his ditches to water his crop, but is 
 careless, and the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he 
 shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss. 
 
 56. If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the 
 plantation of his neighbor, he shall pay ten gur of corn for 
 every ten gan of land. 
 
 57- If a shepherd, without the permission of the owner of 
 
 ield, and without the knowledge of the owner of the sheep, 
 
 ets the sheep into a field to graze, then the owner of the field 
 
 shall harvest his crop, and the shepherd, who had pastured his
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 23 
 
 flock there without permission of the owner of the field, shall 
 pay to the owner twenty gur of corn for every ten gan. 
 
 58. If after the flocks have left the pasture and been shut 
 up in the common fold at the city gate, any shepherd let them 
 into a field and they graze there, this shepherd shall take 
 possession of the field which he has allowed to be grazed on, 
 and at the harvest he must pay sixty gur of corn for every ten 
 gan. 
 
 59. If any man, without the knowledge of the owner of a 
 garden, fell a tree in a garden he shall pay half a mina in 
 money. 
 
 60. If any one give over a field to a gardener, for him to 
 plant it as a garden, if he work at it, and care for it for four 
 years, in the fifth year the owner and the gardener shall divide 
 it, the owner taking his part in charge. 
 
 61. If the gardener has not completed the planting of the 
 field, leaving one part unused, this shall be assigned to him as 
 his. 
 
 62. If he do not plant the field that was given over to him 
 as a garden, if it be arable land [for corn or sesame] the gar- 
 dener shall pay the owner the produce of the field for the years 
 that he let it lie fallow, according to the product of neighbor- 
 ing fields, put the field in arable condition and return it to its 
 owner. 
 
 63. If he transform waste land into arable fields and return 
 it to its owner, the latter shall pay him for one year ten gur for 
 ten gan. 
 
 64. If any one hand over his garden to a gardener to work, 
 the gardener shall pay to its owner two-thirds of the produce of 
 the garden, for so long as he has it in possession, and the other 
 third shall he keep. 
 
 65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the prod- 
 uct fall off, the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neigh- 
 boring gardens. 
 
 [Here a portion of the text is missing, apparently compris- 
 ing thirty-five paragraphs.] 
 
 100. . . . interest for the money, as much as he has re- 
 ceived, he shall give a note therefor, and on the day, when 
 they settle, pay to the merchant.
 
 24 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 101. If there are no mercantile arrangements in the 
 place whither he went, he shall leave the entire amount of 
 money which he received with the broker to give to the 
 
 merchant. 
 
 102. If a merchant intrust money to an agent [broker] for 
 some investment, and the broker surfer a loss in the place to 
 which he goes, he shall make good the capital to the merchant. 
 
 103. If, while on the journey, an enemy take away from 
 him anything that he had, the broker shall swear by God [take 
 an oath] and be free of obligation. 
 
 104. If a merchant give an agent corn, wool, oil or any 
 other goods to transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the 
 amount, and compensate the merchant therefor. Then he 
 shall obtain a receipt from the merchant for the money that 
 he gives the merchant. 
 
 105. If the agent is careless, and does not take a receipt 
 for the money which he gave the merchant, he cannot consider 
 the unreceipted money as his own. 
 
 106. If the agent accept money from the merchant, but 
 have a quarrel with the merchant [denying the receipt], then 
 shall the merchant swear before God and witnesses that he has 
 given this money to the agent, and the agent shall pay him 
 three times the sum. 
 
 107. If the merchant cheat the agent, in that as the latter 
 has returned to him all that had been given him, but the mer- 
 chant denies the receipt of what had been returned to him, 
 then shall this agent convict the merchant before God and the 
 judges, and if he still deny receiving what the agent had given 
 him shall pay six times the sum to the agent. 
 
 108. If a tavern-keeper [feminine] does not accept corn ac- 
 cording to gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, 
 and the price of the drink is less than that of the corn, she shall 
 be convicted and thrown into the water. 
 
 109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, 
 and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the 
 court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death. 
 
 1 10. If a " sister of a god " [one devoted to the temple] 
 open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman 
 be burned to death.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 25 
 
 in. If an inn-keeper furnish sixty ka of usakani-dnnk 
 to .... she shall receive fifty ka of corn at the harvest. 
 
 112. If any one be on a journey and intrust silver, gold, 
 precious stones, or any movable property to another, and wish 
 to recover it from him; if the latter do not bring all of the 
 property to the appointed place, but appropriate it to his own 
 use, then shall this man, who did not bring the property to 
 hand it over be convicted, and he shall pay fivefold for all 
 that had been intrusted to him. 
 
 113. If any one have a consignment of corn or money, and 
 he take from the granary or box, without the knowledge of the 
 owner, then shall he who took corn without the knowledge of 
 the owner out of the granary or money out of the box be 
 legally convicted, and repay the corn he has taken. And he 
 shall lose whatever commission was paid to him, or due him. 
 
 114. If a man have no claim on another for corn and 
 money, and try to demand it by force, he shall pay one-third 
 of a mina of silver in every case. 
 
 115. If any one have a claim for corn or money upon an- 
 other and imprison him; if the prisoner die in prison a natural 
 death, the case shall go no further. 
 
 116. If the prisoner die in prison from blows or maltreat- 
 ment, the master of the prisoner shall convict the merchant 
 before the judge. If he was a free-born man, the son of the 
 merchant shall be put to death ; if it was a slave, he shall pay 
 one-third of a mina of gold, and all that the master of the 
 prisoner gave he shall forfeit. 
 
 117. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and sell him- 
 self, his wife, his son and daughter for money or give them 
 away to forced labor: they shall work for three years in the 
 house of the man who bought them or the proprietor and in 
 the fourth year they shall be set free. 
 
 1 1 8. If he give a male or female slave away for forced 
 labor, and the merchant sublease them, or sell them for money, 
 no objection can be raised. 
 
 119. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and he sell 
 the maid servant who has borne him children, for money, the 
 money which the merchant has paid shall be repaid to him by 
 the owner of the slave and she shall be freed.
 
 26 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 120. If any one store corn for safe keeping in another per- 
 son's house, and any harm happen to the corn in storage, or if 
 the owner of the house open the granary and take some of the 
 corn, or if especially he deny that the corn was stored in his 
 house : then the owner of the corn shall claim his corn before 
 God [on oath], and the owner of the house shall pay its owner 
 for all of the corn that he took.. 
 
 121. If any one store corn in another man's house he shall 
 pay him storage at the rate of one gur for every five ka of corn 
 per year, 
 
 122. If any one give another silver, gold or anything else to 
 keep, he shall show everything to some witness, draw up a con- 
 tract, and then hand it over for safe keeping. 
 
 123. If he turn it over for safe keeping without witness or 
 contract, and if he to whom it was given deny it, then he has 
 no legitimate claim. 
 
 124. If any one deliver silver, gold or anything else to an- 
 other for safe keeping, before a witness, but he deny it, he 
 shall be brought before a judge, and all that he has denied he 
 shall pay in full. 
 
 125. If any one place his property with another for safe 
 keeping, and there, either through thieves or robbers, his prop- 
 erty and the property of the other man be lost, the owner of 
 the house, through whose neglect the loss took place, shall 
 compensate the owner for all that was given to him in charge. 
 But the owner of the house shall try to follow up and recover 
 his property, and take it away from the thief. 
 
 126. If any one who has not lost his goods, state that they 
 have been lost, and make false claims : if he claim his goods 
 and amount of injury before God, even though he has not lost 
 them, he shall be fully compensated for all his loss claimed [i.e., 
 the oath is all that is needed]. 
 
 127. If any one point the finger [slander] at a sister of a 
 god or the wife of any one, and cannot prove it, this man shall 
 be taken before the judges and his brow shall be marked [by 
 cutting the skin, or perhaps hair]. 
 
 128. If a man take a woman to wife, but have no inter- 
 course with her, this woman is no wife to him. 
 
 129. If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 27 
 
 shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may 
 pardon his wife and the king his slaves. 
 
 1 30. If a man violate the wife [betrothed or child-wife] of 
 another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in 
 her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this 
 man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless. 
 
 131. If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is 
 not surprised with another man \delitflagrant is necessary for 
 divorce], she must take an oath and then may return to her 
 house. 
 
 132. If the "finger is pointed " at a man's wife about an- 
 other man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, 
 she shall jump into the river for her husband [prove her inno- 
 cence by this test]. 
 
 133. If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sus- 
 tenance in his house, but his wife leave house and court, and go 
 to another house : because this wife did not keep her court, and 
 went to another house, she shall be judicially condemned and 
 thrown into the water. 
 
 1 34. If any one be captured in war and there is no susten- 
 ance in his house, if then his wife go to another house, this 
 woman shall be held blameless. 
 
 135. If a man be taken prisoner in war and there be no sus- 
 tenance in his house and his wife go to another house and bear 
 children ; and if later her husband return and come to his home : 
 then this wife shall return to her husband, but the children fol- 
 low their father. 
 
 1 36. If any one leave his house, run away, and then his wife 
 go to another house, if then he return, and wishes to take his 
 wife back : because he fled from his home and ran away, the 
 wife of this runaway shall not return to her husband. 
 
 1 37. If a man wish to separate from a woman who has borne 
 him children, or from his wife who has borne him children : 
 then he shall give that wife her dowry, and a part of the usu- 
 fruct of field, garden and property, so that she can rear her 
 children. When she has brought up her children, a portion of 
 all that is given to the children, equal as that of one son, shall 
 be given to her. She may then marry the man of her heart. 
 
 138. If a man wishes to separate from his wife who has
 
 28 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 borne him no children, he shall give her the amount of her pur. 
 chase money [amount formerly paid to the bride's father] and 
 the dowry which she brought from her father's house, and let 
 
 her go. 
 
 139. If there was no purchase price he shall give her one 
 
 mina of gold as a gift of release. 
 
 140. If he be a freed man he shall give her one-third of a 
 mina of gold. 
 
 141. If a man's wife, who lives in his house, wishes to leave 
 it, plunges into debt, tries to ruin her house, neglects her hus- 
 band, and is judicially convicted: if her husband offer her re- 
 lease, she may go on her way, and he gives her nothing as a 
 gift of release. If her husband does not wish to release her, 
 and if he take another wife, she shall remain as servant in her 
 husband's house. 
 
 142. If a woman quarrel with her husband, and say : " You 
 are not congenial to me," the reasons for her prejudice must be 
 presented. If she is guiltless, and there is no fault on her 
 part, but he leaves and neglects her, then no guilt attaches to 
 this woman, she shall take her dowry and go back to her 
 father's house. 
 
 143. If she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and 
 ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be 
 cast into the water. 
 
 144. If a man take a wife and this woman give her husband 
 a maid-servant, and she bear him children, but this man wishes 
 to take another wife, this shall not be permitted to him ; he 
 shall not take a second wife. 
 
 145. If a man take a wife, and she bear him no children, 
 and he intend to take another wife : if he take this second wife, 
 and bring her into the house, this second wife shall not be al- 
 lowed equality with his wife. 
 
 146. If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid 
 servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid- 
 assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him chil- 
 dren her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep 
 her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants. 
 
 147- If she have not borne him children, then her mistress 
 may sell her for money.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 29 
 
 148. If a man take a wife, and she be seized by disease, if 
 he then desire to take a second wife he shall not put away his 
 wife, who has been attacked by disease, but he shall keep her 
 in the house which he has built and support her so long as she 
 lives. 
 
 149. If this woman does not wish to remain in her hus- 
 band's house, then he shall compensate her for the dowry that 
 she brought with her from her father's house, and she may go. 
 
 150. If a man give his wife a field, garden and house and a 
 deed therefor, if then after the death of her husband the sons 
 raise no claim, then the mother may bequeath all to one of her 
 sons whom she prefers, and need leave nothing to his brothers. 
 
 151. If a woman who lived in a man's house, made an agree- 
 ment with her husband, that no creditor can arrest her, and 
 has given a document therefor : if that man, before he married 
 that woman, had a debt, the creditor cannot hold the woman 
 for it. But if the woman, before she entered the man's house, 
 had contracted a debt, her creditor cannot arrest her husband 
 therefor. 
 
 152. If after the woman had entered the man's house, both 
 contracted a debt, both must pay the merchant. 
 
 153. If the wife of one man on account of another man has 
 their mates [her husband and the other man's wife] murdered, 
 both of them shall be impaled. 
 
 154. If a man be guilty of incest with his daughter, he shall 
 be driven from the place [exiled]. 
 
 155. If a man betroth a girl to his son, and his son have in- 
 tercourse with her, but he [the father] afterward defile her, 
 and be surprised, then he shall be bound and cast into the water 
 [drowned]. 
 
 156. If a man betroth a girl to his son, but his son has not 
 known her, and if then he defile her, he shall pay her half a 
 gold mina, and compensate her for all that she brought out of 
 her father's house. She may marry the man of her heart. 
 
 157. If any one be guilty of incest with his mother after his 
 father, both shall be burned. 
 
 158. If any one be surprised after his father with his chief 
 wife, who has borne children, he shall be driven out of his 
 father's house.
 
 3 o COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 159. If any one, who has brought chattels into his father- 
 in-law's house, and has paid the purchase-money, looks for an- 
 other wife, and says to his father-in-law: " I do not want your 
 daughter," the girl's father may keep all that he had brought. 
 
 1 60. If a man bring chattels into the house of his father- 
 in-law, and pay the "purchase price" [for his wife]: if then 
 the father of the girl say: "I will not give you my daughter," 
 he shall give him back all that he brought with him. 
 
 161. If a man bring chattels into his father-in-law's house 
 and pay the " purchase price," if then his friend slander him, 
 and his father-in-law say to the young husband : " You shall 
 not marry my daughter," then he shall give back to him undi- 
 minished all that he had brought with him ; but his wife shall 
 not be married to the friend. 
 
 162. If a man marry a woman, and she bear sons to him; if 
 then this woman die, then shall her father have no claim on 
 her dowry; this belongs to her sons. 
 
 163. If a man marry a woman and she bear him no sons ; if 
 then this woman die, if the " purchase price " which he had 
 paid into the house of his father-in-law is repaid to him, her 
 husband shall have no claim upon the dowry of this woman ; it 
 belongs to her father's house. 
 
 164. If his father-in-law do not pay back to him the amount 
 of the " purchase price " he may subtract the amount of the 
 " purchase price " from the dowry, and then pay the remainder 
 to her father's house. 
 
 165. If a man give to one of his sons whom he prefers, a 
 field, garden and house and a deed therefor : if later the father 
 die, and the brothers divide [the estate], then they shall first 
 give him the present of his father, and he shall accept it ; and 
 the rest of the paternal property shall they divide. 
 
 1 66. If a man take wives for his sons, but take no wife for 
 his minor son, and if then he die : if the sons divide the estate, 
 they shall set aside besides his portion the money for the " pur- 
 chase price " for the minor brother who had taken no wife as 
 yet, and secure a wife for him. 
 
 167. If a man marry a wife and she bear him children: if 
 this wife die and he then take another wife and she bear him 
 children : if then the father die, the sons must not partition
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 31 
 
 the estate according to the mothers, they shall divide the dow- 
 ries of their mothers only in this way ; the paternal estate they 
 shall divide equally with one another. 
 
 1 68. If a man wish to put his son out of his house, and de- 
 clare before the judge: "I want to put my son out," then the 
 judge shall examine into his reasons. If the son be guilty of 
 no great fault, for which he can be rightfully put out, the 
 father shall not put him out. 
 
 169. If he be guilty of a grave fault, which should rightfully 
 deprive him of the filial relationship, the father shall forgive 
 him the first time ; but if he be guilty of a grave fault a second 
 time the father may deprive his son of all filial relation. 
 
 1 70. If his wife bear sons to a man, or his maid-servant have 
 borne sons, and the father while still living says to the children 
 whom his maid-servant has borne : " My sons," and he count 
 them with the sons of his wife ; if then the father die, then the 
 sons of the wife and of the maid-servant shall divide the pater- 
 nal property in common. The son of the wife is to partition 
 and choose. 
 
 171. If, however, the father while still living did not say to 
 the sons of the maid-servant: " My sons," and then the father 
 dies, then the sons of the maid-servant shall not share with the 
 sons of the wife, but the freedom of the maid and her sons 
 shall be granted. The sons of the wife shall have no right to 
 enslave the sons of the maid ; the wife shall take her dowry 
 [from her father], and the gift that her husband gave her and 
 deeded to her [separate from dowry, or the purchase money 
 paid her father], and live in the home of her husband : so long 
 as she lives she shall use it, it shall not be sold for money. 
 Whatever she leaves shall belong to her children. 
 
 172. If her husband made her no gift, she shall be compen- 
 sated for her gift, and she shall receive a portion from the 
 estate of her husband, equal to that of one child. If her sons 
 oppress her, to force her out of the house, the judge shall ex- 
 amine into the matter, and if the sons are at fault the woman 
 shall not leave her husband's house. If the woman desire to 
 leave the house, she must leave to her sons the gift which her 
 husband gave her, but she may take the dowry of her father's 
 house. Then she may marry the man of her heart.
 
 32 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 173. If this woman bear sons to her second husband, in 
 the place to which she went, and then die, her earlier and later 
 sons shall divide the dowry between them. 
 
 174. If she bear no sons to her second husband, the sons 
 of her first husband shall have the dowry. 
 
 175. If a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry the 
 daughter of a free man, and children are born, the master of 
 the slave shall have no right to enslave the children of the 
 free. 
 
 176. If, however, a state slave or the slave of a freed man 
 marry a man's daughter, and after he married her she bring a 
 dowry from a father's house, if then they both enjoy it and 
 found a household, and accumulate means, if then the slave die, 
 then she who was free born may take her dowry, and all that 
 her husband and she had earned ; she shall divide them into 
 two parts, one-half the master for the slave shall take, and the 
 other half shall the free-born woman take for her children. If 
 the free-born woman had no gift she shall take all that her hus- 
 band and she had earned and divide it into two parts ; and the 
 master of the slave shall take one-half and she shall take the 
 other for her children. 
 
 177. If a widow, whose children are not grown, wishes to 
 enter another house [remarry], she shall not enter it without 
 the knowledge of the judge. If she enter another house the 
 judge shall examine the estate of the house of her first hus- 
 band. Then the house of her first husband shall be intrusted 
 to the second husband and the woman herself as managers. 
 And a record must be made thereof. She shall keep the 
 house in order, bring up the children, and not sell the house- 
 hold utensils. He who buys the utensils of the children of a 
 widow shall lose his money, and the goods shall return to their 
 owners. 
 
 178. If a "devoted woman" or a prostitute [connected 
 with the temple neither can marry] to whom her father has 
 given a dowry and a deed therefor, but if in this deed it is not 
 stated that she may bequeath it as she pleases, and has not ex- 
 plicitly stated that she has the right of disposal; if then her 
 
 ither die, then her brothers shall hold her field and garden, 
 and give her corn, oil and milk according to her portion, and
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 33 
 
 satisfy her. If her brothers do not give her corn, oil and milk 
 according to her share, then her field and garden shall be given 
 to a farmer whom she chooses and the farmer shall support 
 her. She shall have the usufruct of field and garden and all 
 that her father gave her so long as she lives, but she cannot 
 sell or assign it to others. Her position of inheritance belongs 
 to her brothers. 
 
 179. If a " sister of a god " [whose hire went to the revenue 
 of the temple, counterpart to the public prostitute], or a pros- 
 titute, receive a gift from her father, and a deed in which it 
 has been explicitly stated that she may dispose of it as she 
 pleases, and give her complete disposition thereof : if then her 
 father die, then she may leave her property to whomsoever she 
 pleases. Her brothers can raise no claim thereto. 
 
 1 80. If a father give a present to his daughter either mar- 
 riageable or a prostitute [unmarriageable] and then die, then 
 she is to receive a portion as a child from the paternal estate, 
 and enjoy its usufruct so long as she lives. Her estate belongs 
 to her brothers. 
 
 181. If a father devote a temple-maid or temple-virgin to 
 God and give her no present : if then the father die, she shall 
 receive the third of a child's portion from the inheritance of 
 her father's house, and enjoy its usufruct so long as she lives. 
 Her estate belongs to her brothers. 
 
 182. If a father devote his daughter as a wife of Marduk of 
 Babylon [as in 181], and give her no present, nor a deed; if 
 then her father die, then shall she receive one-third of her por- 
 tion as a child of her father's house from her brothers, but she 
 shall not have the management thereof. A wife of Marduk 
 may leave her estate to whomsoever she wishes. 
 
 183. If a man give his daughter by a concubine a dowry, 
 and a husband, and a deed ; if then her father die, she shall re- 
 ceive no portion from the paternal estate. 
 
 184. If a man do not give a dowry to his daughter by a con- 
 cubine, and no husband ; if then her father die then her brother 
 shall give her a dowry according to her father's wealth and 
 secure a husband for her. 
 
 185. If a man adopt a child and to his name as son, and 
 rear him, this grown son cannot be demanded back again. 
 
 E., VOL. i. 3
 
 34 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 1 86. If a man adopt a son, and if after he has taken him he 
 injure his foster father and mother, then this adopted son shall 
 return to his father's house. 
 
 187. The son of a paramour in the palace service, or of a 
 prostitute, cannot be demanded back. 
 
 1 88. If an artisan has undertaken to rear a child and teaches 
 him his craft, he cannot be demanded back. 
 
 189. If he has not taught him his craft, this adopted son 
 may return to his father's house. 
 
 190. If a man does not maintain a child that he has adopted 
 as son and reared with his other children, then his adopted son 
 may return to his father's house. 
 
 191. If a man, who had adopted a son and reared him, 
 founded a household, and had children, wish to put this adopted 
 son out, then this son shall not simply go his way. His adopt- 
 ive father shall give him of his wealth one-third of a child's 
 portion, and then he may go. He shall not give him of the 
 field, garden and house. 
 
 192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adopt- 
 ive father or mother: " You are not my father, or my mother," 
 his tongue shall be cut off. 
 
 193. If the son of a paramour or a prostitute desire his 
 father's house, and desert his adoptive father and adoptive 
 mother, and goes to his father's house, then shall his eye be 
 put out. 
 
 194. If a man give his child to a nurse and the child die in 
 her hands, but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother 
 nurse another child, then they shall convict her of having 
 nursed another child without the knowledge of the father and 
 mother and her breasts shall be cut off. 
 
 195- If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off. 
 
 196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall 
 be put out. 
 
 197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be 
 broken. 
 
 198. If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the 
 bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina. 
 
 199- If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the 
 bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 3* 
 
 200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth 
 shall be knocked out 
 
 201. If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay 
 one-third of a gold mina. 
 
 202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank 
 than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-hide whip in 
 public. 
 
 203. If a free-born man strike the body of another free- 
 born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina. 
 
 204. If a freed man strike the body of another freed man, 
 he shall pay ten shekels in money. 
 
 205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed 
 man, his ear shall be cut off. 
 
 206. If during a quarrel one man strike another and wound 
 him, then he shall swear, " I did not injure him wittingly," and 
 pay the physician. 
 
 207. If the man die of his wound, he shall swear similarly, 
 and if he [the deceased] was a free-born man, he shall pay 
 half a mina in money. 
 
 208. If he was a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a 
 mina. 
 
 209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose 
 her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss. 
 
 210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death. 
 
 211. If a woman of the freed class lose her child by a blow, 
 he shall pay five shekels in money. 
 
 212. If this woman die, he shall pay half a mina. 
 
 213. If he strike the maid-servant of a man, and she lose 
 her child, he shall pay two shekels in money. 
 
 214. If this maid-servant die, he shall pay one-third of a 
 mina. 
 
 215. If a physician make a large incision with a operating 
 knife and cure it, or if he open a tumor [over the eye] with an 
 operating knife, and saves the eye, he shall receive ten shekels 
 in money. 
 
 216. If the patient be a freed man, he receives five shekels. 
 
 217. If he be the slave of some one, his owner shall give the 
 physician two shekels. 
 
 2 1 8. If a physician make a large incision with the operat-
 
 3 6 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 ing knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating 
 knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off. 
 
 219. If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a 
 freed man, and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another 
 slave. 
 
 220. If he had opened a tumor with the operating knife, 
 and put out his eye, he shall pay half his value. 
 
 221. If a physician heal the broken bone or diseased soft 
 part of a man, the patient shall pay the physician five shekels 
 in money. 
 
 222. If he were a freed man he shall pay three shekels. 
 
 223. If he were a slave his owner shall pay the physician 
 two shekels. 
 
 224. If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation on 
 an ass or an ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the surgeon 
 one-sixth of a shekel as fee. 
 
 225. If he perform a serious operation on an ass or ox, and 
 kill it, he shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value. 
 
 226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut 
 the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this 
 barber shall be cut off. 
 
 227. If any one deceive a barber, and have him mark a 
 slave not for sale with the sign of a slave, he shall be put to 
 death, and buried in his house. The barber shall swear: "I 
 did not mark him wittingly," and shall be guiltless. 
 
 228. If a builder build a house for some one and complete 
 it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each 
 sar of surface. 
 
 229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not 
 construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and 
 kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. 
 
 230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder 
 shall be put to death. 
 
 231. If it kill a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave 
 for slave to the owner of the house. 
 
 232. If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all 
 that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct 
 properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall reerect 
 the house from his own means.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 37 
 
 233. If a builder build a house for some one, even though 
 he has not yet completed it ; if then the walls seem toppling, 
 the builder must make the walls solid from his own means. 
 
 234. If a shipbuilder build a boat of sixty gur for a man, 
 he shall pay him a fee of two shekels in money. 
 
 235. If a shipbuilder build a boat for some one, and do not 
 make it tight, if during that same year that boat is sent away 
 and suffers injury, the shipbuilder shall take the boat apart and 
 put it together tight at his own expense. The tight boat he 
 shall "give to the boat owner. 
 
 236. If a man rent his boat to a sailor, and the sailor is 
 careless, and the boat is wrecked or goes aground, the sailor 
 shall give the owner of the boat another boat as compensa- 
 tion. 
 
 237. If a man hire a sailor and his boat, and provide it with 
 corn, clothing, oil and dates, and other things of the kind 
 needed for fitting it: if the sailor is careless, the boat is 
 wrecked, and its contents ruined, then the sailor shall compen- 
 sate for the boat which was wrecked and all in it that he ruined. 
 
 238. If a sailor wreck any one's ship, but saves it, he shall 
 pay the half of its value in money. 
 
 239. If a man hire a sailor, he shall pay him six gur of corn 
 per year. 
 
 240. If a merchantman run against a ferryboat, and wreck 
 it, the master of the ship that was wrecked shall seek justice 
 before God ; the master of the merchantman, which wrecked 
 the ferryboat, must compensate the owner for the boat and all 
 that he ruined. 
 
 241. If any one impresses an ox for forced labor, he shall 
 pay one-third of a mina in money. 
 
 242. If any one hire oxen for a year, he shall pay iaux gur 
 of corn for plow-oxen. 
 
 243. As rent of herd cattle he shall pay three guroi. corn 
 to the owner. 
 
 244. If any one hire an ox or an ass, and a lion kill it in 
 the field, the loss is upon its owner. 
 
 245. If any one hire oxen, and kill them by bad treatment 
 or blows, he shall compensate the owner, oxen for oxen. 
 
 246. If a man hire an ox, and he break its leg or cut the
 
 3 8 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 ligament of its neck, he shall compensate the owner with ox 
 
 for ox. 
 
 247. If any one hire an ox, and put out its eye, he shall pay 
 the owner one-half of its value. 
 
 248. If any one hire an ox, and break off a horn, or cut off 
 its tail or hurt its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its value 
 in money. 
 
 249. If any one hire an ox, and God strike it that it die, 
 the man who hired it shall swear by God and be considered 
 guiltless. 
 
 250. If while an ox is passing on the street [market ?] some 
 one push it, and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the 
 suit [against the hirer]. 
 
 251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it is shown that he is a 
 gorer, and he do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and 
 the ox gore a free-born man and kill him, the owner shall pay 
 one-half a mina hi money. 
 
 252. If he kill a man's slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina. 
 
 253. If any one agree with another to tend his field, give 
 him seed, intrust a yoke of oxen to him, and bind him to culti- 
 vate the field, if he steal the corn or plants, and take them for 
 himself, his hands shall be hewn off. 
 
 254. If he take the seed-corn for himself, and do not use 
 the yoke of oxen, he shall compensate him for the amount of 
 the seed-corn. 
 
 255. If he sublet the man's yoke of oxen or steal the seed- 
 corn, planting nothing in the field, he shall be convicted, and 
 for each one hundred gan he shall pay sixty gur of corn. 
 
 256. If his community will not pay for him, then he shall 
 be placed in that field with the cattle [at work]. 
 
 257. If any one hire a field laborer, he shall pay him eight 
 gur of corn per year. 
 
 258. If any one hire an ox-driver, he shall pay him six gur 
 of corn per year. 
 
 259. If any one steal a water-wheel from the field, he shall 
 pay five shekels in money to its owner. 
 
 260. If any one steal a shadduf [used to draw water from 
 the river or canal] or a plow, he shall pay three shekels in 
 money.
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 39 
 
 261. If any one hire a herdsman for cattle or sheep, he 
 shall pay him eight gur of corn per annum. 
 
 262. If any one, a cow or a sheep .;.... [broken off]. 
 
 263. If he kill the cattle or sheep that were given to him, 
 he shall compensate the owner with cattle for cattle and sheep 
 for sheep. 
 
 264. If a herdsman, to whom cattle or sheep have been in- 
 trusted for watching over, and who has received his wages as 
 agreed upon, and is satisfied, diminish the number of the cat- 
 tle or sheep, or make the increase by birth less, he shall make 
 good the increase and profit which was lost in the terms of set- 
 tlement. 
 
 265. If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have 
 been intrusted, be guilty of fraud and make false returns of 
 the natural increase, or sell them for money, then shall he be 
 convicted and pay the owner ten times the loss. 
 
 266. If the animal be killed in the stable by God [an acci- 
 dent], or if a lion kill it, the herdsman shall declare his inno- 
 cence before God, and the owner bears the accident in the 
 stable^ 
 
 267. If the herdsman overlook something, and an accident 
 happen in the stable, then the herdsman is at fault for the ac- 
 cident which he has caused in the stable, and he must compen- 
 sate the owner for the cattle or sheep. 
 
 268. If any one hire an ox for threshing, the amount of the 
 hire is twenty ka of corn. 
 
 269. If he hire an ass for threshing, the hire is twenty ka 
 of corn. 
 
 270. If he hire a young animal for threshing, the hire is ten 
 ka of corn. 
 
 271. If any one hire oxen, cart and driver, he shall pay one 
 hundred and eighty ka of corn per day. 
 
 272. If any one hire a cart alone, he shall pay forty ka of 
 corn per day. 
 
 273. If any one hire a day laborer, he shall pay him from 
 the New Year until the fifth month [April to August, when 
 days are long and work hard] six gerahs in money per day ; 
 from the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him 
 five gerahs per day.
 
 40 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 274. If any one hire a skilled artisan, he shall pay as wages 
 
 O f the five gerahs, as wages of the potter five gerahs, of 
 
 a tailor five gerahs, of gerahs, of gerahs 
 
 . . . of gerahs, of a carpenter four gerahs, of a rope- 
 maker four gerahs, of gerahs, of a mason gerahs 
 
 per day. 
 
 275. If any one hire a ferryboat, he shall pay three gerahs 
 
 in money per day 
 
 276. If he hire a freight-boat, he shall pay two and one- 
 half gerahs per day. 
 
 277. If any one hire a ship of sixty gur, he shall pay one- 
 sixth of a shekel in money as its hire per day. 
 
 278. If any one buy a male or female slave, and before a 
 month has elapsed the ^-raw-disease be developed, he shall re- 
 turn the slave to the seller, and receive the money which he 
 had paid. 
 
 279. If any one buy a male or female slave, and a third 
 party claim it, the seller is liable for the claim. 
 
 280. If while in a foreign country a man buy a male or 
 female slave belonging to another [of his own country] : if 
 when he return home the owner of the male or female slave 
 recognize it : if the male or female slave be a native of the 
 country, he shall give them back without any money. 
 
 281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall de- 
 clare the amount of money he paid before God, and the owner 
 shall give the money paid therefor to the merchant, and keep 
 the male or female slave. 
 
 282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my mas- 
 ter," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear. 
 
 THE EPILOGUE 
 
 Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, estab- 
 lished. A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the 
 land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I. I have not 
 withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to me, the 
 rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but 
 I made them a peaceful abiding place. I expounded all great 
 difficulties, I made the light shine upon them. With the
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 41 
 
 mighty weapons which Zamama and Ishtar intrusted to me, 
 with the keen vision with which Ea endowed me, with the 
 wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy 
 above and below [in north and south], subdued the earth, 
 brought prosperity to the land, guaranteed security to the 
 inhabitants in their homes; a disturber was not permitted 
 The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing 
 shepherd [ruler], whose staff [sceptre] is straight [just], the 
 good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I 
 cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad 
 [Babylonia] ; in my shelter I have let them repose in peace ; 
 in my deep wisdom have I inclosed them. That the strong 
 might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows 
 and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and Bel 
 raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foun- 
 dations stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak 
 justice in the land, to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, 
 set up these my precious words, written upon my memorial 
 stone, before the image of me, as king of righteousness. 
 
 The king who ruleth among the kings of the cities am I. 
 My words are well considered ; there is no wisdom like unto 
 mine. By the command of Shamash [the sun-god], the great 
 judge of heaven and earth, let righteousness go forth in the 
 land : by the order of Marduk, my lord, let no destruction be- 
 fall my monument. In E-Sagil, which I love, let my name be 
 ever repeated ; let the oppressed, who has a case at law, come 
 and stand before this my image as king of righteousness ; let 
 him read the inscription, and understand my precious words : 
 the inscription will explain his case to him ; he will find out 
 what is just, and his heart will be glad [so that he will 
 say]: 
 
 " Hammurabi is a ruler, who is as a father to his subjects, who 
 holds the words of Marduk in reverence, who has achieved con- 
 quest for Marduk over the north and south, who rejoices the 
 heart of Marduk, his lord, who has bestowed benefits forever 
 and ever on his subjects, and has established order in the land." 
 
 When he reads the record, let him pray with full heart to 
 Marduk, my lord, and Zarpanit, my lady ; and then shall the 
 protecting deities and the gods, who frequent E-Sagil, gra-
 
 4 2 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 ciously grant the desires daily presented before Marduk, my 
 lord, and Zarpanit, my Jady. 
 
 In future time, through all coming generations, let the 
 king, who may be in the land, observe the words of righteous- 
 ness which I have written on my monument ; let him not alter 
 the law of the land which I have given, the edicts which I have 
 enacted ; my monument let him not mar. If such a ruler have 
 wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall observe 
 the words which I have written in this inscription ; the rule, 
 statute and law of the land which I have given ; the decisions 
 which I have made will this inscription show him ; let him rule 
 his subjects accordingly, speak justice to them, give right de- 
 cisions, root out the miscreants and criminals from his land, 
 and grant prosperity to his subjects. 
 
 Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash 
 has conferred right [or law] am I. My words are well consid- 
 ered, my deeds are not equaled, to bring low those that were 
 high, to humble the proud, to expel insolence. If a succeed- 
 ing ruler considers my words, which I have written in this my 
 inscription, if he do not annul my law, nor corrupt my words, 
 nor change my monument, then may Shamash lengthen that 
 king's reign, as he has that of me, the king of righteousness, 
 that he may reign in righteousness over his subjects. If this 
 ruler do not esteem my words, which I have written in my in- 
 scription, if he despise my curses, and fear not the curse of 
 God, if he destroy the law which I have given, corrupt my 
 vords, change my monument, efface my name, write his name 
 there, or on account of the curses commission another so to 
 do, that man, whether king or ruler, patesi [priest-viceroy] or 
 commoner, no matter what he be, may the great God [Ami], 
 the Father of the gods, who has ordered my rule, withdraw 
 from him the glory of royalty, break his sceptre, curse his des- 
 tiny. May Bel, the lord, who fixeth destiny, whose command 
 cannot be altered, who has made my kingdom great, order a 
 rebellion which his hand cannot control ; may he let the wind 
 of the overthrow of his habitation blow, may he ordain the 
 years of his rule in groaning, years of scarcity, years of famine, 
 darkness without light, death with seeing eyes be fated to him ; 
 may he [Bel] order with his potent mouth the destruction of
 
 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 43 
 
 his city, the dispersion of his subjects, the cutting off of his 
 rule, the removal of his name and memory from the land. May 
 Belit, the great Mother, whose command is potent in E-Kur 
 [the Babylonian Olympus], the Mistress, who hearkens gra- 
 ciously to my petitions, in the seat of judgment and decision 
 [where Bel fixes destiny], turn his affairs evil before Bel, and 
 put the devastation of his land, the destruction of his subjects, 
 the pouring out of his life like water into the mouth of King 
 Bel. May Ea, the great ruler, whose fated decrees come to 
 pass, the thinker of the gods, the omniscient, who maketh long 
 the days of my life, withdraw understanding and wisdom from 
 him, lead him to forgetfulness, shut up his rivers at their 
 sources, and not allow corn or sustenance for man to grow 
 in his land. May Shamash, the great Judge of heaven and 
 earth, who supporteth all means of livelihood, Lord of life-cour- 
 age, shatter his dominion, annul his law, destroy his way, 
 make vain the march of his troops, send him in his visions fore- 
 casts of the uprooting of the foundations of his throne and of 
 the destruction of his land. May the condemnation of Sha- 
 mash overtake him forthwith ; may he be deprived of water 
 above among the living, and his spirit below in the earth. May 
 Sin [the moon-god], the Lord of Heaven, the divine father, 
 whose crescent gives light among the gods, take away the 
 crown and regal throne from him ; may he put upon him heavy 
 guilt, great decay, that nothing may be lower than he. May 
 he destine him as fated, days, months and years of dominion 
 filled with sighing and tears, increase of the burden of domin- 
 ion, a life that is like unto death. May Adad, the lord of fruit 
 fulness, ruler of heaven and earth, my helper, withhold froni 
 him rain from heaven, and the flood of water from the springs, 
 destroying his land by famine and want; may he rage mightily 
 over his city, and make his land into flood-hills [heaps of ruined 
 cities]. May Zamama, the great warrior, the first born son of 
 E-Kur, who goeth at my right hand, shatter his weapons on 
 the field of battle, turn day into night for him, and let his foe 
 triumph over him. May Ishtar, the goddess of fighting and 
 war, who unfetters my weapons, my gracious protecting spirit^ 
 who loveth my dominion, curse his kingdom in her angry heart ; 
 in her great wrath, change his grace into evil, and shatter his
 
 44 COMPILATION OF EARLIEST CODE 
 
 weapons on the place of fighting and war. May she create 
 disorder and sedition for him, strike down his warriors, that 
 the earth may drink their blood, and throw down the piles of 
 corpses of his warriors on the field ; may she not grant him a 
 life of mercy, deliver him into the hands of his enemies, and 
 imprison him in the land of his enemies. May Nergal, the 
 mighty among the gods, whose contest is irresistible, who 
 grants me victory, in his great might burn up his subjects like 
 a slender reed-stalk, cut off his limbs with his mighty weapons, 
 and shatter him like an earthen image. May Nin-tu, the sub- 
 lime mistress of the lands, the fruitful mother, deny him a son, 
 vouchsafe him no name, give him no successor among men. 
 May Nin-karak, the daughter of Anu, who adjudges grace to 
 me, cause to come upon his members in E-kur, high fever, 
 severe wounds, that cannot be healed, whose nature the physi- 
 cian does not understand, which he cannot treat with dressing, 
 which, like the bite of death, cannot be removed, until they 
 have sapped away his life. 
 
 May he lament the loss of his life-power, and may the great 
 gods of heaven and earth, the Anunnaki altogether inflict a 
 curse and evil upon the confines of the temple, the walls of 
 this E-barra [the Sun temple of Sippara], upon his dominion, 
 his land, his warriors, his subjects and his troops. May Bel 
 curse him with the potent curses of his mouth that cannot be 
 altered, and may they come upon him forthwith
 
 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 
 
 B.C. 1235 
 
 PLUTARCH 
 
 The founding of the city of Athens, apart from the mythological lore 
 which ascribes its name to Athene", the goddess, is credited by the Greeks 
 to Sais, a native of Egypt. The real founder of Athens, the one who 
 made it a city and kingdom, was Theseus; an unacknowledged illegiti- 
 mate child. The usual myth surrounds his birth and upbringing. 
 
 King JEgeus, of Attica, his father, had an intrigue with ^Ethra. Be- 
 fore leaving, yEgeus informed her that he had hidden his sword and 
 sandals beneath a great stone, hollowed out to receive them. She was 
 charged that should a son be born to them and, on growing to man's 
 estate, be able to lift the stone, ^Ethra must send him to his father, with 
 these things under it, in all secrecy. These happenings were in Troszen, 
 in which place vEgeus had been sojourning. 
 
 All came about as expected. Theseus, the son, lifted the stone, took 
 thence the deposit and departed for Attica, his father's home. On his 
 way Theseus had a number of adventures which proved his prowess, not 
 the least being his encounter with and defeat of Periphetes, the " club- 
 bearer," so called from the weapon he used. 
 
 Theseus had complied with the custom of his country by journeying 
 to Delphi and offering the first-fruits of his hair, then cut for the first 
 time. This first cutting of the hair was always an occasion of solemnity 
 among the Greeks, the hair being dedicated to some god. It will be re- 
 membered that Homer speaks of this hi the Iliad. 
 
 One salient fact must be borne in mind in Grecian history, which is 
 that it was a settled maxim that each city should have an independent 
 sovereignty. " The patriotism of a Greek was confined to his city, and 
 rarely kindled into any general love for the common welfare of Hellas." l 
 
 A Greek citizen of Athens was an alien in any other city of the penin- 
 sula. This political disunion caused the various cities to turn against 
 each other, and laid them open to conquest by the Macedonians. 
 
 A S he [Theseus] proceeded on his way, and reached the river 
 ** Cephisus, men of the Phytalid race were the first to meet 
 and greet him. He demanded to be purified from the guilt of 
 bloodshed, and they purified him, made propitiatory offerings, 
 
 1 Smith. 
 45
 
 4 6 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 
 
 and also entertained him in their houses, being the first persons 
 from whom he had received any kindness on his journey. 
 
 It is said to have been on the eighth day of the month Cro- 
 nion, which is now called Hecatombaion, that he came to his 
 own city. On entering it he found public affairs disturbed by 
 factions, and the house of ^Egeus in great disorder ; for Medea, 
 who had been banished from Corinth, was living with ;geus, 
 and had engaged by her drugs to enable ^Egeus to have chil- 
 dren. She was the first to discover who Theseus was, while 
 JEgeus, who was an old man, and feared every one because of 
 the disturbed state of society, did not recognize him. Conse- 
 quently she advised JEgeus to invite him to a feast, that she 
 might poison him. 
 
 Theseus accordingly came to ^Egeus's table. He did not 
 wish to be the first to tell his name, but, to give his father an 
 opportunity of recognizing him, he drew his sword, as if he 
 meant to cut some of the meat with it, and showed it to ALgeus. 
 JEgtus at once recognized it, overset the cup of poison, looked 
 closely at his son, and embraced him. He then called a public 
 meeting and made Theseus known as his son to the citizens, 
 with whom he was already very popular because of his bravery. 
 It is said that when the cup was overset the poison was spilt in 
 the place where now there is the enclosure in the Delphinium, 
 for there ^Egeus dwelt; and the Hermes to the east of the 
 temple there they call the one who is " at the door of ^Egeus." 
 
 But the sons of Pallas, who had previously to this expected 
 that they would inherit the kingdom on the death of ^Egeus 
 without issue, now that Theseus was declared the heir, were 
 much enraged, first that ^Egeus should be king, a man who was 
 merely an adopted child of Pandion, and had no blood relation- 
 ship to Erechtheus, and next that Theseus, a stranger and a 
 foreigner, should inherit the kingdom. They consequently 
 declared war. 
 
 Dividing themselves into two bodies, the one proceeded to 
 march openly upon the city from Sphettus, under the command 
 of Pallas their father, while the other lay in ambush at Garget- 
 tus, in order that they might fall upon their opponents on two 
 sides at once. But there was a herald among them named 
 Leos, of the township of Agnus, who betrayed the plans of the
 
 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 47 
 
 sons of Pallas to Theseus. He suddenly attacked those who 
 were in ambush, and killed them all, hearing which the other 
 body under Pallas dispersed. From this time forth they say 
 that the township of Pallene has never intermarried with that 
 of Agnus, and that it is not customary amongst them for her- 
 alds to begin a proclamation with the words " Acouete Leo," 
 (Oyez) for they hate the name of Leo because of the treachery 
 of that man. 
 
 Shortly after this the ship from Crete arrived for the third 
 time to collect the customary tribute. Most writers agree that 
 the origin of this was, that on the death of Androgeus, in At- 
 tica, which was ascribed to treachery, his father Minos went to 
 war, and wrought much evil to the country, which at the same 
 time was afflicted by scourges from heaven (for the land did 
 not bear fruit, and there was a great pestilence, and the rivers 
 sank into the earth). 
 
 So that as the oracle told the Athenians that, if they pro- 
 pitiated Minos and came to terms with him, the anger of heaven 
 would cease and they should have a respite from their suffer- 
 ings, they sent an embassy to Minos and prevailed on him to 
 make peace, on the condition that every nine years they should 
 send him a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens. The 
 most tragic of the legends states these poor children when they 
 reached Crete were thrown into the Labyrinth, and there either 
 were devoured by the Minotaur or else perished with hunger, 
 being unable to find the way out. The Minotaur, as Euripides 
 tells us, was 
 
 " A form commingled, and a monstrous birth, 
 Half man, half bull, in twofold shape combined." 
 
 So when the time of the third payment of the tribute ar- 
 rived, and those fathers who had sons not yet grown up had to 
 submit to draw lots, the unhappy people began to revile ^Egeus, 
 complaining that he, although the author of this calamity, yet 
 took no share in their affliction, but endured to see them left 
 childless, robbed of their own legitimate offspring, while he 
 made a foreigner and a bastard the heir to his kingdom. 
 
 This vexed Theseus, and determining not to hold aloof, but 
 to share the fortunes of the people, he came forward and offered
 
 4 8 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 
 
 himself without being drawn by lot. The people all admired 
 his courage and patriotism, and ygeus finding that his prayers 
 and entreaties had no effect on his unalterable resolution, pro- 
 ceeded to choose the rest by lot. Hellanicus says that the city 
 did not select the youths and maidens by lot, but that Minos 
 himself came thither and chose them, and that he picked out 
 Theseus first of all, upon the usual conditions, which were that 
 the Athenians should furnish a ship, and that the youths should 
 embark in it and sail with him, not carrying with them any 
 weapon of war; and that when the Minotaur was slain, the 
 tribute should cease. 
 
 Formerly, no one had any hope of safety ; so they used to 
 send out the ship with a black sail, as if it were going to a cer- 
 tain doom; but now Theseus so encouraged his father, and 
 boasted that he would overcome the Minotaur, that he gave a 
 second sail, a white one, to the steersman, and charged him on 
 his return, if Theseus were safe, to hoist the white one, if not, 
 the black one as a sign of mourning. But Simonides says that 
 it was not a white sail which was given by ygeus, but "a 
 scarlet sail embrued in holm oak's juice," and that this was 
 agreed on by him as the signal of safety. The ship was 
 steered by Phereclus, the son of Amarsyas, according to 
 Simonides. 
 
 When they reached Crete, according to most historians and 
 poets, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus, and from her he re- 
 ceived the clew of string, and was taught how to thread the 
 mazes of the Labyrinth. He slew the Minotaur, and, taking 
 with him Ariadne and the youths, sailed away. Pherecydes 
 also says that Theseus also knocked out the bottoms of the 
 Cretan ships, to prevent pursuit. But Demon says that Tau- 
 rus, Minos' general, was slain in a sea-fight in the harbor, 
 when Theseus sailed away. 
 
 But according to Philochorus, when Minos instituted his 
 games, Taurus was expected to win every prize, and was 
 grudged this honor ; for his great influence and his unpopular 
 manners made him disliked, and scandal said that he was too 
 intimate with Pasiphae. On this account, when Theseus offered 
 to contend with him, Minos agreed. And, as it was the custom 
 in Crete for women as well as men to be spectators of the
 
 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 49 
 
 games, Ariadne was present, and was struck with the appear- 
 ance of Theseus, and his strength, as he conquered all compet- 
 itors. Minos was especially pleased, in the wrestling match, 
 at Taurus's defeat and shame, and, restoring the children to 
 Theseus, remitted the tribute for the future. 
 
 As he approached Attica, on his return, both he and his 
 steersman in their delight forgot to hoist the sail which was to 
 be a signal of their safety to ^Egeus ; and he in his despair 
 flung himself down the cliffs and perished. Theseus, as soon 
 as he reached the harbor, performed at Phalerum the sacrifices 
 whicn he had vowed to the gods if he returned safe, and sent 
 off a herald to the city with the news of his safe return. 
 
 This man met with many who were lamenting the death of 
 the king, and, as was natural, with others who were delighted 
 at the news of their safety, and who congratulated him and 
 wished to crown him with garlands. These he received, but 
 placed them on his herald's staff, and when he came back to 
 the seashore, finding that Theseus had not completed his liba- 
 tion, he waited outside the temple, not wishing to disturb the 
 sacrifice. When the libation was finished he announced the 
 death of ^Egeus, and then they all hurried up to the city with 
 loud lamentations : wherefore to this day, at the Oschophoria, 
 they say that it is not the herald that is crowned, but his staff, 
 and that at the libations the bystanders cry out, " Eleleu, lou, 
 lou ! " of which cries the first is used by men in haste, or raising 
 the paean for battle, while the second is used by persons in sur- 
 prise and trouble. 
 
 Theseus, after burying his father, paid his vow to Apollo s 
 on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion ; for on this day 
 it was that the rescued youths went up into the city. The boil- 
 ing of pulse, which is customary on this anniversary, is said to 
 be done because the rescued youths put what remained of their 
 pulse together into one pot, boiled it all, and merrily feasted on 
 it together. And on this day also the Athenians carry about 
 the Eiresione, a bough of the olive tree garlanded with wool, 
 just as Theseus had before carried the suppliants' bough, 
 and covered with first-fruits of all sorts of produce, because 
 the barrenness of the land ceased on that day; and they 
 sing, 
 
 E. VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 
 
 Eiresione, bring us figs, 
 
 And wheaten loaves, and oil, 
 And wine to quaff, that we may all 
 Rest merrily from toil." 
 
 However, some say that these ceremonies are performed in 
 memory of the Heracleidae, who were thus entertained by the 
 Athenians; but most writers tell the tale as I have told it. 
 
 After the death of ^Egeus, Theseus conceived a great and 
 important design. He gathered together all the inhabitants of 
 Attica and made them citizens of one city, whereas before they 
 had lived dispersed, so as to be hard to assemble together ior 
 the common weal, and at times even fighting with one another. 
 
 He visited all the villages and tribes, and won their consent, 
 the poor and lower classes gladly accepting his proposals, while 
 he gained over the more powerful by promising that the new 
 constitution should not include a king, but that it should be a 
 pure commonwealth, with himself merely acting as general of 
 its army and guardian of its laws, while in other respects it 
 would allow perfect freedom and equality to every one. By 
 these arguments he convinced some of them, and the rest 
 knowing his power and courage chose rather to be persuaded 
 than forced into compliance. 
 
 He therefore destroyed the prytanea, the senate house, and 
 the magistracy of each individual township, built one common 
 prytaneum and senate house for them all on the site of the 
 present acropolis, called the city Athens, and instituted the 
 Panathenaic festival common to all of them. He also instituted 
 a festival for the resident aliens, on the sixteenth of the month, 
 Hecatombaion, which is still kept up. And having, according 
 to his promise, laid down his sovereign power, he arranged the 
 new constitution under the auspices of the gods ; for he made 
 inquiry at Delphi as to how he should deal with the city, ana 
 received the following answer: 
 
 "Thou son of /Egeus and of Pittheus' maid, 
 My father hath within thy city laid 
 The bounds of many cities; weigh not down 
 Thy soul with thought; the bladder cannot drown.* 
 
 The same thing they say was afterward prophesied by the 
 Sibyl concerning the city, in these words :
 
 THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS 51 
 
 "The bladder may be dipped, but cannot drown." 
 
 Wishing still further to increase the number of his citizens, 
 he invited all strangers to come and share equal privileges, and 
 they say that the words now used, " Come hither all ye peoples," 
 was the proclamation then used by Theseus, establishing as it 
 were a commonwealth of all nations. But he did not permit 
 his state to fall into the disorder which this influx of all kinds 
 of people would probably have produced, but divided the people 
 into three classes, of Eupatridae or nobles, Geomori or farm- 
 ers, Demiurgi or artisans. 
 
 To the Eupatridae he assigned the care of religious rites, the 
 supply of magistrates for the city, and the interpretation of the 
 laws and customs sacred or profane ; yet he placed them on an 
 equality with the other citizens, thinking that the nobles would 
 always excel in dignity, the farmers in usefulness, and the arti- 
 sans in numbers. Aristotle tells us that he was the first who 
 inclined to democracy, and gave up the title of king ; and Homer 
 seems to confirm this view by speaking of the people of the 
 Athenians alone of all the states mentioned in his catalogue of 
 ships. 
 
 Theseus also struck money with the figure of a bull, either 
 alluding to the bull of Marathon, or Taurus, Minos' general, or 
 else to encourage tarming among the citizens. Hence, they say, 
 came the words, " worth ten," or " worth a hundred oxen." He 
 permanently annexed Megara to Attica, and set up the famous 
 pillar on the Isthmus, on which he wrote the distinction be- 
 tween the countries in two trimeter lines, of which the one 
 looking east says, 
 
 "This is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia, 
 and the one looking west says, 
 
 " This is Peloponnesus, not Ionia." 
 
 And also he instituted games there, in emulation of Hera- 
 cles; that, just as Heracles had ordained that the Greeks 
 should celebrate the Olympic games in honor of Zeus, so by 
 Theseus' appointment they should celebrate the Isthmian 
 games in honor of Poseidon.
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 B.C. 1200 
 
 GUSTAVE LE BON ' W. W. HUNTER 
 
 The institution of caste was not peculiar to India. In Rome there 
 was a long struggle over the connubium. Among the Greeks the right 
 of commensality, or eating together, was restricted. In fact, the phe- 
 nomena of caste are world-wide in their extent. In India the priests and 
 nobles contended for the first place. India had progressed along the 
 line of ethnic evolution from a loose confederacy of tribes into several 
 nations, ruled by kings and priests, and the iron fetters of caste were be- 
 coming more rigidly welded. At first the father of the family was the 
 priest. Then the chiefs and sages took the office of spiritual guide, and 
 conducted the sacrifices. As writing was unknown, the liturgies were 
 learned by heart, and handed down in families. The exclusive knowl- 
 edge of the ancient hymns became hereditary, as it were. The minis- 
 trants increased in number, and thus sprang up the powerful priestly 
 caste. 
 
 Then the warrior class arose and grew strong in numbers and power, 
 becoming differentiated from the agriculturists, and forming the military 
 caste. The husbandmen drifted into another caste, and the three orders 
 were rigidly separated by a cessation of intermarriage. 
 
 At the bottom came the Sudras, or slave bands, the servile dregs of 
 the population. In course of time, from various influences, the third 
 class became almost eliminated in many provinces. From the cradle to 
 the grave these cruel barriers still intervene between the strata of the 
 people, relentless as fate and insurmountable as death. 
 
 GUSTAVE LE BON 
 
 T N ancient times the power of kings [in India] was only nomi- 
 nal. In the Aryan village, forming a little republic, the 
 chief, bearing the name of rajah, was secure in his fortress, 
 exercising full sway. Such was the political system prevailing 
 in India through all the ages, and which has always been re- 
 spected by the conquerors, whoever they might be. So, for so 
 
 1 Translated from the French by Chauncey C. Starkweather. 
 52
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 53 
 
 many centuries back we see arise the first elements of an organi- 
 zation which still endures. 
 
 We find here also the beginnings of that system of castes, 
 which, at first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought 
 only to be distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, 
 when it was constituted under the influence of ethnological rea- 
 sons, as to dig fathomless abysses between the races. 
 
 In the Vedas may be traced the progression of the distance 
 between the priests and the warriors, at first slight, and then 
 increasing more and more. The division of functions did not 
 stop there. While the sacrificing priest was consecrating him- 
 self more exclusively day by day to the accomplishment of the 
 sacred rites and to the composition of hymns ; while the war- 
 rior passed his days in adventurous expeditions or daring feats, 
 what would have become of the land and what would it have 
 produced if others had not applied themselves without ceasing, 
 to cultivate >t ? A third class became distinct, the agricultur- 
 ists. 
 
 In one of the last hymns of Rig Veda these three classes 
 appear, absolutely separated and already designated by the 
 three words Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas. 
 
 The fourth class, that of the Sudras, was to arise later and 
 to include the mass of conquered peoples when the latter joined 
 the circle of Aryan civilization. The classes, hitherto min- 
 gling, now became rigidly separated castes. 
 
 The most important of these divisions, and that which was 
 first formed, was the one between the priests and the warriors. 
 The Brahmans, intermediaries between men and the gods, soon 
 became more and more exacting, and finally considered them- 
 selves as entirely superior beings and were accepted as such. 
 
 The distinction between the warriors and the agriculturists 
 also soon became marked, arising doubtless rather from a differ- 
 ence in fortune than in functions. 
 
 The war chief, who returned Jaden with booty, covered him- 
 self with rings of gold, rich vestments, and gleaming arms. He 
 became "rajah," that is to say "shining," for such was the 
 meaning of the word at the Vedic epoch. 
 
 Still no absolute barrier between the classes had arisen. 
 They mingled to offer sacrifices, and sometimes ate in common.
 
 54 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 Heredity of office and profession began to be established. The 
 sacred songs were handed down in families, as were also the 
 functions of the sacrificers. And here among the Vedic 
 Aryans are seen in process of elaboration the germs of the 
 institution which later gained so much power in India and which 
 dominates it still with apparent immutability. 
 
 The system of castes has been the corner-stone of all the 
 institutions of India for two thousand years. Such is its im- 
 portance, and so generally is it misunderstood, that it will be 
 well briefly to explain its origins, sources, and consequences. 
 A system, the result of which is to permit a handful of Euro- 
 peans to hold sway over two hundred and fifty millions of men 
 deserves the attention of the observer. 
 
 The system of castes has existed for more than twenty cen- 
 turies in India. It doubtless had its origin in the recognition 
 of the inevitable laws of heredity. When the white-skinned 
 conquerors, whom we call Aryans, penetrated India, they 
 found, in addition to other invaders of Turanian origin, black, 
 half -savage populations whom they subjugated. The conquerors 
 were half-pastoral, half-stationary tribes, under chiefs whose 
 authority was counterbalanced by the all-powerful influence of 
 the priests whose duty it was to secure the protection of the 
 gods. Their occupations were divided into classes, that of 
 Brahmans or priests, Kchatryas or warriors, and Vaisyas, labor- 
 ers or artisans. The last class was perhaps formed by the in- 
 vaders anterior to the Aryans, whom we have just mentioned. 
 
 These divisions corresponded, as is evident, to our three 
 ancient castes, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. 
 Beneath these classes was the aboriginal population, the Su- 
 dras, forming three quarters of the whole population. 
 
 Experience soon revealed the inconveniences which might 
 rise from the mixture of the superior race with the inferior 
 ones, and all the proscriptions of religion tended thereafter to 
 prevent it. " Every country which gives birth to men of mixed 
 races," said the ancient law-giver of the Hindus, the sage 
 Manu, " is soon destroyed together with those who inhabit it." 
 The decree is harsh, but it is impossible not to recognize its 
 truth. Every superior race which has mingled with another 
 too inferior has speedily been degraded or absorbed by it.
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 55 
 
 The Spaniards in America, the Portuguese in India, are proofs 
 of the sad results produced by such mixtures. The descendants 
 of the brave Portuguese adventurers, who in other days con- 
 quered part of India, fill to-day the employments of servants, 
 and the name of their race has become a term of contempt. 
 
 Imbued with the importance of this anthropological truth, 
 the Code of Manu, which has been the law of India for so many 
 centuries, and which, like all codes, is the result of long ante- 
 rior experiences, neglects nothing to preserve the purity of 
 blood. 
 
 It pronounces severe penalties against all intermingling of 
 the superior castes between themselves, and especially with the 
 caste of the Sudras. There are no frightful threats which it 
 does not employ to keep the latter apart. 
 
 But in the course of the centuries nature triumphed over 
 these formidable prohibitions. Woman always has her charms, 
 no matter how inferior she may be in caste. In spite of Manu, 
 crossings of caste were numerous, and one need not travel India 
 throughout to perceive that, to-day, the populations of all the 
 races are mixed to a large extent. The number of individuals 
 white enough to prove that their blood is quite pure is very 
 restricted. The word caste, taken in its primitive sense, is no 
 longer a synonym of color, as it used to be in Sanscrit, and, if 
 caste had had only formerly prevailing ethnological reasons to 
 invoke, it would have had no reason for continuing. In fact, 
 the primitive divisions of caste have long since disappeared. 
 They were replaced by new divisions, the origin of which is 
 other than the difference of races, except in the case of the 
 Brahmans, who still form the less mixed portion of the popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of 
 castes, the law of heredity has furthermore continued to play a 
 fundamental part. Aptness is inevitably hereditary among the 
 Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son follows the profession of 
 the father. The principle of heredity of the professions being 
 universally admitted, there has resulted the formation of castes 
 as numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India 
 castes are numbered by the thousand. Each new profession 
 has for an immediate consequence the formation of a new caste.
 
 5 6 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 The European who comes to India to live soon perceives to 
 what an extent the castes have multiplied in observing the 
 number of different persons whom he is obliged to hire to wait 
 on him. To the two preceding causes of the formations of 
 castes, the ethnological cause, now very weak, and the profes- 
 sional, which is still very strong, are added political office, and 
 the heterogeneity of religious beliefs. 
 
 The castes springing from political office might, strictly 
 speaking, be placed in the category of professional castes, but 
 those produced by diversity of religious beliefs should be at- 
 tached to none of the preceding causes. In theory, that is, only 
 judged by the reading of books, all India would be divided into 
 two or three great religions only. But practically these re- 
 ligions are very numerous. New gods, considered as simple 
 incarnations of ancient ones, are born and die every day, and 
 their votaries soon form a new caste as rigid in its exclusions as 
 the others. 
 
 Two fundamental signs mark the conformity of castes, and 
 separate from all the others the persons belonging to them. 
 The first is that the individuals of the same caste cannot eat 
 except among themselves. The second is that they can only 
 marry among themselves. 
 
 These two proscriptions are quite fundamental, and the first 
 not less than the second. You may meet by the hundreds in 
 India Brahmans who are employed by the government in the 
 post-office and railway service, or even Brahmans who are beg- 
 gars. But the humble functionary or wretched mendicant 
 would rather die than sit at table with the viceroy of India. 
 
 The quality of Brahmans is hereditary, like a title of nobility 
 in Europe. It is not a synonym of priest, as is generally be- 
 lieved, because it is from this caste that priests are recruited. 
 This caste was formerly so exalted that the rank of royalty was 
 not sufficient to enable one to aspire to the hand of a Brahman's 
 daughter. 
 
 The Hindu would rather die than violate the laws of his 
 caste. Nothing is more terrible than for him to lose it. Such 
 loss may be compared to excommunication in the middle ages, 
 or to a condemnation for an infamous crime in modern Europe. 
 To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, re-
 
 57 
 
 lations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon the culprit 
 and refuses to have any dealings with him. He must enter the 
 casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject 
 functions. 
 
 As to the social and political consequences of such a system, 
 the only social bond among the Hindus is caste. Outside of 
 caste the world does not exist for him. He is separated from 
 persons of another caste by an abyss much deeper than that 
 which separates Europeans of the most different nationalities. 
 The latter may intermarry, but persons of different castes can- 
 not. The result is that every village possesses as many groups 
 as there are castes represented. 
 
 With such a system union against a master is impossible. 
 This system of caste explains the phenomenon of two hun- 
 d"ed and fifty millions of men obeying, without a murmur, sixty 
 ot seventy thousand strangers l whom they detest. The only 
 fatherland of the Hindu is his caste. He has never had an- 
 other. His country is not a fatherland to him, and he has 
 never dreamed of its unity. 
 
 w. w. HUNTER 
 
 At a very early period we catch sight of a nobler race from 
 the northwest, forcing its way in among the primitive peoples 
 of India. This race belonged to the splendid Aryan or Indo- 
 Germanic stock from which the Brahman, the Rajput, and the 
 Englishman alike descend. Its earliest home seems to have 
 been in Western Asia. From that common camping-ground 
 certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the 
 farther west. One of the western offshoots built Athens and 
 Sparta, and became the Greek nation ; another went on to Italy, 
 and reared the city on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial 
 Rome. A distant colony of the same race excavated the silver 
 ores of prehistoric Spain ; and when we first catch a sight of 
 ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in wattle 
 canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile 
 other branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the 
 primitive Asiatic home to the east. Powerful bands found 
 
 1 English.
 
 5 g THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 their way through the passes of the Himalayas into the Pun- 
 jab, and spread themselves, chiefly as Brahmans and Rajputs, 
 
 over India. 
 
 The Aryan offshoots, alike to the east and to the west, as- 
 serted their superiority over the earlier peoples whom they 
 found in possession of the soil. The history of ancient Europe 
 is the story of the Aryan settlements around the shores of the 
 Mediterranean ; and that wide term, modern civilization, merely 
 means the civilization of the western branches of the same race. 
 The history of India consists in like manner of the history of 
 the eastern offshoots of the Aryan stock who settled in that 
 land. 
 
 We know little regarding these noble Aryan tribes in their 
 early camping-ground in Western Asia. From words preserved 
 in the languages of their long-separated descendants in Europe 
 and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy 
 steppes with their cattle, making long halts to raise crops of 
 grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals; were 
 acquainted with iron ; understood the arts of weaving and sew- 
 ing; wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy 
 life of the comparatively temperate zone; and the feeling of 
 cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of 
 the eastern and the western branches of the race. 
 
 The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the Eng- 
 lish and the Hindu, dwelt together in Western Asia, spoke the 
 same tongue, worshipped the same gods. The languages of 
 Europe and India, although at first sight they seem wide apart, 
 are merely different growths from the original Aryan speech. 
 This is especially true of the common words of family life. The 
 names for father, mother, brother, sister, and widow are the 
 same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on the 
 banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus 
 the word daughter, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been 
 derived from the Aryan root dugh, which in Sanscrit has the 
 form of dnh, to milk ; and perhaps preserves the memory of the 
 time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive 
 Aryan household. 
 
 The ancient religions of Europe and India had a common 
 origin. They were to some extent made up of the sacred
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 59 
 
 stories or myths which our joint ancestors had learned while 
 dwelling together in Asia. Several of the Vedic gods were also 
 the gods of Greece and Rome ; and to this day the Divinity is 
 adored by names derived from the same old Aryan word (deva, 
 the Shining One), by Brahmans in Calcutta, by the Protestant 
 clergy of England, and by Roman Catholic priests in Peru. 
 
 The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Aryans 
 on their march to the southeast, and in their new homes. The 
 earliest songs disclose the race still to the north of the Khai- 
 bar pass, in Kabul ; the later ones bring them as far as the 
 Ganges. Their victorious advance eastward through the in- 
 termediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings almost 
 step by step. The steady supply of water among the five 
 rivers of the Punjab led the Aryans to settle down from their 
 old state of wandering half-pastoral tribes into regular com- 
 munities of husbandmen. The Vedic poets praised the rivers 
 which enabled them to make this great change perhaps the 
 most important step in the progress of a race. " May the In- 
 dus," they sang, " the far-famed giver of wealth, hear us ; [fer- 
 tilizing our] broad fields with water." The Himalayas, through 
 whose southwestern passes they had reached India, and at 
 whose southern base they long dwelt, made a lasting impression 
 on their memory. The Vedic singer praised "Him whose 
 greatness the snowy ranges, and the sea, and the aerial river 
 declare." The Aryan race in India never forgot its northern 
 home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers ; and there elo- 
 quence descended from heaven among men ; while high amid 
 the Himalayan mountains lay the paradise of deities and heroes, 
 where the kind and the brave forever repose. 
 
 The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early 
 Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable 
 hymnal is unknown. Orthodox Hindus believe, without evi- 
 dence, that it existed "from before all time," or at least from 
 3001 years B.C. European scholars have inferred from astro- 
 nomical data that its composition was going on about 1400 B.C. 
 But the evidence might have been calculated backward, and in- 
 serted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion 
 had been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth 
 century B.C. The Rig- Veda is a very old collection of 1017
 
 60 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 short poems, chiefly addressed to the gods, and containing io r 
 580 verses. Its hymns show us the Aryans on the banks of 
 the Indus, divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with 
 each other, sometimes united against the "black-skinned" 
 aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each 
 father of a family is the priest of his own household. The 
 chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the 
 greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy 
 offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people. 
 The king himself seems to have been elected ; and his title of 
 Vis-pat, literally "Lord of the Settlers," survives in the old 
 Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiez-patis in east-cen- 
 tral Europe at this day. Women enjoyed a high position; and 
 some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and 
 queens. Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were 
 both "rulers of the house" (dampati')\ and drew near to the 
 gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their hus- 
 bands' funeral pile was unknown ; and the verses in the Veda 
 which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the 
 practice, have the very opposite meaning. "Rise, woman," 
 says the Vedic text to the mourner ; " come to the world of 
 life. Come to us. Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to 
 thy husband." 
 
 The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, copper- 
 smiths, and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, bar- 
 bers, and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and freely 
 use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They 
 have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the 
 plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also cling to 
 their old wandering life, with their herds and "cattle-pens." 
 Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth the coin in which 
 payment of fines is made reminding us of the Latin word for 
 money, pecunia, from pectts, a herd. One of the Vedic words 
 for war literally means "a desire for cows." Unlike the mod- 
 ern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef; used a fermented 
 liquor or beer, made from the soma plant; and offered the same 
 strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans 
 spread eastward through Northern India, pushed on from be- 
 hind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 61 
 
 them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier "black-skinned" 
 races. They marched in whole communities from one river 
 valley to another; each house-father a warrior, husbandman, 
 and priest ; with his wife, and his little ones, and his cattle. 
 
 These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves 
 and their gods. Like other conquering races, they believed 
 that both themselves and their deities were altogether superior 
 to the people of the land, and to their poor, rude objects of 
 worship. Indeed, this noble self-confidence is a great aid to the 
 success of a nation. Their divinities devas, literally " the shin- 
 ing ones," from the Sanscrit root div, "to shine" were the 
 great powers of nature. They adored the Father-heaven, 
 Dyaush-pitarvn. Sanscrit, the Dies piter m Jupiter of Rome, the 
 Zeus of Greece ; and the Encompassing Sky Varuna in San- 
 scrit, Uranus in Latin, Ouranos in Greek. Indra, or the Aque- 
 ous Vapor, that brings the precious rain on which plenty or 
 famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number 
 of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more 
 keenly the importance of the periodical rains to their new life 
 as husbandmen, he became the chief of the Vedic gods. " The 
 gods do not reach unto thee, O Indra, nor men ; thou overcom- 
 est all creatures in strength." Agni, the God of Fire (Latin 
 ignis}, ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number of hymns 
 addressed to him. He is " the Youngest of the Gods," " the 
 Lord and Giver of Wealth." The Maruts are the Storm Gods, 
 " who make the rock to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest." 
 Ushas, " the High-born Dawn " (Greek Eos), " shines upon us 
 like a young wife, rousing every living being to go forth to his 
 work." The Asvins, the " Horsemen " or fleet outriders of the 
 dawn, are the first rays of sunrise, " Lords of Lustre." The 
 Solar Orb himself (Surya), the Wind (Vayu), the Sunshine or 
 Friendly Day (Mitra), the intoxicating fermented juice of the 
 Sacrificial Plant (Soma), and many other deities are invoked in 
 the Veda in all, about thirty-three gods, " who are eleven in 
 heaven, eleven on earth, and eleven dwelling in glory in mid- 
 air." 
 
 The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright 
 gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that 
 it would be granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred
 
 62 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. In 
 deed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind, that when he 
 praises any one of his Shining Gods, he can think of none other 
 for the time being, and adores him as the supreme ruler. 
 Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater deities to 
 be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto 
 thee, O Indra ! " Another hymn speaks of Soma as " king of 
 heaven and earth, the conqueror of all." To Varuna also it is 
 said, " Thou art lord of all, of heaven and earth ; thou art king 
 of all those who are gods, and of all those who are men." The 
 more spiritual of the Vedic singers, therefore, may be said to 
 have worshipped One God, though not One alone. 
 
 " In the beginning there arose the Golden Child. He was 
 the one born lord of all that is. He established the earth and 
 this sky. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who gives life, he who gives strength ; whose command 
 all the Bright Gods revere ; whose shadow is immortality, whose 
 shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our 
 sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who, through his power, is the one king of the breath- 
 ing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. 
 Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm ; 
 he through whom the heaven was established, nay, the highest 
 heaven ; he who measured out the light and the air. Who is 
 the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds ; 
 he who alone is God above all gods. Who is the God to whom 
 we shall offer our sacrifice ? " 
 
 While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or 
 under rude stone monuments, the Aryan alike in India, in 
 Greece, and in Italy made use of the funeral-pile. Several 
 exquisite Sanscrit hymns bid farewell to the dead : " Depart 
 thou, depart thou by the ancient paths to the place whither our 
 fathers have departed. Meet with the Ancient Ones; meet 
 with the Lord of Death. Throwing off thine imperfections, go 
 to thy home. Become united with a body; clothe thyself in a 
 hining form." " Let him depart to those for whom flow the 
 rivers of nectar. Let him depart to those who, through medi-
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 63 
 
 tation, have obtained the victory ; who, by fixing their thoughts 
 on the unseen, have gone to heaven. Let him depart to the 
 mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid down their lives 
 for others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor." 
 The doctrine of transmigration was at first unknown. The cir- 
 cle round the funeral-pile sang with a firm assurance that their 
 friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with 
 the loved ones who i^d gone before. " Do thou conduct us to 
 heaven," says a hymn of the later Atharva-Veda ; "let us be 
 with our wives and children." " In heaven, where our friends 
 dwell in bliss having left behind the infirmities of the body, 
 free from lameness, free from crookedness of limb there let us 
 behold our parents and our children." " May the water-shed- 
 ding Spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee with their swift 
 motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with dew." " Bear 
 him, carry him ; let him, with all his faculties complete, go to 
 the world of the righteous. Crossing the dark valley which 
 spreadeth boundless around him, let the unborn soul ascend to 
 heaven. Wash the feet of him who is stained with sin; let him 
 go upward with cleansed feet. Crossing the gloom, gazing 
 with wonder in many directions, let the unborn soul go up to 
 heaven." 
 
 By degrees the old collection of hymns, or the Rig-Veda, no 
 longer sufficed. Three other collections or service-books were 
 therefore added, making the Four Vedas. The word Veda is 
 from the same root as the Latin vid-ere, to see : the early Greek 
 feid-enai, infinitive of oida, I know : and the English wisdom, 
 or I wit. The Brahmans taught that the Veda was divinely 
 inspired, and that it was literally " the wisdom of God." There 
 was, first, the Rig-Veda, or the hymns in their simplest form. 
 Second, the Sama-Veda, made up of hymns of the Rig-Veda 
 to be used at the Soma sacrifice. Third, the Yajur-Veda, 
 consisting not only of Rig-Vedic hymns, but also of prose 
 sentences, to be used at the great sacrifices ; and divided into 
 two editions, the Black and White Yajur. The fourth, or 
 Atharva-Veda, was compiled from the least ancient hymns at 
 the end of the Rig-Veda, very old religious spells, and later 
 sources. Some of its spells have a similarity to the ancient 
 German and Lithuanian charms, and appear to have come down
 
 64 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 from the most primitive times, before the Indian and European 
 branches of the Aryan race struck out from their common 
 
 home. 
 
 To each of the four Vedas were attached prose works, called 
 Brahmanas, in order to explain the sacrifices and the duties of 
 the priests. Like the Four Vedas, the Brahmanas were held to 
 be the very word of God. The Vedas and the Brahmanas form 
 the revealed Scriptures of the Hindus the sruti, literally 
 " Things heard from God." The Vedas supplied their divinely- 
 inspired psalms, and the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired the- 
 ology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the 
 Sutras, literally " Strings of pithy sentences " regarding laws 
 and ceremonies. Still later the Upanishads were composed, 
 treating of God and the soul; the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for 
 the forest recluse ; " and, after a very long interval, the Puranas, 
 or "Traditions from of old." All these ranked, however, not 
 as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard from God" 
 (sruti}, like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred tra- 
 ditions smriti, literally " The things remembered" 
 
 Meanwhile the Four Castes had been formed. In the old 
 Aryan colonies among the Five Rivers of the Punjab, each 
 house-father was a husbandman, warrior, and priest. But by 
 degrees certain gifted families, who composed the Vedic hymns 
 or learned them off by heart, were always chosen by the king 
 to perform the great sacrifices. In this way probably the 
 priestly caste sprang up. As the Aryans conquered more ter- 
 ritory, fortunate soldiers received a larger share of the lands 
 than others, and cultivated it not with their own hands, but by 
 means of the vanquished non-Aryan tribes. In this way the 
 Four Castes arose. First, the priests or Brahmans. Second, 
 the warriors or fighting companions of the king, called Rajputs 
 or Kchatryas, literally " of the royal stock." Third, the Aryan 
 agricultural settlers, who kept the old name of Vaisyas, from 
 the root vis, which in the primitive Vedic period had included 
 the whole Aryan people. Fourth, the Sudras, or conquered 
 non-Aryan tribes, who became serfs. The three first castes 
 were of Aryan descent, and were honored by the name of the 
 Twice-born Castes. They could all be present at the sacrifices, 
 and they worshipped the same Bright Gods. The Sudras were
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 65 
 
 " the slave-bands of black descent " of the Veda. They were 
 distinguished from their "Twice-born" Aryan conquerors as 
 being only " Once-born," and by many contemptuous epithets. 
 They were not allowed to be present at the great national sac- 
 rifices, or at the feasts which followed them. They could never 
 rise out of their servile condition ; and to them was assigned the 
 severest toil in the fields, and all the hard and dirty work of the 
 village community. 
 
 The Brahmans or priests claimed the highest rank. But 
 they seemed to have had a long struggle with the Kchatryas, 
 or warrior caste, before they won their proud position at the 
 head of the Indian people. They afterward secured them- 
 selves in that position by teaching that it had been given to 
 them by God. At the beginning of the world, they said, the 
 Brahman proceeded from the mouth of the Creator, the Kchat- 
 ryas or Rajput from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs or 
 belly, and the Sudra from his feet. This legend is true so far 
 that the Brahmans were really the brain power of the Indian 
 people, the Kchatryas its armed hands, the Vaisyas the food- 
 growers, and the Sudras the down-trodden serfs. When the 
 Brahmans had established their power, they made a wise use of 
 it. From the ancient Vedic times they recognized that if they 
 were to exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly 
 pomp. In arrogating the priestly function, they gave up all 
 claim to the royal office. They were divinely appointed to be 
 the guides of nations and the counsellors of kings, but they 
 could not be kings themselves. As the duty of the Sudra was 
 to serve, of the Vaisya to till the ground and follow middle-class 
 trades or crafts ; so the business of the Kchatryas was to fight 
 the public enemy, and of the Brahman to propitiate the national 
 gods. 
 
 Each day brought to the Brahmans its routine of cere- 
 monies, studies, and duties. Their whole life was mapped out 
 into four clearly defined stages of discipline. For their exist- 
 ence, in its full religious significance, commenced not at birth, 
 but on being invested at the close of childhood with the sacred 
 thread of the Twice-born. Their youth and early manhood 
 were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from 
 an older Brahman, tending the sacred fire, and serving their 
 E., VOL. i. 5
 
 66 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 preceptor. Having completed his long studies, the young 
 Brahman entered on the second stage of his life, as a house- 
 holder. He married, and commenced a course of family duties. 
 When he had reared a family, and gained a practical knowledge 
 of the world, he retired into the forest as a reduse, for the third 
 period of his life; feeding on roots or fruits, practising his 
 religious duties with increased devotion. The fourth stage was 
 that of the ascetic or religious mendicant, wholly withdrawn 
 from earthly affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind 
 which, heedless of the joys, or pains, or wants of the body, is 
 intent only on its final absorption into the deity. The Brah- 
 man, in this fourth stage of his life, ate nothing but what was 
 given to him unasked, and abode not more than one day in any 
 village, lest the vanities of the world should find entrance into 
 his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a Brahman, 
 and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large extent 
 practically carried out. Throughout his whole existence the 
 true Brahman practised a strict temperance ; drinking no wine, 
 using a simple diet, curbing the desires ; shut off from the tu- 
 mults of war, as his business was to pray, not to fight, and 
 having his thoughts ever fixed on study and contemplation. 
 " What is this world ? " says a Brahman sage. " It is even as 
 the bough of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night, and in 
 the morning flies away." 
 
 The Brahmans, therefore, were a body of men who, in an 
 early stage of this world's history, bound themselves by a rule 
 of life the essential precepts of which were self -culture and self- 
 restraint. The Brahmans of the present India are the result of 
 3000 years of hereditary education and temperance; and they 
 have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct from the sur- 
 rounding population. Even the passing traveller in India 
 marks them out, alike from the bronze-cheeked, large-limbed, 
 leisure-loving Rajput or Kchatryas, the warrior caste of Aryan 
 descent ; and from the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped low 
 castes of non-Aryan origin, with their short bodies and bullet 
 heads. The Brahman stands apart from both, tall and slim, 
 with finely-modelled lips and nose, fair complexion, high fore- 
 head, and slightly cocoanut shaped skull the man of self-cen- 
 tred refinement. He is an example of a class becoming the
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 67 
 
 ruling power in a country, not by force of arms, but by the vig- 
 or of hereditary culture and temperance. One race has swept 
 across India after another, dynasties have risen and fallen, 
 religions have spread themselves over the land and disappeared. 
 But since the dawn of history the Brahman has calmly ruled ; 
 swaying the minds and receiving the homage of the people, and 
 accepted by foreign nations as the highest type of Indian man- 
 kind. The position which the Brahmans won resulted in no 
 small measure from the benefits which they bestowed. For 
 their own Aryan countrymen they developed a noble language 
 and literature. The Brahmans were not only the priests and 
 philosophers, but also the lawgivers, the men of science and the 
 poets of their race. Their influence on the aboriginal peoples, 
 the hill and forest races of India, was even more important. 
 To these rude remnants of the flint and stone ages they 
 brought in ancient times a knowledge of the metals and the 
 gods. 
 
 As a social league, Hinduism arranged the people into the 
 old division of the " Twice-born " Aryan castes, namely, the 
 Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas ; and the " Once-born " castes, 
 consisting of the non-Aryan Sudras and the classes of mixed 
 descent. This arrangement of the Indian races remains to the 
 present day. The " Twice-born " castes still wear the sacred 
 thread, and claim a joint, although an unequal, inheritance in 
 the holy books of the Veda. The " Once-born " castes are still 
 denied the sacred thread ; and they were not allowed to study 
 the holy books, until the English set up schools in India for all 
 classes of the people. But while caste is thus founded on the 
 distinctions of race, it has been influenced by two other, sys- 
 tems of division, namely, the employments of the people, and 
 the localities in which they live. Even in the oldest times, the 
 castes had separate occupations assigned to them. They could 
 be divided either into Brahmans, Kchatryas, Vaisyas, and Su- 
 dras; or into priests, warriors, husbandmen, and serfs. They 
 are also divided according to the parts of India in which they 
 live. Even the Brahmans have among themselves ten distinct 
 classes, or rather nations. Five of these classes or Brahman 
 nations live to the north of the Vindhya mountains ; five of them 
 live to the south. Each of the ten feels itself to be quite apart
 
 68 THE CASTES IN INDIA 
 
 from the rest ; and they have among themselves no fewer than 
 1886 subdivisions or separate Brahmanical tribes. In like man- 
 ner, the Kchatryas or Rajputs number 590 separate tribes in 
 different parts of India. 
 
 While, therefore, Indian caste seems at first a very simple 
 arrangement of the people into four classes, it is in reality a very 
 complex one. For it rests upon three distinct systems of divi- 
 sion: namely, upon race, occupation, and geographical position. 
 It is very difficult even to guess at the number of the Indian 
 castes. But there are not fewer than 3,000 of them which have 
 separate names, and which regard themselves as separate 
 classes. The different castes cannot intermarry with each 
 other, and most of them cannot eat together. The ordinary 
 rule is that no Hindu of good caste can touch food cooked by a 
 man of inferior caste. By rights, too, each caste should keep 
 to its own occupation. Indeed, there has been a tendency to 
 erect every separate kind of employment or handicraft in each 
 separate province into a distinct caste. But, as a matter of 
 practice, the castes often change their occupation, and the lower 
 ones sometimes raise themselves in the social scale. Thus the 
 Vaisya caste were in ancient times the tillers of the soil. They 
 have in most provinces given up this toilsome occupation, and 
 the Vaisyas are now the great merchants and bankers of India. 
 Their fair skins, intelligent faces, and polite bearing must have 
 altered since the days when their forefathers ploughed, sowed, 
 and reaped under the hot sun. Such changes of employment 
 still occur on a smaller scale throughout India. 
 
 The system of caste exercises a great influence upon the 
 industries of the people. Each caste is, in the first place, a 
 trade-guild. It insures the proper training of the youth of its 
 own special craft; it makes rules for the conduct of the caste- 
 trade ; it promotes good feeling by feasts or social gatherings. 
 The famous manufactures of mediaeval India, its muslins, silks, 
 cloth of gold, inlaid weapons, and exquisite work in precious 
 stones were brought to perfection under the care of the castes 
 or trade-guilds. Such guilds may still be found in full work in 
 many parts of India. Thus, in the northwestern districts of 
 Bombay all heads of artisan families are ranged under their 
 proper trade-guild. The trade-guild or caste prevents undue,
 
 THE CASTES IN INDIA 69 
 
 competition among the members, and upholds the interest of 
 its own body in any dispute arising with other craftsmen. 
 
 In 1873, for example, a number of the bricklayers in Ahmada- 
 bad could not find work. Men of this class sometimes added 
 to their daily wages by rising very early in the morning, and 
 working overtime. But when several families complained that 
 they could not get employment, the bricklayers' guild met, and 
 decided that as there was not enough work for all, no member 
 should be allowed to work in extra hours. In the same city, 
 the cloth dealers in 1 872 tried to cut down the wages of the 
 sizers or men who dress the cotton cloth. The sizers 1 guild 
 refused to work at lower rates, and remained six weeks on 
 strike. At length they arranged their dispute, and both the 
 trade-guilds signed a stamped agreement fixing the rates for the 
 future. Each of the higher castes or trade-guilds in Ahmada- 
 bad receives a fee from young men on entering their business. 
 The revenue derived from these fees, and from fines upon mem- 
 bers who break caste rules, is spent in feasts to the brethren of 
 the guild, and in helping the poorer craftsmen or their orphans. 
 A favorite plan of raising money in Surat is for the members 
 of the trade to keep a certain day as a holiday, and to shut up 
 all their shops except one. The right to keep open this one 
 shop is put up to auction, and the amount bid is expended on a 
 feast. The trade-guild or caste allows none of its members to 
 starve. It thus acts as a mutual assurance society and takes 
 the place of a poor-law in India. The severest social penalty 
 which can be inflicted upon a Hindu is to be put out of his 
 caste. 
 
 Hinduism is, however, not only a social league resting upon 
 caste it is also a religious alliance based upon worship. As 
 the various race elements of the Indian people have been 
 welded into caste, so the simple old beliefs of the Veda, the mild 
 doctrines of Buddha, and the fierce rites of the non-Aryan 
 tribes, have been thrown into the melting-pot, and poured out 
 thence as a mixture of precious metal and dross, to be worked 
 up into the complex worship of the Hindu gods.
 
 FALL OF TROY 
 
 B.C. 1184 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 The siege of Troy is an event not to be reckoned as history, although 
 Herodotus, the " Father of History," speaks of it as such, and it would 
 be quite impossible to understand the history and character of the Greek 
 people without a study of the Iliad and Odyssey poems attributed to " a 
 blind bard of Scio's isle "immortal Homer. The campaign of the Greek 
 heroes in Asia is to be referred to a hazy point in the past when Europe 
 was just beginning to have an Eastern Question. A vast circle of tales 
 and poems has gathered round this mythical event, and the Iliad Song 
 of Ilium, or Troy is still a poem of unfailing interest and fascination. 
 
 Ilium, or Troy, was a city of Asia Minor, a little south of the Helles- 
 pont. It was the centre of a powerful state, Grecian in race and lan- 
 guage ; and when Paris, son of King Priam, visited Sparta and carried off 
 the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, all the heroes of Greece 
 banded together and invaded Priam's dominions. 
 
 The twelve hundred ships that sailed for Troy transported one hundred 
 thousand warriors to the valley of Simois and Scamander. Among them 
 was Agamemnon, "king of men," brother of Menelaus. He was the 
 leader, and in his train were Achilles, " swift of foot " ; " god-like, wise " 
 Ulysses, King of Ithaca, the two Ajaxes, and the aged Nestor. The nar- 
 rative of their adventures is told in the Homeric poems with a power of 
 musical expression, a charm of language, and a vividness of imagery un- 
 surpassed in poetry. 
 
 For ten years the besiegers encircled the city of Priam. After many 
 engagements and single combats on " the windy plain of Troy " the great 
 hero of the Greeks, Achilles of Thessaly, is wronged by Agamemnon, who 
 carries away Briseis, a fair captive girl allotted as the spoils of war to 
 the " Swift-footed." The hero of Thessaly thenceforth refuses to join in 
 the war, and sullenly shuts himself up in his tent. It is only when his 
 dear friend Patroclus has been slain by the valiant Hector, eldest son 
 of Priam, that he sallies forth, meets Hector in single combat, and finally 
 slays him. Achilles then attaches the body of Hector to his chariot and 
 insultingly trails it in the dust as he drives three times around the walls 
 of Troy. The Iliad closes with the funeral rites celebrated over the 
 corpse of Hector.
 
 FALL OF TROY 71 
 
 \A7E now arrive at the capita] and culminating point of the 
 Grecian epic the two sieges and captures of Troy, 
 with the destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as 
 Grecian, after the second and most celebrated capture and de- 
 struction of the city. 
 
 It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea 
 of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first 
 handled by so many poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, with their 
 endless additions, transformations, and contradictions, then 
 purged and recast by historical inquirers, who, under color of 
 setting aside the exaggerations of the poets, introduced a new 
 vein of prosaic invention, lastly, moralized and allegorized by 
 philosophers. In the present brief outline of the general field 
 of Grecian legend, or of that which the Greeks believed to be 
 their antiquities, the Trojan war can be regarded as only one 
 among a large number of incidents upon which Hecataeus and 
 Herodotus looked back as constituting their fore-time. Taken 
 as a special legendary event, it is, indeed, of wider and larger 
 interest than any other, but it is a mistake to single it out from 
 the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy 
 basis. I must, therefore, confine myself to an abridged narra- 
 tive of the current and leading facts ; and amid the numerous 
 contradictory statements which are to be found respecting 
 every one of them, I know no better ground of preference than 
 comparative antiquity, though even the oldest tales which we 
 possess those contained in the Iliad evidently presuppose 
 others of prior date. 
 
 The primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dar- 
 danus, son of Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania : in the 
 account of later authors, Dardanus was called the son of Zeus 
 by Electra, daughter of Atlas, and was further said to have 
 come from Samothrace, or from Arcadia, or from Italy ; but of 
 this Homer mentions nothing. The first Dardanian town 
 founded by him was in a lofty position on the descent of Mount 
 Ida ; for he was not yet strong enough to establish himself on 
 the plain. But his son Erichthonius, by the favor of Zeus, be- 
 came the wealthiest of mankind. His flocks and herds having 
 multiplied, he had in his pastures three thousand mares, the 
 offspring of some of whom, by Boreas, produced horses of pre-
 
 73 FALL OF TROY 
 
 ternatural swiftness. Tros, the son of Erichthonius, and the 
 eponym of the Trojans, had three sons Ilus, Assaracus, and 
 the beautiful Ganymedes, whom Zeus stole away to become his 
 cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his father Tros, as the price 
 of the youth, a team of immortal horses. 
 
 From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines 
 diverge; the former passing from Ilus to Laomedon, Priam, 
 and Hector; the latter from Assaracus to Capys, Anchises, 
 and ^neas. Ilus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of 
 Ilium ; Assaracus and his descendants remained sovereigns of 
 Dardania. 
 
 It was under the proud Laomedon, son of Ilus, that Posei- 
 don and Apollo underwent, by command of Zeus, a temporary 
 servitude ; the former building the walls of the town, the latter 
 tending the flocks and herds. When their task was completed 
 and the penal period had expired, they claimed the stipulated 
 reward ; but Laomedon angrily repudiated their demand, and 
 even threatened to cut off their ears, to tie them hand and foot, 
 and to sell them in some distant island as slaves. He was pun- 
 ished for this treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidon sent 
 to ravage his fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedon 
 publicly offered the immortal horses given by Zeus to his 
 father Tros, as a reward to any one who would destroy the 
 monster. But an oracle declared that a virgin of noble blood 
 must be surrendered to him, and the lot fell upon Hesione, 
 daughter of Laomedon himself. Heracles, arriving at this 
 critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for 
 him by Athene and the Trojans, so as to rescue both the ex- 
 posed maiden and the people ; but Laomedon, by a second act 
 of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless 
 animals which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, 
 Heracles equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy, and 
 killed Laomedon, giving Hesione to his friend and auxiliary 
 Telamon, to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teucros. A 
 painful sense of this expedition was preserved among the in- 
 habitants of the historical town of Ilium, who offered no wor- 
 ship to Heracles. 
 
 Among all the sons of Laomedon, Priam was the only one 
 who had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned
 
 FALL OF TROY 73 
 
 guerdon of Heracles ; for which the hero recompensed him by 
 placing him on the throne. Many and distinguished were his 
 sons and daughters, as well by his wife Hecuba, daughter of 
 Cisseus, as by other women. Among the sons were Hector, 
 Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, Polites, Polydorus; among 
 the daughters, Laodice, Creusa, Polyxena, and Cassandra. 
 
 The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage; 
 for Hecuba dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand, and 
 Priam, on consulting the soothsayers, was informed that the 
 son about to be born would prove fatal to him. Accordingly 
 he directed the child to be exposed on Mount Ida ; but the in- 
 auspicious kindness of the gods preserved him ; and he grew up 
 amid the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and 
 symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphrodite. 
 
 It was to this youtn, in his solitary shepherd's walk on 
 Mount Ida, that the three goddesses, Here, Athene, and 
 Aphrodite, were conducted, in order that he might determine 
 the dispute respecting their comparative beauty, which had 
 arisen at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, a dispute brought 
 about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in accomplishment 
 of the deep-laid designs of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking with 
 pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race, 
 pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which she was 
 compelled to bear, and determined to lighten it by exciting a 
 destructive and long-continued war. Paris awarded the palm 
 of beauty to Aphrodite, who promised him in recompense the 
 possession of Helen, wife of the Spartan Menelaus, the 
 daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the in- 
 stance of Aphrodite, ships were built for him, and he embarked 
 on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native 
 city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, 
 and the always neglected warnings of Cassandra, 
 
 Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by 
 Menelaus as well as by Castor and Pollux, and was enabled to 
 present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen. Mene- 
 laus then departed to Crete, leaving Helen to entertain his Tro- 
 jan guest a favorable moment, which was employed by Aphro- 
 dite to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris car- 
 ried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money be-
 
 74 FALL OF TROY 
 
 longing to Menelaus, made a prosperous voyage to Troy, and 
 arrived there safely with his prize on the third day. 
 
 Menelaus, informed by Iris in Crete of the perfidious return 
 made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and 
 indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnon, as well as 
 with the venerable Nestor, on the means of avenging the out- 
 rage. They made known the event to the Greek chiefs around 
 them, among whom they found universal sympathy ; Nestor, 
 Palamedes, and others went round to solicit aid in a c ntem- 
 plated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnon to 
 whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exer- 
 tion until Helen should be recovered Ten years were spent 
 in equipping the expedition. The goddesses Here and Athene, 
 incensed at the preference given by Paris to Aphrodite, and 
 animated by steady attachment to Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, 
 took an active part in the cause, and the horses of Here were 
 fatigued with her repeated visits to the different parts of 
 Greece. 
 
 By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis in 
 Boeotia, consisting of 1,186 ships and more than one hundred 
 thousand men a force outnumbering by more than ten to one 
 anything that the Trojans themselves could oppose, and supe- 
 rior to the defenders of Troy even with all her allies included. 
 It comprised heroes with their followers from the extreme 
 points of Greece from the northwestern portions of Thessaly 
 under Mount Olympus, as well as the western islands of Duli- 
 chium and Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Crete and Rhodes. 
 Agamemnon himself contributed 100 ships manned with the 
 subjects of his kingdom Mycenae, besides furnishing 60 ships 
 to the Arcadians, who possessed none of their own. Menelaus 
 brought with him 60 ships, Nestor from Pylus, 90, Idomeneus 
 from Crete and Diomedes from Argos, 80 each. Forty ships 
 were manned by the Elians, under four different chiefs; the 
 like number under Meges from Dulichium and the Echinades, 
 and under Thoas from Calydon and the other ALtoli&n towns. 
 Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 
 ships each. The Abantes from Eubcea, under Elphenor, filled 
 40 vessels; the Boeotians, under Peneleos and Leitus, 50; the 
 inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledon, 30; the light-armed
 
 FALL OF TROY >-., 
 
 Locrians, under Ajax son of Oileus, 40; the Phocians as many 
 The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief distinguished for his 
 skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships ; the Myrmidons 
 from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled in 50 ships; 
 Protesilaus from Phylace and Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from 
 Ormenium, each came with 40 ships ; Machaon and Podaleirius, 
 from Trikka, with 30; Eumelus, from Pherse and the lake 
 Boebeis, with 1 1 ; and Philoctetes from Meliboea with 7 ; the 
 Lapithse, under Polypoetes, son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels, 
 the ^inianes and Perrhaebians, under Guneus, 22; and the 
 Magnetes, under Prothous, 40; these last two were from the 
 no"thernmost parts of Thessaly, near the mountains Pelion and 
 Olympus From Rhodes, under Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, 
 appeared 9 ships ; from Syme, under the comely but effeminate 
 Nireus, 3 ; from Cos, Crapathus, and the neighboring islands, 
 30, under the orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of 
 Thessalus and grandsons of Heracles. 
 
 Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished 
 warriors Ajax and Diomedes, and the sagacious Nestor; while 
 Agamemnon himself, scarcely inferior to either of them in 
 prowess, brought with him a high reputation for prudence 
 in command. But the most marked and conspicuous of all 
 were Achilles and Odysseus; the former a beautiful youth 
 born of a divine mother, swift in the race, of fierce temper and 
 irresistible might ; the latter not less efficient as an ally, from 
 his eloquence, his untiring endurance, his inexhaustible re- 
 sources under difficulty, and the mixture of daring courage with 
 deep-laid cunning which never deserted him : the blood of the 
 arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through an illicit connection with his 
 mother Anticleia, was said to flow in his veins, and he was espe- 
 cially patronized and protected by the goddess Athene. Odys- 
 seus, unwilling at first to take part in the expedition, had even 
 simulated insanity; but Palamedes, sent to Ithaca to invite 
 him, tested the reality of his madness by placing in the furrow 
 where Odysseus was ploughing his infant son Telemachus. 
 Thus detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achaean 
 host, but the prophet Halitherses predicted to him that twenty 
 years would elapse before he revisited his native land. To 
 Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of heroic
 
 7 6 FALL OF TROY 
 
 glory before the walls of Troy ; nor could the place be taken 
 without both his cooperation and that of his son after him. But 
 they had forewarned him that this brilliant career would be 
 rapidly brought to a close ; and that if he desired a long life, he 
 must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In 
 spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis he preferred few 
 years with bright renown, and joined the Achaean host. When 
 Nestor and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he 
 and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call. 
 
 Agamemnon and his powerful host set sail from Aulis ; but 
 being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by 
 mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Caicus, 
 and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it 
 was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the 
 country, opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately de- 
 feated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks, now 
 discovering their mistake, retired ; but their fleet was dispersed 
 by a storm and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and 
 took Scyrus, and there married Deidamia, the daughter of 
 Lycomedes. Telephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed 
 by the oracle to come to Greece and present himself to Achilles 
 to be healed, by applying the scrapings of the spear with which 
 the wound had been given ; thus restored, he became the guide 
 of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expe- 
 dition. 
 
 The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the god 
 dess Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Aga 
 memnon, prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the 
 offending chief was compelled to appease her by the well-known 
 sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. They then proceeded to 
 Tenedos, from whence Odysseus and Menelaus were dispatched 
 as envoys to Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. 
 In spite of the prudent counsels of Antenor, who received the 
 two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the Trojans re- 
 jected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was 
 foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should 
 perish : Protesilaus was generous enough to put himself upon 
 this forlorn hope, and accordingly fell by the hand of Hector. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Trojans had assembled a large body of
 
 FALL OF TROY 77 
 
 allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Darda- 
 nians under JEneas, Lycians under Sarpedon, Mysians, Ca- 
 rians, Maeonians, Alizonians, Phrygians, Thracians, and Paeo- 
 nians. But vain was the attempt to oppose the landing of the 
 Greeks: the Trojans were routed, and even the invulnerable 
 Cyncus, son of Poseidon, one of the great bulwarks of the de- 
 fense, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans with- 
 in their walls, Achilles attacked and stormed Lyrnessus, Peda- 
 sus, Lesbos, and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns 
 on the sea-coast, and eleven in the interior : he drove off the 
 oxen of ^Eneas and pursued the hero himself, who narrowly 
 escaped with his life : he surprised and killed the youthful Tro- 
 ilus, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons, 
 whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the ^Egean. He 
 acquired as his captive the fair Briseis, while Chryseis was 
 awarded to Agamemnon ; he was, moreover, eager to see the 
 divine Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable strug- 
 gle; and Aphrodite and Thetis contrived to bring about an 
 interview between them. 
 
 At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of 
 Palamedes, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven 
 the artifice by which Palamedes had detected his simulated in- 
 sanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cun- 
 ning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself ; one who had 
 enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters of dice for 
 amusement of night-watches as well as with other useful sug- 
 gestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamedes was 
 drowned while fishing by the hands of Odysseus and Diomedes. 
 Neither in the lliadnor the Odyssey does the name of Palamedes 
 occur ; the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those 
 poems noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar, 
 who described Palamedes as the wiser man of the two is suffi- 
 cient to explain the omission. But in the more advanced period 
 of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire 
 a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military 
 prowess, the character of Palamedes, combined with his un- 
 happy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting person- 
 ages in the Trojan legend, ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripi- 
 des each consecrated to him a special tragedy ; but the mode
 
 7 8 FALL OF TROY 
 
 of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to 
 Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having 
 been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold 
 to be buried in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnon and the 
 Grecian chiefs that Palamedeshad received it from the Trojans. 
 He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus 
 and to the delusion of the leading Greeks. The philosopher 
 Socrates, in the last speech made to his Athenian judges, 
 alludes with solemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condem- 
 nation of Palamedes as analogous to that which he himself was 
 about to suffer ; and his companions seem to have dwelt with 
 satisfaction on the comparison. Palamedes passed for an in- 
 stance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often 
 wait upon superior genius. 
 
 In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, 
 during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle with- 
 out their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed 
 epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the 
 duration of the siege of Camicus by the Cretan armament 
 which came to avenge the death of Minos : ten years of prepa- 
 ration, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odys- 
 seus were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of 
 the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with 
 the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same 
 events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, 
 who could not be satisfied without either finding or inventing 
 satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events. 
 Thucydides tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than 
 the poets have represented, and that being, moreover, very 
 poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant pro- 
 visions : hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and 
 to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese a part in 
 marauding expeditions over the neighborhood. Could the 
 whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he 
 says), the siege would have been much more speedily and 
 easily concluded. If the great historian could permit himself 
 thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have 
 imagined that a simpler course would have been to include the 
 duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations,
 
 FALL OF TROY 79 
 
 and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead 
 of ten. But it seems that the ten years' duration was so capi- 
 tal a feature in the ancient tale that no critic ventured to med- 
 dle with it. 
 
 A period of comparative intermission, however, was now at 
 hand for the Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable 
 fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused 
 to put on his armor, and kept his Myrmidons in camp. Ac- 
 cording to the Cypria, this was the behest of Zeus, who had 
 compassion on the Trojans : according to the Iliad, Apollo was 
 the originating cause, from anxiety to avenge the injury which 
 his priest Chryses had endured from Agamemnon. For a con- 
 siderable time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were 
 conducted without their best warrior, and severe, indeed, was 
 the humiliation which they underwent in consequence. How 
 the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for 
 his absence how Hector and the Trojans defeated and drove 
 them to their ships how the actual blaze of the destroying 
 flame, applied by Hector to the ship of Protesilaus, roused up 
 the anxious and sympathizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluc- 
 tant consent from Achilles to allow his friend and his followers 
 to go forth and avert the last extremity of ruin how Achilles, 
 when Patroclus had been killed by Hector, forgetting his anger 
 in grief for the death of his friend, reentered the fight, drove 
 the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and 
 satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hector, 
 all these events have been chronicled, together with those 
 divine dispensations on which most of them are made to de- 
 pend, in the immortal verse of the Iliad. 
 
 Homer breaks off with the burial of Hector, whose body 
 has just been ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the 
 lost poem of Arctinus, entitled the jLthiopis y so far as we can 
 judge from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the 
 subsequent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyr- 
 naeus, composed about the fourth century of the Christian era, 
 seems in its first books to coincide with ^Ethiopis, in the sub- 
 sequent books partly with the Ilias Minor of Lesches. 
 
 The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hector, were again 
 animated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beau-
 
 8o FALL OF TROY 
 
 tiful queen of the Amazons, Penthesilia, daughter of Ares, 
 hitherto invincible in the field, who came to their assistance 
 from Thrace at the head of a band of her country-women. She 
 again led the besieged without the walls to encounter the 
 Greeks in the open field; and under her auspices the latter 
 were at first driven back, until she, too, was slain by the in- 
 vincible arm of Achilles. The victor, on taking off the helmet 
 of his fair enemy as she lay on the ground, was profoundly 
 affected and captivated by her charms, for which he was scorn- 
 fully taunted by Thersites: exasperated by this rash insult, he 
 killed Thersites on the spot with a blow of his fist. A violent 
 dispute among the Grecian chiefs was the result, for Diomedes, 
 the kinsman of Thersites, warmly resented the proceeding ; and 
 Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbos, where he was purified 
 from the act of homicide by Odysseus. 
 
 Next arrived Memnon, son of Tithonus and Eos, the most 
 stately of living men, with a powerful band of black Ethiopians, 
 to the assistance of Troy. Sallying forth against the Greeks, 
 he made great havoc among them : the brave and popular An- 
 tilochus perished by his hand, a victim to filial devotion in de- 
 fence of Nestor. Achilles at length attacked him, and for a 
 long time the combat was doubtful between them : the prowess 
 of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally 
 prevailed ; while Eos obtained for her vanquished son the con- 
 soling gift of immortality. His tomb, however, was shown 
 near the Propontis, within a few miles of the mouth of the river 
 ./Esopus, and was visited annually by the birds called Memno- 
 nides, who swept it and bedewed it with water from the stream. 
 So the traveller Pausanias was told, even in the second century 
 after the Christian era, by the Hellespontine Greeks. 
 
 But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After 
 routing the Trojans and chasing them into the town, he was 
 slain near the Scaean gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, 
 directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo. The greatest 
 efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the 
 body, which was, however, rescued and borne off to the Grecian 
 camp by the valor of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter was the grief 
 of Thetis for the loss of her son ; she came into the camp with 
 the Muses and the Nereids to mourn over him ; and when a
 
 FALL OF TROY 81 
 
 magnificent funeral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to 
 burn him with every mark of honor, she stole away the body 
 and conveyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of 
 Leuce in the Euxine Sea. According to some accounts he was 
 there blest with the nuptials and company of Helen. 
 
 Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in honor of her 
 son, and offered the unrivalled panoply which Hephaestus had 
 forged and wrought for him as a prize to the most distinguished 
 warrior in the Grecian army. Odysseus and Ajax became 
 rivals for the distinction, when Athene, together with some 
 Trojan prisoners, who were asked from which of the two their 
 country had sustained greatest injury, decided in favor of the 
 former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and humil- 
 iation: in a fit of frenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them 
 for the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own 
 sword. 
 
 Odysseus now learned from Helenus, son of Priam, whom he 
 had captured in an ambuscade, that Troy could not be taken 
 unless both Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, 
 could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, 
 having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming in- 
 supportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had 
 been left at Lemnos in the commencement of the expedition, 
 and had spent ten years in misery on that desolate island; but 
 he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Heracles, 
 which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Dio- 
 medes fetched Philoctetes from Lemnos to the Grecian camp, 
 where he was healed by the skill of Machaon, and took an active 
 part against the Trojans engaging in single combat with 
 Paris, and killing him with one of the Heracleian arrows. The 
 Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this 
 prince, the fatal cause of all their sufferings; but not until 
 it had been mangled by the hand of Menelaus. Odysseus went 
 to the island of Scyros to invite Neoptolemus to the army. 
 The untried but impetuous youth, gladly obeying the call, 
 received from Odysseus his father's armor; while, on the 
 other hand, Eurypylus, son of Telephus, came from Mysia as 
 auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service 
 turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and 
 E., VOL. i. 6
 
 8 2 FALL OF TROY 
 
 killing some of their bravest chiefs, among whom were num- 
 bered Peneleos, and the unrivalled leech Machaon. The ex- 
 ploits of Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy of the glory of 
 his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and 
 slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian war- 
 riors: he routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, 
 from whence they never again emerged to give battle: and he 
 was not less distinguished for good sense and persuasive dic- 
 tion than for forward energy in the field. 
 
 Troy, however, was still impregnable so long as the Palla 
 dium, a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in 
 the citadel; and great care had been taken by the Trojans not 
 only to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other 
 statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Never- 
 theless, the enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person 
 with miserable clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means 
 to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth 
 away. Helen alone recognized him; but she was now anxious 
 to return to Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting 
 means for the capture of the town. 
 
 To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted 
 to. By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion 
 of Athene, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, 
 capable of containing one hundred men. In the inside of this 
 horse the e*lite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, 
 Menelaus, and others, concealed themselves while the entire 
 Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and 
 pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, over- 
 joyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and con- 
 templated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies 
 had left behind. They long doubted what should be done 
 with it; and the anxious heroes from within heard the sur- 
 rounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she 
 pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their 
 wives. Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to 
 the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliver- 
 ance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an 
 enemy's legacy. Laocoon, the priest of Poseidon, manifested 
 his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear.
 
 FALL OF TROY 83 
 
 The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans 
 heeded not this warning of possible fraud. The unfortunate 
 Laocoon, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably 
 perished before ;he eyes of his countrymen, together with one 
 of his sons: two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out 
 of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together 
 with the perfidious counsels of Simon a traitor whom the 
 Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false 
 information the Trojans were induced to make a breach in 
 their own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and 
 exultation into their city. 
 
 The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, 
 was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in 
 a night of riotous festivity, Simon kindled the fire-signal to the 
 Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, 
 from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, 
 assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly 
 sacked and destroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the 
 larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The vener- 
 able Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in 
 vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herceius. But 
 his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become 
 the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against 
 Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was 
 slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter. 
 
 Thus was Troy utterly destroyed the city, the altars and 
 temples, and the population. ^Eneas and Antenor were per- 
 mitted to escape, with their families, having been always more 
 favorably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining Trojans. 
 According to one version of the story they had betrayed the 
 city to the Greeks: a panther's skin had been hung over the 
 door of Antenor's house as a signal for the victorious besiegers 
 to spare it in general plunder. In the distribution of the prin- 
 cipal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hector, was cast 
 from the top of the wall and killed by Odysseus or Neoptole- 
 mus: Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the 
 tomb of Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the 
 shade of the deceased hero to his countrymen; while her sister 
 Cassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnon. She had
 
 84 FALL OF TROY 
 
 sought sanctuary at the altar of Athene, where Ajax, the son 
 of Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both 
 upon himself and upon the army the serious wrath of the god- 
 dess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from 
 stoning him to death. Andromache and Helenus were both 
 given to Neoptolemus, who, according to the Ilias Minor, car- 
 ried away also ,#neas as his captive. 
 
 Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus; she ac- 
 companied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many 
 years in comfort and dignity, passing afterward to a happy im- 
 mortality in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as a god- 
 dess, with her brothers, the Dioscuri, and her husband, having 
 her temple, statue, and altar at Therapnae and elsewhere. Va- 
 rious examples of her miraculous intervention were cited among 
 the Greeks. The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to de- 
 nounce her, conjointly with her sister Clytemnestra, in a tone 
 of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides 
 and Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the deli- 
 cacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, 
 who never admits reproaches against her except from her own 
 lips. He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his 
 impiety; but, having repented and composed a special poem 
 formally retracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his 
 sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous Palinode now 
 unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric nar- 
 rative, affirming that Helen had never been at Troy at all, and 
 that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or 
 eidolon. It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of 
 Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation 
 from the old legend, which could never have been recom- 
 mended by any considerations of poetical interest. 
 
 Other versions were afterward started, forming a sort of 
 compromise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that 
 Helen had never really been at Troy, without altogether deny- 
 ing her elopement. Such is the story of her having been de- 
 tained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on 
 his departure from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, 
 and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong 
 which he had committed toward Menelaus, had sent him away
 
 FALL OF TROY 85 
 
 from the country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until 
 her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the 
 Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them 
 solemnly that she neither was nor ever had been in the town; 
 but the Greeks, Ueatinr; this allegation as fraudulent, prose- 
 cuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the cor- 
 rectness of the statement. Menelaus did not recover Helen 
 until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. Such was 
 the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it ap- 
 peared satisfactory to his historicizing mind. "For if Helen 
 had really been at Troy," he argues, "she would certainly have 
 been given up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself in- 
 stead of Paris : the Trojan king, with all his family and all his 
 subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and irre- 
 trievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her: their 
 misfortune was that, while they did not possess and therefore 
 could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince 
 the Greeks that such was the fact." Assuming the historical 
 character of the war of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits 
 of no reply; nor can we greatly wonder that he acquiesced in 
 the tale of Helen's Egyptian detention, as a substitute for the 
 "incredible insanity/' which the genuine legend imputes to 
 Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and 
 by the same mode of reasoning, pronounced that the Trojan 
 horse must have been, in point of fact, a battering-engine, be- 
 cause to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter 
 childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne 
 Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan 
 war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for he thinks 
 that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so 
 mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude "for 
 one little woman." Mr. Knight suggests various political 
 causes as substitutes; these might deserve consideration, either 
 if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if 
 the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown 
 to belong to the domain of history. 
 
 The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished mat- 
 ter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, 
 and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as
 
 86 FALL OF TROY 
 
 those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and 
 isolated. Moreover, the stormy voyages and compulsory 
 wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspi- 
 rations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most re- 
 mote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with 
 this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine 
 world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the 
 supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, 
 and many family misfortunes and misdeeds during the interval. 
 One of these historic "Returns," that of Odysseus, has been 
 immortalized by the verse of Homer. The hero, after a series 
 of long-protracted suffering and expatriation inflicted on him by 
 the anger of Poseidon, at last reaches his native island, but finds 
 his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance 
 plundered by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear 
 as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their 
 scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athene 
 coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled 
 to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and 
 to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian 
 chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias which is now 
 lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: 
 there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and 
 analogous matter. 
 
 As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of 
 this back voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by 
 the sins of the Greeks, who, in the fierce exultation of a victory 
 purchased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor 
 even spared the altars of the gods in Troy. Athene, who had 
 been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed 
 by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of 
 Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively harassed and embittered 
 their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs 
 began to quarrel among themselves; their formal assembly be- 
 came a scene of drunkenness ; even Agamemnon and Menelaus 
 lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own 
 separate resolution. Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, 
 Nestor, Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus, and Philoctetes 
 reached home speedily and safely; Agamemnon also arrived in
 
 FALL OF TROY 87 
 
 Peloponnesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but 
 Menelaus was condemned to long wanderings and to the sever- 
 est privations in Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere before he could 
 set foot in his native land. The Locrian Ajax perished on the 
 Gyraean rock. Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had 
 already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the 
 rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods. No 
 sooner did Poseidon hear this language than he struck with his 
 trident the rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both 
 into the sea. Calchas, the soothsayer, together with Leonteus 
 and Polypcetes, proceeded by land from Troy to Colophon. 
 
 In respect, however, to these and other Grecian heroes, tales 
 were told different from those in the Odyssey, assigning to them 
 a long expatriation and a distant home. Nestor went to Italy, 
 where he founded Metapontum, Pisa, and Heracleia: Phil- 
 octetes also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Crimisa, and 
 sent settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus, under the ad- 
 vice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Odys- 
 seus, who had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his 
 journey to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians. 
 Idomeneus came to Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine 
 peninsula. Diomedes, after wandering far and wide, went 
 along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic gulf, and 
 finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of Argyrippa, 
 Beneventum, Atria, and Diomedeia : by the favor of Athene he 
 became immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many differ- 
 ent places. The Locrian followers of Ajax founded the Epi- 
 zephyrian Locri on the southernmost corner of Italy, besides 
 another settlement in Libya. 
 
 The previously exiled Teucros, besides founding the city 
 of Salamis in Cyprus, is said to have established some set- 
 tlements in the Iberian peninsula. Menestheus, the Athenian, 
 did the like, and also founded both Elaea in Mysia and Scylle- 
 tium in Italy. The Arcadian chief Agapenor founded Paphos 
 in Cyprus. Epius, of Panopeus in Phocis, the constructor of 
 the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athene, settled at 
 Lagaria, near Sybaris, on the coast of Italy; and the very tools 
 which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown 
 down to a late date in the temple of Athene at Metapontum.
 
 88 FALL OF TROY 
 
 Temples, altars, and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, 
 in Samos, and in Crete, the foundation of Agamemnon or of 
 his followers. The inhabitants of the Grecian town of Scione, 
 in the Thracian peninsula called Pallene or Pellene, accounted 
 themselves the offspring of the Pellenians from Achaea in Pelo- 
 ponnesus, who had served under Agamemnon before Troy, and 
 who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot 
 by a storm and there settled. The Pamphylians, on the south- 
 ern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their origin from the wan- 
 derings of Amphilochus and Calchas after the siege of Troy: 
 the inhabitants of the Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Am- 
 bracia revered the same Amphilochus as their founder. The 
 Orchomenians under lamenus, on quitting the conquered city, 
 wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Euxine 
 Sea; and the barbarous Achaeans under Mount Caucasus were 
 supposed to have derived their first establishment from this 
 source. Meriones, with his Cretan followers, settled at Engyion 
 in Sicily, along with the preceding Cretans who had remained 
 there after the invasion of Minos. The Elymians in Sicily also 
 were composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the 
 spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, united in the 
 joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta. We hear of Podalerius 
 both in Italy and on the coast of Caria; of Acamas, son of The- 
 seus, at Amphipolus in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, and at Syn- 
 nada in Phrygia; of Guneus, Prothous, and Eurypylus, in Crete 
 as well as in Libya. The obscure poem of Lycophron enumer- 
 ates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose con- 
 quest of Troy was indeed a "Cadmean" victory (according to 
 the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of 
 the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished. It was 
 particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were wor- 
 shipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as wan- 
 derers from Troy was reported and believed. 
 
 I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among 
 the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Tro- 
 jan heroes as well as that of the Argonauts one of the most 
 striking features in the Hellenic legendary world. Among 
 them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose 
 romantic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous
 
 FALL OF TROY 89 
 
 persons have been made familiarly known by Homer. The 
 goddesses Calypso and Circe; the semi-divine mariners of 
 Phaeacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey 
 without a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic 
 Laestrygones, and the wind-ruler ./Eolus ; the Sirens, who en- 
 snare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food, 
 all these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the 
 old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reestablished in his house 
 and family. But so marked a personage could never be per- 
 mitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life ; the epic 
 poem called the Telegonia ascribed to him a subsequent series 
 of adventures. Telegonus, his son by Circe, coming to Ithaca 
 in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus 
 without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the 
 son for his undesigned parricide : at his prayer and by the in- 
 tervention of his mother Circe, both Penelope and Telemachus 
 were made immortal : Telegonus married Penelope, and Telem- 
 achus married Circe. 
 
 We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the 
 mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus 
 was of the Molossian. 
 
 It has already been mentioned that Antenor and ^Eneas 
 stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction 
 with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which was by 
 Sophocles and others construed as treacherous collusion, a 
 suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically repelled, 
 by the yEneas of Vergil. In the old epic of Arctinus, next in 
 age to the Iliad and Odyssey, ^Eneas abandons Troy and retires 
 to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous death of Laocoon, 
 before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night - 
 battle : yet Lesches, in another of the ancient epic poems, rep- 
 resented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptole- 
 mus. In a remarkable passage of the Iliad, Poseidon describes 
 the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus, and 
 predicts that ./Eneas and his descendants shall reign over the 
 Trojans : the race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all 
 his other sons, would thus be preserved, since ./Eneas belonged 
 to it. Accordingly, when ^Eneas is in imminent peril from the 
 hands of Achilles, Poseidon specially interferes to rescue him,
 
 90 FALL OF TROY 
 
 and even the implacable miso-Trojan goddess Here assents to 
 the proceeding. These passages have been construed by va- 
 rious able critics to refer to a family of philo-Hellenic or semi- 
 Hellenic ^Eneadae, known even in the time of the early singers 
 of the Iliad as masters of some territory in or near the Troad, 
 and professing to be descended from, as well as worshipping, 
 ^Cneas. In the town of Scepsis, situated in the mountainous 
 range of Ida, about thirty miles eastward of Ilium, there existed 
 two noble and priestly families who professed to be descended, 
 the one from Hector, the other from ^neas. The Scepsian 
 critic Demetrius (in whose time both these families were still 
 to be found) informs us that Scamandrius, son of Hector, and 
 Ascanius, son of ^Eneas, were the archegets or heroic founders 
 of his native city, which had been originally situated on one of 
 the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred by 
 them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time. In 
 Arisbe and Gentinus there seem to have been families profess- 
 ing the same descent, since the same archegets were acknowl- 
 edged. In Ophrynium, Hector had his consecrated edifice, 
 while in Ilium both he and ./Eneas were worshipped as gods : 
 and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian Menecrates 
 that ^Eneas, "having been wronged by Paris and stripped of 
 the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself 
 by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks." 
 
 One tale thus among many respecting ^Eneas, and that, too, 
 the most ancient of all, preserved among natives of the Troad, 
 who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was that after 
 the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the 
 remaining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But 
 there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irre- 
 concilable : the hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer (fato 
 profugus) and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of 
 Odysseus. We hear of him at JEnus in Thrace, in Pallene, at 
 -<Eneia in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delos, at Orchomenus and 
 Mantineia in Arcadia, in the islands of Cythera and Zacyn- 
 thus, in Leucas and Ambracia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the 
 Salentine peninsula and various other places in the southern 
 region of Italy; at Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, 
 at Cape Palinurus, Cumae, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in La-
 
 FALL OF TROY 91 
 
 tium, where he lays the first humble foundation of the mighty 
 Rome and her empire. And the reason why his wanderings 
 were not continued still further was, that the oracles and the 
 pronounced will of the gods directed him to settle in Latium. 
 In each of these numerous places his visit was commemorated 
 and certified by local monuments or special legends, particularly 
 by temples and permanent ceremonies in honor of his mother 
 Aphrodite, whose worship accompanied him everywhere : there 
 were also many temples and many different tombs of ^Eneas 
 himself. The vast ascendancy acquired by Rome, the ardor 
 with which all the literary Romans espoused the idea of a Tro- 
 jan origin, and the fact that the Julian family recognized ^Eneas 
 as their gentile primary ancestor, all contributed to give to 
 the Roman version of this legend the preponderance over every 
 other. The various other places in which monuments of 
 JEneas were found came thus to be represented as places where 
 he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. 
 But though the legendary pretensions of these places were 
 thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary 
 public, the local belief was not extinguished ; they claimed the 
 hero as their permanent property, and his tomb was to them a 
 proof that he had lived and died among them. 
 
 Antenor, who shares with ^Eneas the favorable sympathy 
 of the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along 
 with Menelaus and Helen into the region of Cyrene in Libya. 
 But according to the more current narrative, he placed himself 
 at the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who 
 had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part 
 of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring bar- 
 barians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua) ; 
 the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his 
 immigration. We learn further from Strabo that Opsicellas, 
 one of the companions of Antenor, had continued his wander- 
 ings even into Iberia, and that he had there established a set- 
 tlement bearing his name. Thus endeth the Trojan war, to- 
 gether with its sequel, the dispersion of the heroes, victors as 
 well as vanquished.
 
 ACCESSION OF SOLOMON 
 BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM 
 
 B.C. 1017 
 
 HENRY HART MILMAN 
 
 After many weary years of travail and fighting in the wilderness and 
 the land of Canaan, the Jews had at last founded their kingdom, with Jeru- 
 salem as the capital. Saul was proclaimed the first king; afterward 
 followed David, the " Lion of the tribe of Judah." During the many 
 wars in which the Israelites had been engaged, the Ark of the Covenant 
 was the one thing in which their faith was bound. No undertaking 
 could fail while they retained possession of it. 
 
 In their wanderings the tabernacle enclosing the precious ark was 
 first erected before the dwellings for the people. It had been captured 
 by the Philistines, then restored to the Hebrews, and became of greater 
 veneration than before. It will be remembered that, among other things, 
 it contained the rod of Aaron which budded and was the cause of his 
 selection as high-priest. It also contained the tables of stone which 
 bore the Ten Commandments. 
 
 David desired to build a fitting shrine, a temple, in which to place the 
 Ark of the Covenant ; it should be a place wherein the people could 
 worship ; a centre of religion in which the ark should have paid it the 
 distinction due it as the seat of tremendous majesty. 
 
 But David had been a man of war; this temple was a place of peace. 
 Blood must not stain its walls; no shedder of gore could be its architect. 
 Yet David collected stone, timber, and precious metals for its erection; 
 and, not being allowed to erect the temple himself, was permitted to 
 depute that office to his son and successor, " Solomon the Wise." 
 
 At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered, the coun 
 try was at peace ; the domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any 
 other time, before or afterward. It was the fitting time for the erection 
 of a great shrine to enclose the sacred ark. Nobly was this done, and 
 no human work of ancient or modern times has so impressed mankind 
 as the building of Solomon's Temple. 
 
 gOLOMON succeeded to the Hebrew kingdom at the age of 
 twenty. He was environed by designing, bold, and dan- 
 gerous enemies. Tne pretensions of Adonijah still commanded 
 a powerful party: Abiathar swayed the priesthood; Joab the 
 
 02
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 93 
 
 army. The singular connection in public opinion between the 
 title to the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's 
 harem is well understood. 1 Adonijah, in making request for 
 Abishag, a youthful concubine taken by David in his old age, 
 was considered as insidiously renewing his claims to the sover- 
 eignty. Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's dying 
 admonition : he seized the opportunity of crushing all future 
 opposition and all danger of a civil war. He caused Adonijah 
 to be put to death; suspended Abiathar from his office, and 
 banished him from Jerusalem: and though Joab fled to the 
 altar, he commanded him to be slain for the two murders of 
 which he had been guilty, those of Abner and Amasa. Shimei, 
 another dangerous man, was commanded to reside in Jerusalem, 
 on pain of death if he should quit the city. Three years after- 
 ward he was detected in a suspicious journey to Gath, on the 
 Philistine border ; and having violated the compact, he suffered 
 the penalty. 
 
 Thus secured by the policy of his father from internal ene- 
 mies, by the terror of his victories from foreign invasion, Solo- 
 mon commenced his peaceful reign, during which Judah and 
 Israel dwelt safely, Every man under his vine and under his fig- 
 tree, from Dan to Beersheba. This peace was broken only by a 
 revolt of the Edomites. Hadad, of the royal race, after the 
 exterminating war waged by David and by Joab, had fled to 
 Egypt, where he married the sister of the king's wife. No 
 sooner had he heard of the death of David and of Joab than he 
 returned, and seems to have kept up a kind of predatory war- 
 fare during the reign of Solomon. Another adventurer, Rezon, 
 a subject of Hadadezer, king of Zobah, seized on Damascus, 
 and maintained a great part of Syria in hostility to Solomon. 
 
 Solomon's conquest of Hamath Zobah in a later part of his 
 reign, after which he built Tadmor in the wilderness and raised 
 a line of fortresses along his frontier to the Euphrates, is prob- 
 ably connected with these hostilities.' The justice of Solomon 
 was proverbial. Among his first acts after his accession, it is 
 related that when he had offered a costly sacrifice at Gibeon, 
 the place where the Tabernacle remained, God had appeared 
 
 1 1 Kings, i. * I Kings, xi., 23 ; I Chron., viii., 3.
 
 94 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 to him in a dream, and offered him whatever gift he chose : the 
 wise king requested an understanding heart to judge the peo- 
 ple. God not merely assented to his prayer, but added the gift 
 of honor and riches. His judicial wisdom was displayed in the 
 memorable history of the two women who contested the right 
 to a child. Solomon, in the wild spirit of Oriental justice, 
 commanded the infant to be divided before their faces: the 
 heart of the real mother was struck with terror and abhor- 
 rence, while the false one consented to the horrible partition, 
 and by this appeal to nature the cause was instantaneously 
 decided. 
 
 The internal government of his extensive dominions next 
 demanded the attention of Solomon. Besides the local and 
 municipal governors, he divided the kingdom into twelve dis- 
 tricts : over each of these he appointed a purveyor for the col- 
 lection of the royal tribute, which was received in kind ; and 
 thus the growing capital and the immense establishments of 
 Solomon were abundantly furnished with provisions. Each 
 purveyor supplied the court for a month. The daily consump- 
 tion of his household was three hundred bushels of finer flour, 
 six hundred of a coarser sort ; ten fatted, twenty other oxen ; 
 one hundred sheep; besides poultry, and various kinds of 
 venison. Provender was furnished for forty thousand horses, 
 and a great number of dromedaries. Yet the population of the 
 country did not, at first at least, feel these burdens : Judah and 
 Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude^ 
 eating and drinking, and making merry. 
 
 The foreign treaties of Solomon were as wisely directed to 
 secure the profound peace of his dominions. He entered into 
 a matrimonial alliance with the royal family of Egypt, whose 
 daughter he received with great magnificence ; and he renewed 
 the important alliance with the king of Tyre. 1 The friendship 
 of this monarch was of the highest value in contributing to the 
 
 1 After inserting the correspondence between King Solomon and King 
 Hiram of Tyre, according to I Kings, v., Josephus asserts that copies of 
 these letters were not only preserved by his countrymen, but also in the 
 archives of Tyre. I presume that Josephus adverts to the statement of 
 Tynan historians, not to an actual inspection of the archives, which he 
 seems to assert as existing and accessible.
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 95 
 
 great royal and national work, the building of the Temple. 
 The cedar timber could only be obtained from the forests of 
 Lebanon: the Sidonian artisans, celebrated in the Homeric 
 poems, were the most skilful workmen in every kind of manu- 
 facture, particularly hi the precious metals. 
 
 Solomon entered into a regular treaty, by which he bound 
 himself to supply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn ; re- 
 ceiving in return their timber, which was floated down to Joppa, 
 and a large body of artificers. The timber was cut by his own 
 subjects, of whom he raised a body of thirty thousand; ten 
 thousand employed at a time, and relieving each other every 
 month ; so that to one month of labor they had two of rest. 
 He raised tsvo other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of 
 burdens, the other of eighty thousand hewers of stone, who 
 were employed in the quarries among the mountains. All 
 these labors were thrown, not on the Israelites, but on the 
 strangers who, chiefly of Canaanitish descent, had been per- 
 mitted to inhabit the country. 
 
 These preparations, in addition to those of King David, 
 being completed, the work began. The eminence of Moriah, 
 the Mount of Vision, i.e., the height seen afar from the adjacent 
 country, which tradition pointed out as the spot where Abra- 
 ham had offered his son (where recently the plague had been 
 stayed, by the altar built in the threshing-floor of Oman or 
 Araunah, the Jebusite), rose on the east side of the city. Its 
 rugged top was levelled with immense labor; its sides, which 
 to the east and south were precipitous, were faced with a wall 
 of stone, built up perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, 
 so as to appear to those who looked down of most terrific 
 height ; a work of prodigious skill and labor, as the immense 
 stones were strongly mortised together and wedged into the 
 rock. Around the whole area or esplanade, an irregular quad- 
 rangle, was a solid wall of considerable height and strength : 
 within this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were 
 either from the first, or subsequently, admitted. A second 
 wall encompassed another quadrangle, called the court of the 
 Israelites. Along this wall, on the inside, ran a portico or 
 cloister, over which were chambers for different sacred pur- 
 poses. Within this again another, probably a lower, wall
 
 96 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 separated the court of the priests from that of the Israelites. 
 To each court the ascent was by steps, so that the platform 
 of the inner court was on a higher level than that of the 
 outer. 
 
 The Temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth 
 than the architectural skill and science of the people. It was a 
 wonder of the world from the splendor of its materials, more 
 than the grace, boldness, or majesty of its height and dimen- 
 sions. It had neither the colossal magnitude of the Egyptian, 
 the simple dignity and perfect proportional harmony of the 
 Grecian, nor perhaps the fantastic grace and lightness of later 
 Oriental architecture. Some writers, calling to their assistance 
 the visionary temple of Ezekiel, have erected a most superb 
 edifice ; to which there is this fatal objection, that if the dimen- 
 sions of the prophet are taken as they stand in the text, the 
 area of the Temple and its courts would not only have covered 
 the whole of Mount Moriah, but almost all Jerusalem. In fact 
 our accounts of the Temple of Solomon are altogether unsatis- 
 factory. The details, as they now stand in the books of Kings 
 and Chronicles, the only safe authorities, are unscientific, and, 
 what is worse, contradictory. 
 
 Josephus has evidently blended together the three temples, 
 and attributed to the earlier all the subsequent additions and 
 alterations. The Temple, on the whole, was an enlargement 
 of the tabernacle, built of more costly and durable materials. 
 Like its model, it retained the ground-plan and disposition of 
 the Egyptian, or rather of almost all the sacred edifices of an- 
 tiquity: even its measurements are singularly in unison with 
 some of the most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It con- 
 sisted of a propylaeon, a temple, and a sanctuary ; called respec- 
 tively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies Yet 
 in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple 
 must rather have resembled the form of a simple Gothic 
 church. 
 
 In the front to the east stood the porch, a tall tower, rising 
 to the height of 210 feet. Either within, or, like the Egyptian 
 obelisks, before the porch, stood two pillars of brass; by one 
 account 27, by another above 60 feet high, the latter statement 
 probably including their capitals and bases. These were called
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 97 
 
 Jachin and Boaz (Durability and Strength). 1 The capitals of 
 these were of the richest workmanship, with net-work, chain- 
 work, and pomegranates. The porch was the same width with 
 the Temple, 35 feet; its depth 17^. The length of the main 
 building, including the Holy Place, 70 feet, and the Holy of 
 Holies, 35, was in the whole 105 feet; the height 52^ feet.* 
 
 Josephus carries the whole building up to the height of the 
 porch ; but this is out of all credible proportion, making the 
 height twice the length and six times the width. Along each 
 side, and perhaps at the back of the main building, ran an aisle, 
 divided into three stories of small chambers : the wall of the 
 Temple being thicker at the bottom, left a rest to support the 
 beams of these chambers, which were not let into the wall. 
 These aisles, the chambers of which were appropriated as 
 vestiaries, treasuries, and for other sacred purposes, seem to 
 have reached about half way up the main wall of what we may 
 call the nave and choir : the windows into the latter were prob- 
 ably above them ; these were narrow, but widened inward. 
 
 If the dimensions of the Temple appear by no means im- 
 posing, it must be remembered that but a small part of the re- 
 ligious ceremonies took place within the walls. The Holy of 
 Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the High- 
 priest alone. It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of 
 the Divinity. The Holy Place, the body of the Temple, 
 admitted only the officiating priests. The courts, called in 
 popular language the Temple, or rather the inner quadrangle, 
 
 1 Ewald, following, he says, the Septuagint, makes these pillars 
 not standing alone like obelisks before the porch, but as forming the 
 front of the porch, with the capitals connected together, and supporting 
 a kind of balcony, with ornamental work above it. The pillars measured 
 12 cubits (22 feet) round. 
 
 8 Mr. Fergusson, estimating the cubit rather lower than in the text, 
 makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or Holy Place, 60 by 30; the? 
 Holy of Holies, 30; the height 45 feet. Mr. Fergusson, following Jose- 
 phus, supposes that the whole Temple had an upper story of wood, a 
 talar, as appears in other Eastern edifices. I doubt the authority of 
 Josephus as to the older Temple, though, as Mr. Fergusson observes, 
 the discrepancies between the measurements in Kings and in Chronicles 
 may be partially reconciled on this supposition. Mr. Fergusson makes 
 the height of the eastern tower only 90 feet. The text followed 2 Chroa., 
 lit, 4, reckoning the cubit at i foot 9 inches. 
 E., VOL. I. 7
 
 9$ SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 were in fact the great place of divine worship. Here, under 
 the open air, were celebrated the great public and national 
 rites, the processions, the offerings, the sacrifices; here 
 stood the great tank for ablution, and the high altar for burnt- 
 offerings. 
 
 But the costliness of the materials, the richness and variety 
 of the details, amply compensated for the moderate dimensions 
 of the building. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveller 
 might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of 
 hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was richly carved 
 with knosps and flowers ; the ceiling was of fir-tree. But in 
 every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion ; within 
 and without, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole 
 house is described as overlaid with gold. The finest and purest 
 that of Parvaim, by some supposed to be Ceylon was re- 
 served for the sanctuary. Here the cherubim, which stood 
 upon the covering of the Ark, with their wings touching each 
 wall, were entirely covered with gold 
 
 The sumptuous veil, of the richest materials and brightest 
 colors, which divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place 
 was suspended on chains of gold Cherubim, palm-trees, and 
 flowers, the favorite ornaments, everywhere covered with gild 
 nig, were wrought in almost all parts. The altar within the 
 Temple and the table of shewbread were likewise covered with 
 the same precious metal. All the vessels, the ten candlesticks, 
 five hundred basins, and all the rest of the sacrificial and other 
 utensils, were of solid gold. Yet the Hebrew writers seem to 
 dwell with the greatest astonishment and admiration on the 
 works which were founded in brass by Huram, a man of Jew- 
 ish extraction, who had learned his art at Tyre. 
 
 Besides the lofty pillars above mentioned, there was a great 
 tank, called a sea, of molten brass, supported on twelve oxen, 
 three turned each way ; this was seventeen and one-half feet in 
 diameter. There was also a great altar, and ten large vessels 
 for the purpose of ablution, called lavers, standing on bases or 
 pedestals, the rims of which were richly ornamented with a 
 border, on which were wrought figures of lions, oxen, and 
 cherubim. The bases below were formed of four wheels, like 
 those of a chariot. All the works in brass were cast in a place
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE & 
 
 near the Jordan, where the soil was of a stiff clay suited to the 
 purpose 
 
 For seven years and a half the fabric arose in silence. All 
 the timbers, the stones, even of the most enormous size, meas- 
 uring seventeen and eighteen feet, were hewn and fitted, so as 
 to be put together without the sound of any tool whatever ; as 
 it has been expressed, with great poetical beauty : 
 
 " Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew." 
 
 At the end of this period, the Temple and its courts being 
 completed, the solemn dedication took place, with the greatest 
 magnificence which the king and the nation could display. All 
 the chieftains of the different tribes, and all of every order who 
 could be brought together, assembled. 
 
 David had already organized the priesthood and the Levites ; 
 and assigned to the thirty-eight thousand of the latter tribe 
 each his particular office ; twenty-four thousand were appointed 
 for the common duties, six thousand as officers, four thousand 
 as guards and porters, four thousand as singers and musicians. 
 On this great occasion, the Dedication of the Temple, all the 
 tribe of Levi, without regard to their courses, the whole priestly 
 order of every class, attended. Around the great brazen 
 altar, which rose in the court of the priests before the door of 
 the Temple, stood in front the sacrificers, all around the whole 
 choir, arrayed in white linen. One hundred and twenty of 
 these were trumpeters, the rest had cymbals, harps, and psal- 
 teries. Solomon himself took his place on an elevated scaffold, 
 or raised throne of brass. The whole assembled nation crowded 
 the spacious courts beyond. The ceremony began with the 
 preparation of burnt-offerings, so numerous that they could not 
 be counted. 
 
 At an appointed signal commenced the more important part 
 of the scene, the removal of the Ark, the installation of the 
 God of Israel in his new and appropriate dwelling, to the sound 
 of all the voices and all the instruments, chanting some of those 
 splendid odes, the 47th, 97th, Q8th, and iO7th psalms. The 
 Ark advanced, borne by the Levites, to the open portals of the 
 Temple. It can scarcely be doubted that the 24th psalm, even 
 if composed before, was adopted and used on this occasion.
 
 I00 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 The singers, as it drew near the gate, broke out in these words: 
 Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlast* 
 ing doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. It was an- 
 swered from the other part of the choir, Who is the King of 
 (^lory f the whole choir responded, The Lord of Hosts, he is 
 the King of Glory. 
 
 When the procession arrived at the Holy Place, the gates 
 flew open ; when it reached the Holy of Holies, the veil was 
 drawn back. The Ark took its place under the extended wings 
 of the cherubim, which might seem to fold over, and receive it 
 under their protection. At that instant all the trumpeters and 
 singers were at once to make one sound to be heard in praising 
 and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted tip their voice, 
 with the trumpets, and cymbals, and instruments of music, and 
 praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for his mercy endureth 
 forever, the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the 
 Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of 
 the cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. 
 Thus the Divinity took possession of his sacred edifice. 
 
 The king then rose upon the brazen scaffold, knelt down, 
 and spreading his hands toward heaven, uttered the prayer of 
 consecration. The prayer was of unexampled sublimity : while 
 it implored the perpetual presence of the Almighty, as the 
 tutelar Deity and Sovereign of the Israelites, it recognized his 
 spiritual and illimitable nature. But will God in very deed 
 dwell with men on the earth ? behold heaven and the heaven of 
 fieavens cannot contain thee, how much less this Iwuse which 1 
 have built t It then recapitulated the principles of the Hebrew 
 theocracy, the dependence of the national prosperity and hap- 
 piness on the national conformity to the civil and religious law. 
 As the king concluded in these emphatic terms : Now, there- 
 fore, arise, O Lord God, into thy resting-place, thou and the 
 ark of thy strength: let thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with 
 salvation, and thy saints rejoice in goodness. O Lord God, turn 
 not away tJte face of thine anointed: remember the mercies of 
 David thy servant, the cloud which had rested over the Holy 
 of Holies grew brighter and more dazzling ; fire broke out and 
 consumed all the sacrifices; the priests stood without, awe- 
 struck by the insupportable splendor; the whole people fell on
 
 101 
 
 their faces, and worshipped and praised the Lard, for he u 
 good, for Jiis mercy is forever. 
 
 Which was the greater, the external magnificence, or the 
 moral sublimity of this scene ? Was it the Temple, situated on 
 its commanding eminence, with all its courts, the dazzling 
 splendor of its materials, the innumerable multitudes, the 
 priesthood in their gorgeous attire, the king, with all the insig- 
 nia of royalty, on his throne of burnished brass, the music, the 
 radiant cloud filling the Temple, the sudden fire flashing upon 
 the altar, the whole nation upon their knees ? Was it not rather 
 the religious grandeur of the hymns and of the prayer: the ex- 
 alted and rational views of the Divine Nature, the union of a 
 whole people in the adoration of the one Great, Incomprehen- 
 sible, Almighty, Everlasting Creator? 
 
 This extraordinary festival, which took place at the time of 
 that of Tabernacles, lasted for two weeks, twice the usual time : 
 during this period twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred 
 and twenty thousand sheep were sacrificed, 1 every individual 
 probably contributing to this great propitiatory rite ; and the 
 whole people feasting on those parts of the sacrifices which 
 were not set apart for holy uses. 
 
 Though the chief magnificence of Solomon was lavished on 
 the Temple of God, yet the sumptuous palaces which he 
 erected for his own residence display an opulence and pro- 
 fusion which may vie with the older monarchs of Egypt or As- 
 syria. The great palace stood in Jerusalem ; it occupied thir- 
 teen years in building. A causeway bridged the deep ravine, 
 and leading directly to the Temple, united the part either of 
 Acra or Sion, on which the palace stood, with Mount Moriah. 
 
 1 Gibbon, in one of his malicious notes, observes, " As the blood and 
 smoke of so many hecatombs might be inconvenient, Lightfoot, the 
 Christian Rabbi, removes them by a miracle. Le Clerc (ad loc.) is bold 
 enough to suspect the fidelity of the numbers." To this I ventured to 
 subjoin the following illustration : " According to the historian Kotobed- 
 dyn, quoted by Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, p. 276, the Khalif Mok- 
 tader sacrificed during his pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 
 350, forty thousand camels and cows, and fifty thousand sheep. Barthema 
 describes thirty thousand oxen slain, and their carcasses given to the 
 poor. Tavernier speaks of one hundred thousand victims offered by the 
 king of Tonquin." Gibbon, ch. xxiii., iv., p. 96, edit. Milman.
 
 102 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 In this palace was a vast hall for public business, trom its cedar 
 pillars called the House of the Forest of Lebanon. It was 
 175 feet long, half that measurement in width, above 50 feet 
 high ; four rows of cedar columns supported a roof made of 
 beams of the same wood ; there were three rows of windows on 
 each side facing each other. Besides this great hall, there 
 were two others, called porches, of smaller dimensions, in one 
 of which the throne of justice was placed. The harem, or 
 women's apartments, adjoined to these buildings ; with other 
 piles of vast extent for different purposes, particularly, if we 
 may credit Josephus, a great banqueting hall. 
 
 The same author informs us that the whole was surrounded 
 with spacious and luxuriant gardens, and adds a less credible 
 fact, ornamented with sculptures and paintings. Another pal- 
 ace was built in a romantic part of the country in the valleys 
 at the foot of Lebanon for his wife, the daughter of the king of 
 Egypt ; in the luxurious gardens of which we may lay the scene 
 of that poetical epithalamium, 1 or collection of Idyls, the Song 
 of Solomon. 4 The splendid works of Solomon were not con- 
 fined to royal magnificence and display ; they condescended to 
 usefulness. To Solomon are traced at least the first channels 
 and courses of the natural and artificial water supply which has 
 always enabled Jerusalem to maintain its thousands of wor- 
 shippers at different periods, and to endure long and obstinate 
 sieges." 
 
 The descriptions in the Greek writers of the Persian courts 
 in Susa and Ecbatana; the tales of the early travellers in the 
 
 1 1 here assume that the Song of Solomon was an epithalamium. I 
 enter not into the interminable controversy as to the literal or allegorical 
 or spiritual meaning of this poem, nor into that of its age. A very par- 
 ticular though succinct account of all these theories, ancient and modern, 
 may be found in a work by Dr. Ginsberg. I confess that Dr. Ginsberg's 
 theory, which is rather tinged with the virtuous sentimentality of the mod- 
 era novel, seems to me singularly out of harmony with the Oriental and 
 ancient character of the poem. It is adopted, however, though modified, 
 by M. Re*nan. 
 
 1 According to Ewald, the ivory tower in this poem was raised in one 
 of these beautiful " pleasances," in the Anti-Libanus, looking toward 
 Hamath. 
 
 Ewald: Geschichte, iii., pp. 62-68; a very remarkable and valuable 
 passage.
 
 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 103 
 
 East about the kings of Samarcand or Cathay ; and even the 
 imagination of the Oriental romancers and poets, have scarcely 
 conceived a more splendid pageant than Solomon, seated on 
 his throne of ivory, receiving the homage of distant princes 
 who came to admire his magnificence, and put to the test his 
 noted wisdom. 1 This throne was of pure ivory, covered with 
 gold ; six steps led up to the seat, and on each side of the steps 
 stood twelve lions. 
 
 All the vessels of his palace were of pure gold, silver was 
 thought too mean : his armory was furnished with gold ; two 
 hundred targets and three hundred shields of beaten gold were 
 suspended In the house of Lebanon. Josephus mentions a 
 body of archers who escorted him from the city to his country 
 palace, clad in dresses of Tyrian purple, and their hair powdered 
 with gold dust. But enormous as this wealth appears, the 
 statement of his expenditure on the Temple, and of his annual 
 revenue, so passes all credibility, that any attempt at forming 
 a calculation on the uncertain data we possess may at once be 
 abandoned as a hopeless task. No better proof can be given of 
 the uncertainty of our authorities, of our imperfect knowledge 
 of the Hebrew weights of money, and, above all, of our total 
 ignorance of the relative value which the precious metals bore 
 to the commodities of life, than the estimate, made by Dr. 
 Prideaux, of the treasures left by David, amounting to eight 
 hundred millions, nearly the capital of our national debt. 
 
 Our inquiry into the sources of the vast wealth which Solo- 
 mon undoubtedly possessed may lead to more satisfactory, 
 though still imperfect, results. The treasures of David were 
 accumulated rather by conquest than by traffic. Some of the 
 nations he subdued, particularly the Edomites, were wealthy. 
 All the tribes seem to have worn a great deal of gold and silver 
 in their ornaments and their armor ; their idols were often of 
 gold, and the treasuries of their temples perhaps contained 
 considerable wealth. But during the reign of Solomon almost 
 the whole commerce of the world passed into his territories. 
 The treaty with Tyre was of the utmost importance : nor is 
 there any instance in which two neighboring nations so clearly 
 
 1 Compare the great Mogul's throne, in Tavernier; that of the King 
 of Persia, in Morier.
 
 104 SOLOMON'S TEMPLE 
 
 saw, and so steadily pursued, without jealousy or mistrust, 
 their mutual and inseparable interests. 1 
 
 On one occasion only, when Solomon presented to Hiram 
 twenty inland cities which he had conquered, Hiram expressed 
 great dissatisfaction, and called the territory by the opprobrious 
 name of Cabul. The Tyrian had perhaps cast a wistful eye on 
 the noble bay and harbor of Acco, or Ptolemais, which the pru- 
 dent Hebrew either would not, or could not since it was part 
 of the promised land dissever from his dominions. So strict 
 was the confederacy, that Tyre may be considered the port of 
 Palestine, Palestine the granary of Tyre. Tyre furnished the 
 shipbuilders and mariners ; the fruitful plains of Palestine vict- 
 ualled the fleets, and supplied the manufacturers and mer- 
 chants of the Phoenician league with all the necessaries of life.* 
 
 1 The very learned work of Movers, Die Phonizier (Bonn, 1841, Ber- 
 lin, 1849) contains everything which true German industry and compre- 
 hensiveness can accumulate about this people. Movers, though in such 
 an inquiry conjecture is inevitable, is neither so bold, so arbitrary, nor 
 so dogmatic in his conjectures as many of his contemporaries. See on 
 Hiram, ii. 326 et seq. Movers is disposed to appreciate as of high value 
 the fragments preserved in Josephus of the Phoenician histories of Me- 
 nander and Dios. 
 
 Mr. Kenrick's Phoenicia may also be consulted with advantage. 
 
 9 To a late period Tyre and Sidon were mostly dependent on Pales- 
 tine for their supply of grain. The inhabitants of these cities desired 
 peace with Herod (Agrippa) because their country was nourished by the 
 king's country (Acts xii., 20).
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH 
 
 B.C. 789 
 
 F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER 
 
 Mesopotamia for many centuries was the field of battle for the oppos- 
 ing hosts of Babylonia and Assyria, each striving for mastery over the 
 other. At first each city had its own prince, but at length one of these 
 petty kingdoms absorbed the rest, and Nineveh became the capital of a 
 united Assyria. Babylonia had her own kings, but they were little more 
 than hereditary satraps receiving investiture from Nineveh. 
 
 From about B.C. 1060 to 1020 Babylon seems to have recovered the 
 upper hand. Her victories put an end to what is known as the First As- 
 syrian Empire. After a few generations a new family ascended the 
 throne and ultimately founded the Second Assyrian Empire. 
 
 The first princes whose figured monuments have come down to us be- 
 longed to those days. The oldest of all was Assurnizirpal ; the bas- 
 reliefs with which his palace was decorated are now in the British Museum 
 and the Louvre ; most of them in the former. His son Shalmaneser III, 
 and later Shalmaneser IV, made many campaigns against the neighbor- 
 ing peoples, and Assyria became rapidly a great and powerful nation. 
 The effeminate Sardanapalus was the last of the dynasty. 
 
 The capital of Assyria was Nineveh, one of the most famous of cities. 
 It was remarkable for extent, wealth, and architectural grandeur. Dio- 
 dorus Siculus says its walls were sixty miles around and one hundred feet 
 high. Three chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its 
 walls, which were defended by fifteen hundred bastions, each of them two 
 hundred feet in height. These dimensions may be exaggerated, but the 
 Hebrew scriptures and recent excavations at the ancient site leave no 
 doubt as to the splendor of the Assyrian palaces and the greatness of the 
 city of Nineveh in population, wealth, and power. In historical times it 
 was destroyed by the Medes, under King Cyaxares, and by the Babylo- 
 nians, under Nebuchadnezzar, about B.C. 607. 
 
 We are indebted to the monuments, tablets, and " books " recently 
 discovered for the history of Assyria and other ancient oriental nations. 
 Layard unearthed the greater portion, on the site of ancient Nineveh, of 
 the Assyrian " books " (for so are named the tablets of clay, sometimes 
 enamelled, at others only sun-dried or burnt). The writing on these 
 
 105
 
 106 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 
 " books " Is the cuneiform, and was done by impressing the " style " on the 
 clay while in a waxlike condition. Many of the tablets were broken 
 when Layard and Rawlinson gave them over to the British Museum. 
 The reconstruction of these tablets was undertaken by George Smith, an 
 English Assyriologist of the British Museum, who displayed great skill 
 and earnest application in the deciphering of the cuneiform text. 
 
 In each reign the history of the king and his acts was written by a 
 poet or historian detailed to that office. The " books " were collected and 
 ''ept in great libraries, the largest of these being made by Sardanapalus. 
 
 greater part of the expeditions of Shalmaneser IV, suc- 
 ceeding each other year after year, were directed, like 
 those of his father, sometimes to the north, into Armenia and 
 Pontus ; sometimes to the east, into Media, never completely 
 subdued ; sometimes to the south, into Chaldaea, where revolts 
 were of constant occurrence; and finally westward, toward 
 Syria and the region of Amanus. In this direction he ad- 
 vanced farther than his predecessors, and came into contact 
 with some personages mentioned in Bible history. The part of 
 his annals relating to the campaigns that brought him into col- 
 lision with the kings of Damascus and Israel possesses peculiar 
 interest for us, much greater than that attaching to the narra- 
 tive of any other wars. 
 
 The sixteenth campaign of Shalmaneser IV (B.C. 890) com- 
 menced a new series of wars ; the King crossed the Zab, or 
 Zabat, to make war on the mountain people of Upper Media, 
 and afterward on the Scythian tribes around the Caspian Sea. 
 He did not, however, abandon the western countries, where he 
 soon found himself opposed by the new King whom the revo- 
 lution arising from the influence of Elisha the prophet had 
 placed on the throne of Damascus in the room of Benhidai. 
 
 "In my eighteenth campaign " (886), we read on the Nim- 
 rud obelisk, " I crossed the Euphrates for the sixteenth time. 
 Hazael, king of Damascus, came toward me to give battle. I 
 took from him eleven hundred and twenty-one chariots and 
 four hundred and seventy horsemen, with his camp. 
 
 " In my nineteenth campaign (885) I crossed the Euphrates 
 /or the eighteenth time. I marched toward Mount Amanus, 
 and there cut beams of cedar. 
 
 "In my twenty-first campaign (883) I crossed the Euphra- 
 tes for the twenty-second time. I marched to the cities of Ha-
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 107 
 
 zael of Damascus. I received tribute from Tyre, Sidon, and 
 Byblus." 
 
 It evidently was at the end of this campaign that Jehu, 
 king of Israel, whose territory Hazael had ravaged, appealed to 
 Shalmaneser for help against his powerful enemy. The in- 
 scription on the obelisk says that the Assyrian King received 
 tribute from Jehu, whom it names " son of Omri," for the great 
 renown of the founder of Samaria had made the Assyrians con- 
 sider all the kings of Israel as his descendants. One of the 
 bas-reliefs of the same monument represents Jehu prostrat- 
 ing himself before Shalmaneser, as if acknowledging himself a 
 vassal. 
 
 The annals of Shalmaneser say no more after this, either 
 of the king of Damascus or of Israel. They record, as his 
 twenty-seventh campaign, a great war in Armenia that brought 
 about the submission of all the districts of that country that 
 still resisted the Assyrian monarch. In the thirty-first cam- 
 paign (873), the last mentioned on the obelisk, the King sent 
 the general-in-chief of his armies, Tartan, again into Armenia, 
 where he gave up to pillage fifty cities, among them Van ; and 
 during this time he himself went into Media, subjected part of 
 the northern districts of that country, which were in a state 
 of rebellion, chastised the people in the neighborhood of Mount 
 Elwand, where in after-times Ecbatana was built, and finally 
 made war on the Scythians of the Caspian Sea. 
 
 The official chronology of the Assyrians dates the termina- 
 tion of the reign of Shalmaneser IV in 870, the period of his 
 death. But during the last two years his power was entirely 
 lost, and he was reduced to the possession of two cities, Nine- 
 veh and Calah. His second son, Asshurdaninpal, in conse- 
 quence of circumstances unknown to us, raised the standard of 
 revolt against his father, assumed the royal title, and was sup- 
 ported by twenty-seven of the most important cities in the 
 empire. One of the monuments has preserved a list of -these 
 cities, and among them we find Arrapkha, capital of the prov- 
 ince of Arrapachitis, Amida (now Diarbekr), Arbela, Ellasar, 
 and all the towns of the banks of the Tigris. War broke out 
 between the father and his rebellious son ; the army embraced 
 the cause of the latter; he was recognized by all the provinces,
 
 to8 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 
 and kept Shalmaneser until his death shut up and closely block- 
 aded in his capital. 
 
 Shalmaneser died in B.C. 870; his son, Shamash-Bin, con- 
 tinued the legitimate line. He succeeded in repressing the 
 revolt of his brother Asshurdaninpal and in depriving him of 
 the authority he had usurped. The monument recording the 
 exploits of his first years gives no details, however, of the civil 
 war; it merely records, after enumerating the cities that had 
 joined the revolt of Asshurdaninpal, " With the aid of the great 
 gods, my masters, I subjected them to my sceptre." 
 
 The usurpation of the second son of Shalmaneser and a 
 civil war of five years had introduced many disorders into the 
 empire and shaken the fidelity of many provinces. The early 
 years of Shamash-Bin were occupied in reducing the whole to 
 order. In the narrative which has been preserved, extending 
 only to his fourth year, we find that the King overran and chas- 
 tised with terrible severity Osrhoene or Aramaean Mesopota- 
 mia, where the people had been in rebellion, and reduced to 
 obedience the mountainous districts, where are the sources of 
 the Tigris and Euphrates, and finally Armenia proper. In his 
 fourth year he marched against Mardukbalatirib, king of Baby- 
 lon, who had taken advantage of the disorders in Assyria to as- 
 sert his independence, and who was supported by the Susia- 
 nians or Elamites. He completely defeated him and compelled 
 him to fly to the desert, killed very many of his army in the 
 battle, took two hundred war chariots, and made seven thou- 
 sand prisoners, of whom five thousand were put to death on the 
 field of battle as an example. Unfortunately our information 
 ceases at that period and we know absolutely nothing of the 
 greater part of the reign of Shamash-Bin, or of the expeditions 
 to the west of Asia, Syria, and Palestine, that must have been 
 made after the termination of the campaigns by which the royal 
 authority was reestablished in all the ancient provinces of the 
 empire. This King remained on the throne until 857. In 859 
 and 858 he had to repress a great revolt in Babylon and Chal- 
 daea. 
 
 Binlikhish [or Binnirari] III, the next king, reigned twenty- 
 nine years, from 857 to 828. An inscription of his, engraved 
 in the first years of his reign, describing the extent of the em-
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 109 
 
 pire, says that he governed on one side " From the land of Si- 
 luna, toward the rising sun, the countries of Elam, Albania (at 
 the foot of Caucasus), Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, Gi- 
 ratbunda (a portion of Atropatene, frequently mentioned in 
 the cuneiform inscriptions), the lands of Munna, Parsua (Par- 
 thia), Allabria (Hyrcania), Abdadana (Hecatompyla), Namri 
 (the Caspian Scythians), even to all the tribes of the Andiu 
 (a Turanian or Scythian people, whose country is far off), the 
 whole of the mountainous country as far as the sea of the rising 
 sun, the Caspian Sea ; on the other side from the Euphrates, 
 Syria, all Phoenicia, the land of Tyre, of Sidon, the land of Omri 
 (Samaria), Edom, the Philistines, as far as the sea of the set- 
 ting sun (the Mediterranean) " ; on all these countries he says 
 that " he imposed tribute." 
 
 "I marched," he says again, "against the land of Syria, 
 and I took Marih, king of Syria, in Damascus, the city of his 
 kingdom. The great dread of Asshur, my master, persuaded 
 him ; he embraced my knees and made submission." 
 
 Binlikhish III was a warlike prince; every year of his reign 
 was marked by an expedition. We have a summary of these 
 in a chronological tablet in the British Museum, containing a 
 fragment from the end of the reign of Shamash-Bin to that of 
 Tiglath-pileser II of a canon of eponymes mentioning the prin- 
 cipal events year by year. They nearly all occurred in South- 
 ern Armenia and in the land of Van, where obedience was only 
 maintained by incessant military demonstrations, and subse- 
 quently in the countries to the north of Media as far as the 
 Caspian Sea. Other expeditions were also made as far as Par- 
 thia, toward Ariana and the various countries that, to the As- 
 syrians, were the extreme East. We do not, however, know 
 what that region was called by them, as it is always designated 
 by a group of ideographic characters of unknown pronuncia- 
 tion. By the defeat of Marih, king of Damascus, the submis- 
 sion of the western provinces was secured for the remainder of 
 this reign, for there is no record of any other campaign there. 
 
 The year 849 was marked by a great plague in Assyria; 834 
 by a religious festival, of which unfortunately no particulars are 
 known; and, lastly, 833 by the solemn inauguration of anew 
 temple to the god Nebo, in the capital.
 
 no RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 
 But the most interesting monument of the reign of Binlik- 
 hish III is the statue of Nebo, one of the great gods of Baby- 
 lon, discovered by Mr. Loftus and now in the British Museum ; 
 the inscription on the base of the statue mentions the wife of 
 the King, and calls her " the queen Sammuramat " ; this is the 
 only historical Semiramis, the one mentioned by Herodotus. 
 He places her correctly about a century and a half before Ni- 
 tocris, the wife of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. " Semira- 
 mis," says the father of history, " raised magnificent embank- 
 ments to restrain the river (Euphrates), which till then used to 
 overflow and flood the whole country round Babylon." But 
 why did Herodotus, and the Babylonian tradition he has so 
 faithfully reported, attribute these useful works to the queen 
 and not to her husband, Binlikhish ? It was once supposed, as 
 a solution of this problem, that Sammuramat had governed 
 alone for some time, as queen regnant, after the death of her 
 husband. But this conjecture is absolutely contradicted by the 
 table of eponymes in the British Museum, where it can be seen 
 that Sammuramat never reigned alone. In our opinion the 
 only possible explanation will be found in regarding Binlikhish 
 and Sammuramat as the Ferdinand and Isabella of Mesopota- 
 mia. The restless desire of Babylonia and Chaldaea to form a 
 state separate from Assyria grew more decided as time went 
 on; in the time of Binlikhish it had already gained great 
 strength, and the day was not far distant when the separation 
 was definitely to take place, and to occasion the utter ruin of 
 Nineveh. In this position of affairs it was natural for a king 
 of Assyria to seek to strengthen his authority in Chaldaea by a 
 marriage with a daughter of the royal line of that country, who 
 were his vassals, and thus, in the opinion of the people of Baby- 
 lon, acquire a legitimate right to the possession of the country 
 by means of his wife, as well as the advantages to be derived 
 from the attachment of the people to their own legitimate sov- 
 ereign. We shall therefore consider Sammuramat as a Baby- 
 lonian princess married by Binlikhish, and as reigning nomi- 
 nally at Babylon while her husband occupied the throne at 
 Nineveh, and as being the only sovereign registered by the 
 Babylonians in their national annals. In fact, her position 
 must have been a peculiar one ; she must have been considered
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA in 
 
 the rightful queen in one part of the empire, to have been 
 named as queen, and in the same rank as the king, in such an 
 official document as the inscription on the statue of the god 
 Nebo. She is the only princess mentioned in any of the As- 
 syrian texts, as we might naturally suppose ; for unless under 
 such very exceptional circumstances as we imagine in the case 
 of Sammuramat, there can have been no queens, but only favor- 
 ite concubines, .under the organization of harem life, such as it 
 was under the Assyrian kings, and as it still is in our days. 
 
 The exaggerated development of the Assyrian empire was 
 quite unnatural ; the kings of Nineveh had never succeeded in 
 welding into one nation the numerous tribes whom they sub- 
 dued by force of arms, or in checking in them the spirit of in- 
 dependence; they had not even attempted to do so. The 
 empire was absolutely without cohesion ; the administrative sys- 
 tem was so imperfect, the bond attaching the various provinces 
 to each other, and to the centre of the monarchy, so weak that 
 at the commencement of almost every reign a revolt broke out, 
 sometimes at one point, sometimes at another. 
 
 It was therefore easy to foresee that, so soon as the reins of 
 government were no longer in a really strong hand so soon as 
 the king of Assyria should cease to be an active and warlike 
 king, always in the field, always at the head of his troops the 
 great edifice laboriously built up by his predecessors of the 
 tenth and ninth centuries would collapse, and the immense 
 fabric of empire would vanish like smoke with such rapidity as 
 to astonish the world. And this is exactly what occurred after 
 the death of Binlikhish III. 
 
 The tablet in the British Museum allows us to follow year 
 by year the events and the progress of the dissolution of the 
 empire. Under Shalmaneser V, who reigned from B.C. 828 to 
 8 1 8, some foreign expeditions were still made, as, for instance, 
 to Damascus in B.C. 819; but the forces of the empire were 
 especially engaged during many following years in attempting 
 to hold countries already subdued, such as Armenia, then in a 
 chronic state of revolt ; the wars in one and the same province 
 were constant, and occupied some six successive campaigns 
 the Armenian war was from B.C. 827 to 822 proving that no 
 decisive results were obtained.
 
 H2 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 
 Under Asshur-edil-ilani II, who reigned from B.C. 818 to 
 800, we do not see any new conquests ; insurrections constantly 
 broke out, and were no longer confined to the extremities of the 
 empire ; they encroached on the heart of the country, and grad- 
 ually approached nearer to Nineveh. The revolutionary spirit 
 increased in the provinces, a great insurrection became immi- 
 nent, and was ready to break out on the slightest excuse. At 
 this period, B.C. 804, it is that the British Museum tablet regis- 
 ters, as a memorable fact in the column of events, " Peace in 
 the land." Two great plagues are also mentioned under this 
 reign, in 811 and 805, and on the I3th of June, B.C. 809 30 
 Sivan in the eponymos of Bur-el-salkhi an almost total eclipse 
 of the sun, visible at Nineveh. 
 
 The revolution was not long in coming. Asshurlikhish 
 [Assurbanipal] ascended the throne in B.C. 800, and fixed his 
 residence at Nineveh, instead of Ellasar, where his predecessor 
 had lived after quitting Nineveh ; he is the Sardanapalus of the 
 Greeks, the ever-famous prototype of the voluptuous and 
 effeminate prince. The tablet in the British Museum only 
 mentions two expeditions in his reign, both of small impor- 
 tance, in 795 and 794 ; to all the other years the only notice is 
 " in the country," proving that nothing was done and that all 
 thought of war was abandoned. 
 
 Sardanapalus had entirely given himself up to the orgies of 
 his harem, and never left his palace walls, entirely renouncing 
 all manly and warlike habits of life. He had reigned thus for 
 seven years, and discontent continued to increase ; the desire 
 for independence was spreading in the subject provinces; the 
 bond of their obedience each year relaxed still more, and was 
 nearer breaking, when Arbaces, who commanded the Median 
 contingent of the army and was himself a Mede, chanced to see 
 in the palace at Nineveh the King, in a female dress, spindle in 
 hand, hiding in the retirement of the harem his slothful coward- 
 ice and voluptuous life. 
 
 He considered that it would be easy to deal with a prince 
 so degraded, who would be unable to renew the valorous tradi- 
 tions of his ancestors. The time seemed to him to have come 
 when the provinces, held only by force of arms, might finally 
 throw off the weighty Assyrian yoke. Arbaces communicated
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 113 
 
 his ideas and projects to the prince then intrusted with the 
 government of Babylon, the Chaldaean Phul (Palia?), sur- 
 named Balazu (the Terrible), a name the Greeks have made 
 into Belesis ; he entered into the plot with the willingness to 
 be expected from a Babylonian, one of a nation so frequently 
 rising in revolt. 
 
 Arbaces and Balazu consulted with other chiefs, who com- 
 manded contingents of foreign troops, and with the vassal 
 kings of those countries that aspired to independence ; and they 
 all formed the resolution of overthrowing Sardanapalus. Ar- 
 baces engaged to raise the Medes and Persians, while Balazu 
 set on foot the insurrection in Babylon and Chaldaea. At the 
 end of a year the chiefs assembled their soldiers, to the num- 
 ber of forty thousand, in Assyria, under the pretext of relieving, 
 according to custom, the troops who had served the former 
 year. 
 
 When once there, the soldiers broke into open rebellion. 
 The tablet in the British Museum tells us that the insurrection 
 commenced at Calah in B.C. 792. Immediately after this the 
 confusion became so great that from this year there was no 
 nomination of an eponyme. 
 
 Sardanapalus, rudely interrupted in his debaucheries by a 
 danger he had not been able to foresee, showed himself sud- 
 denly inspired with activity and courage ; he put himself at the 
 head of the native Assyrian troops who remained faithful to 
 him, met the rebels, and gained three complete victories over 
 them. 
 
 The confederates already began to despair of success, when 
 Phul, calling in the aid of superstition to a cause that seemed 
 lost, declared to them that if they would hold together for five 
 days more, the gods, whose will he had ascertained by consult- 
 ing the stars, would undoubtedly give them the victory. 
 
 In fact, some days afterward a large body of troops, whom 
 the King had summoned to his assistance from the provinces 
 near the Caspian Sea, went over, on their arrival, to the side 
 of the insurgents and gained them a victory. Sardanapalus 
 then shut himself up in Nineveh, and determined to defend 
 himself to the last. The siege continued two years, for the 
 walls of the city were too strong for the battering machines of 
 E., VOL. i. 8
 
 ii 4 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 
 
 the enemy, who were compelled to trust to reducing it by fam- 
 ine. Sardanapalus was under no apprehension, confiding in an 
 oracle declaring that Nineveh should never be taken until the 
 river became its enemy. 
 
 But, in the third year, rain fell in such abundance that the 
 waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned 
 one of its walls for a distance of twenty stades. Then the King, 
 convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of 
 any means of escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy's 
 hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre, 
 placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes, and then, 
 shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber 
 formed in the midst of the pile, disappeared in the flames. 
 
 Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers, but this tardy 
 submission did not save the proud city. It was pillaged and 
 burned, and then razed to the ground so completely as to evi- 
 dence the implacable hatred enkindled in the minds of subject 
 nations by the fierce and cruel Assyrian government. The 
 Medes and Babylonians did not leave one stone upon another 
 in the ramparts, palaces, temples, or houses of the city that for 
 two centuries had been dominant over all Western Asia. 
 
 So complete was the destruction that the excavations of 
 modern explorers on the site of Nineveh have not yet found 
 one single wall slab earlier than the capture of the city by Ar- 
 baces and Balazu. All we possess of the first Nineveh is one 
 broken statue. History has no other example of so complete a 
 destruction. 
 
 The Assyrian empire was, like the capital, overthrown, and 
 the people who had taken part in the revolt formed independent 
 states the Medes under Arbaces, the Babylonians under Phul 
 or Balazu, and the Susianians under Shutruk-Nakhunta. As- 
 syria, reduced to the enslaved state in which she had so long 
 held other countries, remained for some time a dependency of 
 Babylon. 
 
 This great event occurred in the year B.C. 789. 
 
 [When the noble sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud had 
 been first uncovered, it was natural to suppose that they marked 
 the real site of ancient Nineveh ; a passage of Strabo, and an- 
 other of Ptolemy, lent confirmation to this theory. Shortly
 
 RISE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 115 
 
 afterward a rival claimant started up in the region farther to 
 the north. 
 
 "After a while an attempt was made to reconcile the rival 
 claims by a theory the grandeur of which gained it acceptance, 
 despite its improbability. It was suggested that the various 
 ruins, which had hitherto disputed the name, were in fact all 
 included within the circuit of the ancient Nineveh, which was 
 described as a rectangle, or oblong square, eighteen miles long 
 and twelve broad. The remains at Khorsabad, Koyunjik, 
 Nimrud, and Keremles marked the four corners of this vast 
 quadrangle, which contained an area of two hundred and six- 
 teen square miles about ten times that of London ! 
 
 " In confirmation of this view was urged, first, the descrip- 
 tion in Diodorus, derived probably from Ctesias, which corre- 
 sponded (it was said) both with the proportions and with the 
 actual distances; and, next, the statements contained in the 
 Book of Jonah, which, it was argued, implied a city of some 
 such dimensions. The parallel of Babylon, according to the 
 description given by Herodotus, might fairly have been cited 
 as a further argument ; since it might have seemed reasonable 
 to suppose that there was no great difference of size between 
 the chief cities of the two kindred empires." Rawlinson^
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 B.C. 753 
 BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR 
 
 Rome occupies a unique position in the history of the world. The 
 whole Mediterranean basin was at one time merely a Roman lake, and 
 the adjacent countries were Roman in letters, law, religion and the prac- 
 tice of war. Roman roads crossed the continents east and west and 
 penetrated to the depths of Asia and Africa. Roman garrisons were 
 stationed in every important city of the provinces, and when the great 
 city on the banks of the Tiber at last fell before successive irruptions of 
 northeasterly barbarians and Roman power was at its extreme ebb, the 
 spirit of Roman institutions still survived in the civilization of Spain, 
 France, Italy, Britain, even in Greece and Asia. Roman law had be- 
 come the code of the world. Iberian, Gaul, and Italian had modified in 
 varying degree their native dialects in conformity with the more copious 
 and logical idiom of Latium. 
 
 A group of legends gathers round the birthplace of the Eternal City. 
 It is ^Cneas who escapes from Troy and brings into the land of Italian 
 Latinus his native gods. His son Ascanius conquers and slays Mezen- 
 tius in a battle between Latins and Etruscans, and eleven kings of Alba, 
 all surnamed Silvius, succeeded him on the throne. The last king of 
 Alba Longa is Procas, whose usurping son Amulius drives his eldest 
 brother Numitorfrom the throne. Numitor's daughter, Silvia, becomes 
 the mother of the immortal twins Romulus and Remus, by Mamers, the 
 god of war; the children are exposed by cruel Amulius, suckled by a 
 wolf, and become founders of Rome. 
 
 Such is the outline of the poem, or rather tissue of poetry in which 
 the founding of Rome is embalmed. 
 
 The critical acumen of Niebuhr may have dispelled some of the 
 clouds and contradictions in which early historians and poets have 
 wrapped the record of this great event. But no critic can ever destroy 
 the beauty and charm of the old Latin chronicles or diminish the glory 
 of the day that saw the first walls rise about the seven hills of the most 
 important of ancient European cities. 
 
 BELIEVE that few persons, when Alba is mentioned, can 
 get rid of the idea, to which I too adhered for a long time, 
 that the history of Alba is lost to such an extent, that we can 
 speak of it only in reference to the Trojan time and the pre- 
 116
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 117 
 
 ceding period, as if all the statements made concerning it by 
 the Romans were based upon fancy and error ; and that accord- 
 ingly it must be effaced from the pages of history altogether. 
 It is true that what we read concerning the foundation of Alba 
 by Ascanius, and the wonderful signs accompanying it, as well 
 as the whole series of the Alban kings, with the years of their 
 reigns, the story of Numitor and Amulius and the story of the 
 destruction of the city, do not belong to history ; but the his- 
 torical existence of Alba is not at all doubtful on that account, 
 nor have the ancients ever doubted it. The Sacra Albana and 
 the Albani tumuli atque luci, which existed as late as the time 
 of Cicero, are proofs of its early existence; ruins indeed no 
 longer exist, but the situation of the city in the valley of Grotta 
 Ferrata may still be recognized. Between the lake and the 
 long chain of hills near the monastery of Palazzuolo one still 
 sees the rock cut steep down toward the lake, evidently the 
 work of man, which rendered it impossible to attack the city on 
 that side ; the summit on the other side formed the arx. That 
 the Albans were in possession of the sovereignty of Latium is 
 a tradition which we may believe to be founded on good author- 
 ity, as it is traced to Cincius. Afterward the Latins became 
 the masters of the district and temple of Jupiter. Further, the 
 statement that Alba shared the flesh of the victim on the Alban 
 mount with the thirty towns, and that after the fall of Alba the 
 Latins chose their own magistrates, are glimpses of real history. 
 The ancient tunnel made for discharging the water of the Alban 
 Lake still exists, and through its vault a canal was made called 
 Fossa Cluilia : this vault, which is still visible, is a work of ear- 
 lier construction than any Roman one. But all that can be said 
 of Alba and the Latins at that time is, that Alba was the capi- 
 tal, exercising the sovereignty over Latium ; that Its temple of 
 Jupiter was the rallying point of the people who were governed 
 by it ; and that the gens Silvia was the ruling clan. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the number of Latin towns was 
 actually thirty, just that of the Albensian demi ; this number 
 afterward occurs again in the later thirty Latin towns and in 
 the thirty Roman tribes, and it is moreover indicated by the 
 story of the foundation of Lavinium by thirty families, in which 
 we may recognize the union of the two tribes. The statement
 
 ii8 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 that Lavinium was a Trojan colony and was afterward aban- 
 doned, but restored by Alba, and further that the sanctuary 
 could not be transferred from it to Alba, is only an accommo- 
 dation to the Trojan and native tradition, however much it may 
 bear the appearance of antiquity. For Lavinium is nothing 
 else than a general name for Latium, just as Panionium is for 
 Ionia, Latinus, Lavinus, and Lavicus being one and the same 
 name, as is recognized even by Servius. Lavinium was the 
 central point of the Prisci Latini, and there is no doubt that in 
 the early period before Alba ruled over Lavinium, worship was 
 offered mutually at Alba and at Lavinium, as was afterward the 
 case at Rome in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, and at 
 the festivals of the Romans and Latins on the Alban mount. 
 
 The personages of the Trojan legend therefore present 
 themselves to us in the following light. Turnus is nothing else 
 but Turinus, in Dionysius 7y/3/tyvy ; Lavinia, the fair maiden, is 
 the name of the Latin people, which may perhaps be so distin- 
 guished that the inhabitants of the coast were called Tyrrhe- 
 nians, and those further inland Latins. Since, after the battle 
 of Lake Regillus, the Latins are mentioned in the treaty with 
 Rome as forming thirty towns, there can be no doubt that the 
 towns, over which Alba had the supremacy in the earliest 
 times, were likewise thirty in number ; but the confederacy did 
 not at all times contain the same towns, as some may af terward 
 have perished and others may have been added. In such politi- 
 cal developments there is at work an instinctive tendency to 
 fill up that which has become vacant; and this instinct acts as 
 long as people proceed unconsciously according to the ancient 
 forms and not in accordance with actual wants. Such also was 
 the case in the twelve Achaean towns and in the seven Frisian 
 maritime communities ; for as soon as one disappeared, another, 
 dividing itself into two, supplied its place. Wherever there is 
 a fixed number, it is kept up, even when one part dies away, 
 and it ever continues to be renewed. We may add that the 
 state of the Latins lost in the West, but gained in the East. 
 We must therefore, I repeat it, conceive on the one hand Alba 
 with its thirty demi, and on the other the thirty Latin towns, 
 the latter at first forming a state allied with Alba, and at a later 
 time under its supremacy.
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 119 
 
 According to an important statement of Cato preserved in 
 Dionysius, the ancient towns of the Aborigines were small 
 places scattered over the mountains. One town of this kind 
 was situated on the Palatine hill, and bore the name of Roma, 
 which is most certainly Greek. Not far from it there occur 
 several other places with Greek names, such as Pyrgi and Al- 
 sium ; for the people inhabiting those districts were closely akin 
 to the Greeks; and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture, 
 that Terracina was formerly called Tpa^etvij ) or the " rough place 
 on a rock " ; Formiae must be connected with #/>/*o9, " a road- 
 stead" or "place for casting anchor." As certain as Pyrgi 
 signifies " towers," so certainly does Roma signify " strength," 
 and I believe that those are quite right who consider that the 
 name Roma in this sense is not accidental. This Roma is de- 
 scribed as a Pelasgian place in which Evander, the introducer 
 of scientific culture, resided. According to tradition, the first 
 foundation of civilization was laid by Saturn, in the golden age 
 of mankind. The tradition in Vergil, who was extremely learned 
 in matters of antiquity, that the first men were created out of 
 trees, must be taken quite literally ; for as in Greece the ju'VA"?* 6 ? 
 were metamorphosed into the Myrmidons, and the stones 
 thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha into men and women, so in 
 Italy trees, by some divine power, were changed into human 
 beings. These beings, at first only half human, gradually ac- 
 quired a civilization which they owed to Saturn ; but the real 
 intellectual culture was traced to Evander, who must not be 
 regarded as a person who had come from Arcadia, but as the 
 good man, as the teacher of the alphabet and of mental culture, 
 which man gradually works out for himself. 
 
 The Romans clung to the conviction that Romulus, the 
 founder of Rome, was the son of a virgin by a god, that his life 
 was marvellously preserved, that he was saved from the floods 
 of the river and was reared by a she-wolf. That this poetry is 
 very ancient cannot be doubted ; but did the legend at all times 
 describe Romulus as the son of Rea Silvia or Ilia ? Perizonius 
 was the first who remarked against Ryccius that Rea Ilia never 
 occurs together, and that Rea Silvia was a daughter of Numi- 
 tor, while Ilia is called a daughter of vEneas. He is perfectly 
 right : Naevius and Ennius called Romulus a son of Ilia, the
 
 120 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 daughter of JEneas, as is attested by Servius on Vergil and 
 Porphyrio on Horace ; but it cannot be hence inferred that this 
 was the national opinion of the Romans themselves, for the 
 poets who were familiar with the Greeks might accommodate 
 their stories to Greek poems. The ancient Romans, on the 
 other hand, could not possibly look upon the mother of the 
 founder of their city as a daughter of JEneas, who was believed 
 to have lived three hundred and thirty-three or three hundred 
 and sixty years earlier. Dionysius says that his account, which 
 is that of Fabius, occurred in the sacred songs, and it is in itself 
 perfectly consistent. Fabius cannot have taken it, as Plutarch 
 asserts, from Diocles, a miserable unknown Greek author; the 
 statue of the she-wolf was erected in the year A.U. 457, long 
 before Diocles wrote, and at least a hundred years before Fa- 
 bius. This tradition therefore is certainly the more ancient 
 Roman one ; and it puts Rome in connection with Alba. A 
 monument has lately been discovered at Bovillae : it is an altar 
 which the Gentiles Julii erected lege Albana, and therefore ex- 
 presses a religious relation of a Roman gens to Alba. The 
 connection of the two towns continues down to the founder of 
 Rome ; and the well-known tradition, with its ancient poetical 
 details, many of which Livy and Dionysius omitted from their 
 histories lest they should seem to deal too much in the marvel- 
 lous, runs as follows : 
 
 Numitor and Amulius were contending for the throne of 
 Alba. Amulius took possession of the throne, and made Rea 
 Silvia, the daughter of Numitor, a vestal virgin, in order that 
 the Silvian house might become extinct. This part of the 
 story was composed without any insight into political laws, for 
 a daughter could not have transmitted any gentilician rights. 
 The name Rea Silvia is ancient, but Rea is only a surname : 
 reafemmina often occurs in Boccaccio, and is used to this day 
 in Tuscany to designate a woman whose reputation is blighted ; 
 a priestess Rea is described by Vergil as having been over- 
 powered by Hercules. While Rea was fetching water in a 
 grove for a sacrifice the sun became eclipsed, and she took ref- 
 uge from a wolf in a cave, where she was overpowered by Mars. 
 When she was delivered, the sun was again eclipsed and the 
 statue of Vesta covered its eyes. Livy has here abandoned
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 121 
 
 the marvellous. The tyrant threw Rea with her infants into the 
 river Anio : she lost her life in the waves, but the god of the 
 river took her soul and changed it into an immortal goddess, 
 whom he married. This story has been softened down into the 
 tale of her imprisonment, which is unpoetical enough to be a 
 later invention. The river Anio carried the cradle, like a boat, 
 into the Tiber, and the latter conveyed it to the foot of the 
 Palatine, the water having overflowed the country, and the 
 cradle was upset at the root of a fig-tree. A she-wolf carried 
 the babies away and suckled them ; Mars sent a woodpecker 
 which provided the children with food, and the bird parra which 
 protected them from insects. These statements are gathered 
 from various quarters ; for the historians got rid of the marvel- 
 lous as much as possible. Faustulus, the legend continues, 
 found the boys feeding on the milk of the huge wild beast ; he 
 brought them up with his twelve sons, and they became the 
 staunchest of all. Being at the head of the shepherds on 
 Mount Palatine, they became involved in a quarrel with the 
 shepherds of Numitor on the Aventine the Palatine and the 
 Aventine are always hostile to each other. Remus being taken 
 prisoner was led to Alba, but Romulus rescued him, and their 
 descent from Numitor being discovered, the latter was restored 
 to the throne, and the two young men obtained permission to 
 form a settlement at the foot of Mount Palatine where they had 
 been saved. 
 
 Out of this beautiful poem the falsifiers endeavored to make 
 some credible story: even the unprejudiced and poetical Livy 
 tried to avoid the most marvellous points as much as he could, 
 but the falsifiers went a step farther. In the days when men 
 had altogether ceased to believe in the ancient gods, attempts 
 were made to find something intelligible in the old legends, and 
 thus a history was made up, which Plutarch fondly embraced 
 and Dionysiusdid not reject, though he also relates the ancient 
 tradition in a mutilated form. He says that many people be- 
 lieve in demons, and that such a demon might have been the 
 father of Romulus ; but he himself is very far from believing 
 it, and rather thinks that Amulius himself, in disguise, violated 
 Rea Silvia amid thunder and lightning produced by artifice. 
 This he is said to have done in order to have a pretext for get-
 
 122 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 ting rid of her, but being entreated by his daughter not to 
 drown her, he imprisoned her for life. The children were 
 saved by the shepherd who was commissioned to expose them, 
 at the request of Numitor,and two other boys were put in their 
 place. Numitor's grandsons were taken to a friend at Gabii, 
 who caused them to be educated according to their rank, and 
 to be instructed in Greek literature. Attempts have actually 
 been made to introduce this stupid forgery into history, and 
 some portions of it have been adopted in the narrative of our 
 historians ; for example, that the ancient Alban nobility mi- 
 grated with the two brothers to Rome ; but if this had been the 
 case there would have been no need of opening an asylum, nor 
 would it have been necessary to obtain by force the connubium 
 with other nations. 
 
 But of more historical importance is the difference of opin- 
 ion between the two brothers respecting the building of the 
 city and its site. According to the ancient tradition, both were 
 kings and the equal heads of the colony ; Romulus is universally 
 said to have wished to build on the Palatine, while Remus, ac- 
 cording to some, preferred the Aventine ; according to others, 
 the hill Remuria. Plutarch states that the latter is a hill three 
 miles south of Rome, and cannot have been any other than the 
 hill nearly opposite St. Paul, which is the more credible, since 
 this hill, though situated in an otherwise unhealthy district, has 
 an extremely fine air : a very important point in investigations 
 respecting the ancient Latin towns, for it may be taken for cer- 
 tain that where the air is now healthy it was so in those times 
 also, and that where it is now decidedly unhealthy, it was an- 
 ciently no better. The legend now goes on to say that a dis- 
 pute arose between Romulus and Remus as to which of them 
 should give the name to the town, and also as to where it was 
 to be built. A town Remuria therefore undoubtedly existed 
 on that hill, though subsequently we find the name transferred 
 to the Aventine, as is the case so frequently. According to 
 the common tradition, the auguries were to decide between the 
 brothers : Romulus took his stand on the Palatine, Remus on 
 the Aventine. The latter observed the whole night, but saw 
 nothing until about sunrise, when he saw six vultures flying 
 from north to south, and tent word of it to Romulus ; but at
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 123 
 
 that very time the latter, annoyed at not having seen any sign, 
 fraudulently sent a messenger to say that he had seen twelve 
 vultures, and at the very moment the messenger arrived there 
 did appear twelve vultures, to which Romulus appealed. This 
 account is impossible ; for the Palatine and Aventine are so 
 near each other that, as every Roman well knew, whatever a 
 person on one of the two hills saw high in the air, could not 
 escape the observation of any one who was watching on the 
 other. This part of the story therefore cannot be ancient, and 
 can be saved only by substituting the Remuria for the Aven- 
 tine. As the Palatine was the seat of the noblest patrician 
 tribe, and the Aventine the special town of the plebeians, there 
 existed between the two a perpetual feud, and thus it came to 
 pass that in after times the story relating to the Remuria, which 
 was far away from the city, was transferred to the Aventine. 
 According to Ennius, Romulus made his observations on the 
 Aventine ; in this case Remus must certainly have been on the 
 Remuria, and it is said that when Romulus obtained the augury 
 he threw his spear toward the Palatine. This is the ancient 
 legend which was neglected by the later writers. Romulus 
 took possession of the Palatine. The spear taking root and 
 becoming a tree, which existed down to the time of Nero, is a 
 symbol of the eternity of the new city, and of the protection of 
 the gods. The statement that Romulus tried to deceive his 
 brother is a later addition ; and the beautiful poem of Ennius, 
 quoted by Cicero, knows nothing of this circumstance. The 
 conclusion which must be drawn from all this is, that in the 
 earliest times there were two towns, Roma and Remuria, the 
 latter being far distant from the city and from the Palatine. 
 
 Romulus now fixed the boundary of his town, but Remus 
 scornfully leaped across the ditch, for which he was slain by 
 Celer, a hint that no one should cross the fortifications of 
 Rome with impunity. But Romulus fell into a state of melan- 
 choly occasioned by the death of Remus ; he instituted festivals 
 to honor him, and ordered an empty throne to be put up by the 
 side of his own. Thus we have a double kingdom, which ends 
 with the defeat of Remuria. 
 
 The question now is, What were these two towns of Roma 
 and Remuria? They were evidently Pelasgian places: th<?
 
 124 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 ancient tradition states that Sicelus migrated from Rome 
 southward to the Pelasgians, that is, the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians 
 were pushed forward to the Morgetes, a kindred nation in Lu- 
 cania and in Sicily. Among the Greeks it was, as Dionysius 
 states, a general opinion that Rome was a Pelasgian, that is, a 
 Tyrrhenian city, but the authorities from whom he learned this 
 are no longer extant. There is, however, a fragment in which 
 it is stated that Rome was a sister city of Antium and Ardea ; 
 here too we must apply the statement from the chronicle of 
 Cumae, that Evander, who, as an Arcadian, was likewise a 
 Pelasgian, had his palatium on the Palatine. To us he appears 
 of less importance than in the legend, for in the latter he is one 
 of the benefactors of nations, and introduced among the Pelas- 
 gians in Italy the use of the alphabet and other arts, just as 
 Damaratus did among the Tyrrhenians in Etruria. In this 
 sense, therefore, Rome was certainly a Latin town, and had 
 not a mixed but a purely Tyrrheno-Pelasgian population. The 
 subsequent vicissitudes of this settlement may be gathered from 
 the allegories. 
 
 Romulus now found the number of his fellow-settlers too 
 small ; the number of three thousand foot and three hundred 
 horse, which Livy gives from the commentaries of the pontiffs, 
 is worth nothing; for it is only an outline of the later military 
 arrangement transferred to the earliest times. According to 
 the ancient tradition, Romulus' s band was too small, and he 
 opened an asylum on the Capitoline hill. This asylum, the old 
 description states, contained only a very small space, a proof 
 how little these things were understood historically. All man- 
 ner of people, thieves, murderers, and vagabonds of every kind, 
 flocked thither. This is the simple view taken of the origin of 
 the clients. In the bitterness with which the estates subse- 
 quently looked upon one another, it was made a matter of re- 
 proach to the Patricians that their earliest ancestors had been 
 vagabonds; though it was a common opinion that the Pa- 
 tricians were descended from the free companions of Romulus, 
 and that those who took refuge in the asylum placed them- 
 selves as clients under the protection of the real free citizens. 
 But now they wanted women, and attempts were made to ob- 
 tain the connubium with neighboring towns, especially perhaps
 
 were 
 
 too we 
 
 
 others 
 
 he 
 
 ally p
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 125 
 
 with Anteranae, which was only four miles distant from Rome, 
 with the Sabines and others. This being refused Romulus 
 had recourse to a stratagem, proclaiming that he had discovered 
 the altar of Census, the god of counsels, an allegory of his cun- 
 ning in general. In the midst of the solemnities, the Sabine 
 maidens, thirty in number, were carried off, from whom the 
 curia received their names : this is the genuine ancient legend, 
 and it proves how small ancient Rome was conceived to have 
 been. In later times the number was thought too small ; it was 
 supposed that these thirty had been chosen by lot for the pur- 
 pose of naming the curia after them; and Valerius Antias 
 fixed the number of the women who had been carried off at five 
 hundred and twenty-seven. The rape is placed in the fourth 
 month of the city, because the consuaha fall in August, and the 
 festival commemorating the foundation of the city in April; 
 later writers, as Cn. Gellius, extended this period to four years, 
 and Dionysius found this of course far more credible. From 
 this rape there arose wars, first with the neighboring towns, 
 which were defeated one after another, and at last with the 
 Sabines. The ancient legend contains not a trace of this war 
 having been of long continuance ; but in later times it was nec- 
 essarily supposed to have lasted for a considerable time, since 
 matters were then measured by a different standard. Lucumo 
 and Caelius came to the assistance of Romulus, an allusion to 
 the expedition of Caeles Vibenna, which however belongs to a 
 much later period. The Sabine king, Tatius, was induced by 
 treachery to settle on the hill which is called the Tarpeian arx. 
 Between the Palatine and the Tarpeian rock a battle was 
 fought, in which neither party gained a decisive victory, until 
 the Sabine women threw themselves between the combatants, 
 who agreed that henceforth the sovereignty should be divided 
 between the Romans and the Sabines. According to the 
 annals, this happened in the fourth year of Rome. 
 
 But this arrangement lasted only a short time ; Tatius was 
 slain during a sacrifice at Lavinium, and his vacant throne was 
 not filled up. During their common reign, each king had a 
 senate of one hundred members, and the two senates, after con- 
 sulting separately, used to meet, and this was called comitium. 
 Romulus during the remainder of his life ruled alone; the
 
 126 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 ancient legend knows nothing of his having been a tyrant : ac- 
 cording to Ennius he continued, on the contrary, to be a mild 
 and benevolent king, while Tatius was a tyrant. The ancient 
 tradition contained nothing beyond the beginning and the end 
 of the reign of Romulus ; all that lies between these points, the 
 war with the Veientines, Fidenates, and so on, is a foolish in- 
 vention of later annalists. The poem itself is beautiful, but this 
 inserted narrative is highly absurd, as for example the state- 
 ment that Romulus slew ten thousand Veientines with his own 
 hand. The ancient poem passed on at once to the time when 
 Romulus had completed his earthly career, and Jupiter fulfilled 
 his promise to Mars, that Romulus was the only man whom he 
 would introduce among the gods. According to this ancient 
 legend, the king was reviewing his army near the marsh of 
 Caprae, when, as at the moment of his conception, there oc- 
 curred an eclipse of the sun and at the same time a hurricane, 
 during which Mars descended in a fiery chariot and took his 
 son up to heaven. Out of this beautiful poem the most 
 wretched stories have been manufactured : Romulus, it is said, 
 while in the midst of his senators was knocked down, cut into 
 pieces, and thus carried away by them under their togas. This 
 stupid story was generally adopted, and that a cause for so hor- 
 rible a deed might not be wanting, it was related that in his 
 latter years Romulus had become a tyrant, and that the sena- 
 tors took revenge by murdering him. 
 
 After the death of Romulus, the Romans and the people of 
 Tatius quarrelled for a long time with each other, the Sabines 
 wishing that one of their nation should be raised to the throne, 
 while the Romans claimed that the new king should be chosen 
 from among them. At length they agreed, it is said, that the 
 one nation should choose a king from the other. 
 
 We have now reached the point at which it is necessary to 
 speak of the relation between the two nations, such as it act- 
 ually existed. 
 
 All the nations of antiquity lived in fixed forms, and their 
 civil relations were always marked by various divisions and 
 subdivisions. When cities raise themselves to the rank of na- 
 tions,^ we always find a division at first into tribes ; Herodotus 
 mentions such tribes in the colonization of Gyrene, and the
 
 same was afterward the case at the foundation of Thurii ; but 
 when a place existed anywhere as a distinct township, its na- 
 ture was characterized by the fact of its citizens being at a cer- 
 tain time divided into gentes (jivr^ t each of which had a com- 
 mon chapel and a common hero. These gentes were united 
 in definite numerical proportions into curies (ypdrpat). The 
 gentes are not families, but free corporations, sometimes close 
 and sometimes open; in certain cases the whole body of the 
 state might assign to them new associates ; the great council at 
 Venice was a close body, and no one could be admitted whose 
 ancestors had not been in it, and such also was the case in many 
 oligarchical states of antiquity. 
 
 All civil communities had a council and an assembly of 
 burghers, that is, a small and a great council; the burghers con- 
 sisted of the guilds or gentes, and these again were united, as it 
 were, in parishes ; all the Latin towns had a council of one hun- 
 dred members, who were divided into ten curies ; this division 
 gave rise to the name of decuriones, which remained in use as 
 a title of civic magistrates down to the latest times, and through 
 the lex Julia was transferred to the constitution of the Italian 
 municipia. That this council consisted of one hundred persons 
 has been proved by Savigny, in the first volume of his history 
 of the Roman law. This constitution continued to exist till a 
 late period of the middle ages, but perished when the institu- 
 tion of guilds took the place of municipal constitutions. Gio- 
 vanni Villani says, that previously to the revolution in the 
 twelfth century there were at Florence one hundred buoni 
 nomini, who had the administration of the city. There is 
 nothing in the German cities which answers to this constitution. 
 We must not conceive those hundred to have been nobles ; they 
 were an assembly of burghers and country people, as was the 
 case in our small imperial cities, or as in the small cantons of 
 Switzerland. Each of them represented a gens ; and they are 
 those whom Propertius calls patres pelliti. The curia of Rome, 
 a cottage covered with straw, was a faithful memorial of the 
 times when Rome stood buried in the night of history, as a 
 small country town surrounded by its little domain. 
 
 The most ancient occurrence which we can discover from 
 the form of the allegory, by a comparison of what happened in
 
 128 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 other parts of Italy, is a result of the great and continued com- 
 motion among the nations of Italy. It did not terminate when 
 the Oscans had been pressed forward from Lake Fucinus to the 
 lake of Alba, but continued much longer. The Sabines may 
 have rested for a time, but they advanced far beyond the dis- 
 tricts about which we have any traditions. These Sabines be- 
 gan as a very small tribe, but afterward became one of the 
 greatest nations of Italy, for the Marrucinians, Caudines, Ves- 
 tinians, Marsians, Pelignians, and in short all the Samnite 
 tribes, the Lucanians, the Oscan part of the Bruttians, the 
 Picentians, and several others were all descended from the Sa- 
 bine stock, and yet there are no traditions about their settle- 
 ments except in a few cases. At the time to which we must 
 refer the foundation of Rome, the Sabines were widely diffused. 
 It is said that, guided by a bull, they penetrated into Opica, and 
 thus occupied the country of the Samnites. It was perhaps at 
 an earlier time that they migrated down the Tiber, whence we 
 there find Sabine towns mixed with Latin ones ; some of their 
 places also existed on the Anio. The country afterward in- 
 habited by the Sabines was probably not occupied by them till 
 a later period, for Falerii is a Tuscan town, and its population 
 was certainly at one time thoroughly Tyrrhenian. 
 
 As the Sabines advanced, some Latin towns maintained 
 their independence, others were subdued ; Fidenae belonged to 
 the former, but north of it all the country was Sabine. Now 
 by the side of the ancient Roma we find a Sabine town on the 
 Quirinal and Capitoline close to the Latin town ; but its exist- 
 ence is all that we know about it. A tradition states that 
 there previously existed on the Capitoline a Siculian town of 
 the name of Saturnia, which, in this case, must have been con- 
 quered by the Sabines. But whatever we may think of this, 
 as well as of the existence of another ancient town on the 
 Janiculum, it is certain that there were a number of small 
 towns in that district. The two towns could exist perfectly 
 well side by side, as there was a deep marsh between them. 
 
 The town on the Palatine may for a. long time have been in 
 a state of dependence on the Sabine conqueror whom tradition 
 calls Titus Tatius ; hence he was slain during the Laurentine 
 sacrifice, and hence also his memory was hateful. The exist-
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 129 
 
 ence of a Sabine town on the Quirinal is attested by the un- 
 doubted occurrence there of a number of Sabine chapels, which 
 were known as late as the time of Varro, and from which he 
 proved that the Sabine ritual was adopted by the Romans. 
 This Sabine element in the worship of the Romans has almost 
 always been overlooked, in consequence of the prevailing desire 
 to look upon everything as Etruscan ; but, I repeat, there is no 
 doubt of the Sabine settlement, and that it was the result of a 
 great commotion among the tribes of middle Italy. 
 
 The tradition that the Sabine women were carried off be- 
 cause there existed no connubium, and that the rape was fol- 
 lowed by a war, is undoubtedly a symbolical representation of 
 the relation between the two towns, previous to the establish- 
 ment of the right of intermarriage; the Sabineshad the ascend- 
 ancy and refused that right, but the Romans gained it by force 
 of arms. There can be no doubt that the Sabines were origi- 
 nally the ruling people, but that in some insurrection of the 
 Romans various Sabine places, such as Antemnas, Fidenae, 
 and others, were subdued, and thus these Sabines were sepa- 
 rated from their kinsmen. The Romans, therefore, reestab- 
 lished their independence by a war, the result of which may 
 have been such as we read it in the tradition Romulus being, 
 of course, set aside namely, that both places as two closely 
 united towns formed a kind of confederacy, each with a senate 
 of one hundred members, a king, an offensive and defensive 
 alliance, and on the understanding that in common delibera- 
 tions the burghers of each should meet together in the space 
 between the two towns which was afterward called the comitium. 
 In this manner they formed a united state in regard to foreign 
 nations. 
 
 The idea of a double state was not unknown to the ancient 
 writers themselves, although the indications of it are preserved 
 only in scattered passages, especially in the scholiasts. The 
 head of Janus, which in the earliest times was represented on 
 the Roman as, is the symbol of it, as has been correctly ob- 
 served by writers on Roman antiquities. The vacant throne 
 by the side of the curule chair of Romulus points to the time 
 when there was only one king, and represents the equal but 
 quiescent right of the other people. 
 E., VOL. i. 9
 
 <3 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 That concord was not of long duration is an historical fact 
 likewise ; nor can it be doubted that the Roman king assumed 
 the supremacy over the Sabines, and that in consequence the 
 two councils were united so as to form one senate under one 
 king, it being agreed that the king should be alternately a 
 Roman and a Sabine, and that each time he should be chosen 
 by the other people : the king, however, if displeasing to the 
 non-electing people, was not to be forced upon them, but was 
 to be invested with the imperium only on condition of the augu- 
 ries being favorable to him, and of his being sanctioned by the 
 whole nation. The non-electing tribe accordingly had the right 
 of either sanctioning or rejecting his election. In the case of 
 Numa this is related as a fact, but it is only a disguisement of 
 the right derived from the ritual books. In this manner the 
 strange double election, which is otherwise so mysterious and 
 was formerly completely misunderstood, becomes quite intel- 
 ligible. One portion of the nation elected and the other sanc- 
 tioned ; it being intended that, for example, the Romans should 
 not elect from among the Sabines a king devoted exclusively to 
 their own interests, but one who was at the same time accept- 
 able to the Sabines. 
 
 When, perhaps after several generations of a separate exist- 
 ence, the two states became united, the towns ceased to be 
 towns, and the collective body of the burghers of each became 
 tribes, so that the nation consisted of two tribes. The form of 
 addressing the Roman people was from the earliest times Popu- 
 lus Romanics Quirites, which, when its origin was forgotten, 
 was changed into Populus Romanus Quiritium, just as Us 
 vindicia was afterward changed into Us vindiciarum. This 
 change is more ancient than Livy ; the correct expression still 
 continued to be used, but was to a great extent supplanted by 
 the false one. The ancient tradition relates that after the 
 union of the two tribes the name Quirites was adopted as the 
 common designation for the whole people ; but this is errone- 
 ous, for the name was not used in this sense till a very late 
 period. This designation remained in use and was transferred 
 to the plebeians at a time when the distinction between Romans 
 and Sabines, between these two and the Luceres, nay, when 
 even that between patricians and plebeians had almost ceased
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 131 
 
 to be noticed. Thus the two towns stood side by side as tribes 
 forming one state, and it is merely a recognition of the ancient 
 tradition when we call the Latins Ramnes, and the Sabines 
 Tities ; that the derivation of these appellations from Romulus 
 and T. Tatius is incorrect is no argument against the view here 
 taken. 
 
 Dionysius, who had good materials and made use of a great 
 many, must, as far as the consular period is concerned, have 
 had more than he gives ; there is in particular one important 
 change in the constitution, concerning which he has only a few 
 words, either because he did not see clearly or because he was 
 careless. But as regards the kingly period, he was well ac- 
 quainted with his subject; he says that there was a dispute 
 between the two tribes respecting the senates, and that Numa 
 settled it by not depriving the Ramnes, as the first tribe, of 
 anything, and by conferring honors on the Tities. This is per- 
 fectly clear. The senate, which had at first consisted of one 
 hundred and now two hundred members, was divided into ten 
 decunes, each being headed by one, who was its leader ; these 
 are the decem primi, and they were taken from the Ramnes. 
 They formed the college, which, when there was no king, un- 
 dertook the government, one after another, each for five days, 
 but in such a manner that they always succeeded one another 
 in the same order, as we must believe with Livy, for Dionysius 
 here introduces his Greek notions of the Attic prytanes, and 
 Plutarch misunderstands the matter altogether. 
 
 After the example of the senate the number of the augurs 
 and pontiffs also was doubled, so that each college consisted of 
 four members, two being taken from the Ramnes and two from 
 the Tities. Although it is not possible to fix these changes 
 chronologically, as Dionysius and Cicero do, yet they are as 
 historically certain as if we actually knew the kings who intro- 
 duced them. 
 
 Such was Rome in the second stage of its development. 
 This period of equalization is one of peace, and is described as 
 the reign of Numa, about whom the traditions are simple and 
 brief. It is the picture of a peaceful condition with a holy man 
 at the head of affairs, like Nicolas von der Flue in Switzerland. 
 Numa was supposed to have been inspired by the goddess
 
 I 3 2 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 Egeria, to whom he was married in the grove of the Camenae, 
 and who introduced him into the choir of her sisters; she 
 melted away in tears at his death, and thus gave her name to 
 the spring which arose out of her tears. Such a peace of forty 
 years, during which no nation rose against Rome, because Nu- 
 ma's piety was communicated to the surrounding nations, is a 
 beautiful idea, but historically impossible in those times, and 
 manifestly a poetical fiction. 
 
 The death of Numa forms the conclusion of the first SCECU- 
 lum, and an entirely new period follows, just as in the Theogony 
 of Hesiod the age of heroes is followed by the iron age ; there 
 is evidently a change, and an entirely new order of things is 
 conceived to have arisen. Up to this point we have had noth- 
 ing except poetry, but with Tullus Hostilius a kind of history 
 begins, that is, events are related which must be taken in gen- 
 eral as historical, though in the light in which they are pre- 
 sented to us they are not historical Thus, for example, the 
 destruction of Alba is historical, and so in all probability is the 
 reception of the Albans at Rome. The conquests of Ancus 
 Martius are quite credible ; and they appear like an oasis of real 
 history in the midst of fables. A similar case occurs once in 
 the chronicle of Cologne. In the Abyssinian annals, we fmd 
 in the thirteenth century a very minute account of one particu- 
 lar event, in which we recognize a piece of contemporaneous 
 history, though we meet with nothing historical either before 
 or after. 
 
 The history which then follows is like a picture viewed from 
 the wrong side, like phantasmata; the names of the kings are 
 perfectly fictitious ; no man can tell how long the Roman kings 
 reigned, as we do not know how many there were, since it is 
 only for the sake of the number that seven were supposed to 
 have ruled, seven being a number which appears in many rela- 
 tions, especially in important astronomical ones. Hence the 
 chronological statements are utterly worthless. We must con- 
 ceive as a succession of centuries the period from the origin of 
 Rome down to the times wherein were constructed the enor- 
 mous works, such as the great drains, the wall of Servius, and 
 others, which were actually executed under the kings and rival 
 the great architectural works of the Egyptians. Romulus and
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 133 
 
 Numa must be entirely set aside ; but a long period follows, in 
 which the nations gradually unite and develop themselves until 
 the kingly government disappears and makes way for repub- 
 lican institutions. 
 
 But it is nevertheless necessary to relate the history, such 
 as it has been handed down, because much depends upon it. 
 There was not the slightest connection between Rome and 
 Alba, nor is it even mentioned by the historians, though they 
 suppose that Rome received its first inhabitants from Alba; 
 but in the reign of Tullus Hostilius the two cities on a sudden 
 appear as enemies : each of the two nations seeks war, and tries 
 to allure fortune by representing itself as the injured party, 
 each wishing to declare war. Both sent ambassadors to de- 
 mand reparation for robberies which had been committed. The 
 form of procedure was this: the ambassadors, that is the 
 Fetiales, related the grievances of their city to every person 
 they met, they then proclaimed them in the market-place of the 
 other city, and if, after the expiration of thrice ten days no repa- 
 ration was made, they said, " We have done enough and now 
 return," whereupon the elders at home held counsel as to how 
 they should obtain redress. In this formula accordingly the res, 
 that is, the surrender of the guilty and the restoration of the 
 stolen property, must have been demanded. Now it is related 
 that the two nations sent such ambassadors quite simultaneously, 
 but that Tullus Hostilius retained the Alban ambassadors, 
 until he was certain that the Romans at Alba had not obtained 
 the justice due to them, and had therefore declared war. After 
 this he admitted the ambassadors into the senate, and the reply 
 made to their complaint was, that they themselves had not sat- 
 isfied the demands of the Romans. Livy then continues : bel- 
 lum in trigesimum diem dixerant. But the real formula is, 
 post trigesimum diem, and we may ask, Why did Livy or the 
 annalist whom he followed make this alteration ? For an ob- 
 vious reason : a person may ride from Rome to Alba in a couple 
 of hours, so that the detention of the Alban ambassadors at 
 Rome for thirty days, without their hearing what was going on 
 in the mean time at Alba, was a matter of impossibility. Livy 
 saw this, and therefore altered the formula. But the ancient 
 poet was not concerned about such things, and without hesita-
 
 134 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 tk>n increased the distance in his imagination, and represented 
 Rome and Alba as great states. 
 
 The whole description of the circumstances under which the 
 fate of Alba was decided is just as manifestly poetical, but we 
 shall dwell upon it for a while in order to show how a semblance 
 of history may arise. Between Rome and Alba there was a 
 ditch, Fossa Cluilia or Cloelia, and there must have been a 
 tradition that the Albans had been encamped there ; Livy and 
 Dionysius mention that Cluilius, a general of the Albans, had 
 given the ditch its name, having perished there. It was neces- 
 sary to mention the latter circumstance, in order to explain the 
 fact that afterward their general was a different person, Met- 
 tius Fuffetius, and yet to be able to connect the name of that 
 ditch with the Albans. The two states committed the decision 
 of their dispute to champions, and Dionysius says that tradition 
 did not agree as to whether the name of the Roman champions 
 was Horatii or Curiatii, although he himself, as well as Livy, 
 assumes that it was Horatii, probably because it was thus 
 stated by the majority of the annalists. Who would suspect 
 any uncertainty here if it were not for this passage of Dio- 
 nysius ? The contest of the three brothers on each side is a 
 symbolical indication that each of the two states was then 
 divided into three tribes. Attempts have indeed been made to 
 deny that the three men were brothers of the same birth, and 
 thus to remove the improbability ; but the legend went even 
 further, representing the three brothers on each side as the sons 
 of two sisters, and as born on the same day. This contains the 
 suggestion of a perfect equality between Rome and Alba. 
 The contest ended in the complete submission of Alba ; it did 
 not remain faithful, however, and in the ensuing struggle with 
 the Etruscans, Mettius Fuffetius acted the part of a traitor to- 
 ward Rome, but not being able to carry his design into effect, 
 he afterward fell upon the fugitive Etruscans. Tullus ordered 
 him to be torn to pieces and Alba to be razed to the ground, 
 the noblest Alban families being transplanted to Rome. The 
 death of Tullus is no less poetical. Like Numa he undertook 
 to call down lightning from heaven, but he thereby destroyed 
 himself and his house. 
 
 If we endeavor to discover the historical substance of these
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 135 
 
 legends, we at once find ourselves in a period when Rome no 
 longer stood alone, but had colonies with Roman settlers, pos- 
 sessing a third of the territory and exercising sovereign power 
 over the original inhabitants. This was the case in a small 
 number of towns, for the most part of ancient Siculian origin. 
 It is an undoubted fact that Alba was destroyed, and that after 
 this event the towns of the Prisci Latini formed an indepen- 
 dent and compact confederacy ; but whether Alba fell in the 
 manner described, whether it was ever compelled to recognize 
 the supremacy of Rome, and whether it was destroyed by the 
 Romans and Latins conjointly, or by the Romans or Latins 
 alone, are questions which no human ingenuity can solve. It 
 is, however, most probable that the destruction of Alba was the 
 work of the Latins, who rose against her supremacy : whether 
 in this case the Romans received the Albans among themselves, 
 and thus became their benefactors instead of destroyers, must 
 ever remain a matter of uncertainty. That Alban families were 
 transplanted to Rome cannot be doubted, any more than that 
 the Prisci Latini from that time constituted a compact state ; 
 if we consider that Alba was situated in the midst of the Latin 
 districts, that the Alban mount was their common sanctuary, 
 and that the grove of Ferentina was the place of assembly for 
 all the Latins, it must appear more probable that Rome did not 
 destroy Alba, but that it perished in an insurrection of the 
 Latin towns, and that the Romans strengthened themselves by 
 receiving the Albans into their city. 
 
 Whether the Albans were the first that settled on the 
 Caelian hill, or whether it was previously occupied, cannot be 
 decided. The account which places the foundation of the town 
 on the Caelius in the reign of Romulus suggests that a town 
 existed there before the reception of the Albans; but what is 
 the authenticity of this account ? A third tradition represents 
 it as an Etruscan settlement of Caeles Vibenna. This much is 
 certain, that the destruction of Alba greatly contributed to in- 
 crease the power of Rome. There can be no doubt that a 
 third town, which seems to have been very populous, now ex- 
 isted on the Caelius and on a portion of the Esquiliae : such a 
 settlement close to other towns was made for the sake of mu- 
 tual protection. Between the two more ancient towns there
 
 I 3 6 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 continued to be a marsh or swamp, and Rome was protected on 
 the south by stagnant water ; but between Rome and the third 
 town there was a dry plain. Rome also had a considerable 
 suburb toward the Aventine, protected by a wall and a ditch, 
 as is implied in the story of Remus. He is a personification of 
 the plebs, leaping across the ditch from the side of the Aven- 
 tine, though we ought to be very cautious in regard to allegory. 
 The most ancient town on the Palatine was Rome ; the 
 Sabine town also must have had a name, and I have no doubt 
 that, according to common analogy, it was Quirium, the name 
 of its citizens being Quirites. This I look upon as certain. I 
 have almost as little doubt that the town on the Caelian was 
 called Lucerum, because when it was united with Rome, its 
 citizens were called, Lucertes (Luceres). The ancients derive 
 this name from Lucumo, king of the Tuscans, or from Lucerus, 
 king of Ardea ; the latter derivation probably meaning that the 
 race was Tyrrheno-Latin, because Ardea was the capital of that 
 race. Rome was thus enlarged by a third element, which, how- 
 ever, did not stand on a footing of equality with the two others, 
 but was in a state of dependence similar to that of Ireland rela- 
 tively to Great Britain down to the year 1782. But although 
 the Luceres were obliged to recognize the supremacy of the two 
 older tribes, they were considered as an integral part of the 
 whole state, that is, as a third tribe with an administration of 
 its own, but inferior rights. What throws light upon our way 
 here is a passage of Festus, who is a great authority on matters 
 of Roman antiquity, because he made his excerpts from Verrius 
 Flaccus; it is only in a few points that, in my opinion, either of 
 them was mistaken ; all the rest of the mistakes in Festus may 
 be accounted for by the imperfection of the abridgment, Festus 
 not always understanding Verrius Flaccus. The statement of 
 Festus to which I here allude is that Tarquinius Superbus in- 
 creased the number of the Vestals in order that each tribe 
 might have two. With this we must connect a passage from 
 the tenth book of Livy, where he says that the augurs were to 
 represent the three tribes. The numbers in the Roman col- 
 leges of priests were always multiples either of two or of 
 three ; the latter was the case with the Vestal Virgins and the 
 great Flamines, and the former with the Augurs, Pontiffs, and
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 137 
 
 Fetiales, who represented only the first two tribes. Previously 
 to the passing of the Ogulnian law the number of augurs was 
 four, and when subsequently five plebeians were added, the 
 basis of this increase was different, it is true, but the ancient 
 rule of the number being a multiple of three was preserved. 
 The number of pontiffs, which was then four, was increased 
 only by four : this might seem to contradict what has just been 
 stated, but it has been overlooked that Cicero speaks of five 
 new ones having been added, for he included the Pontifex 
 Maximus, which Livy does not. In like manner there were 
 twenty Fetiales, ten for each tribe. To the Salii on the Pala- 
 tine Numa added another brotherhood on the Quirinal ; thus 
 we everywhere see a manifest distinction between the first two 
 tribes and the third, the latter being treated as inferior. 
 
 The third tribe, then, consisted of free citizens, but they 
 had not the same rights as the members of the first two; yet 
 its members considered themselves superior to all other people; 
 and their relation to the other two tribes was the same as that 
 existing between the Venetian citizens of the mainland and the 
 nobili. A Venetian nobleman treated those citizens with far 
 more condescension than he displayed toward others, provided 
 they did not presume to exercise any authority in political mat- 
 ters. Whoever belonged to the Luceres called himself a Roman, 
 and if the very dictator of Tusculum had come to Rome, a man 
 of the third tribe there would have looked upon him as an infe- 
 rior person, though he himself had no influence whatever. 
 
 Tullus was succeeded by Ancus. Tullus appears as one of 
 the Ramnes, and as descended from Hostus Hostilius, one of 
 the companions of Romulus ; but Ancus was a Sabine, a grand- 
 son of Numa. The accounts about him are to some extent his- 
 torical, and there is no trace of poetry in them. In his reign, 
 the development of the state again made a step in advance. 
 According to the ancient tradition, Rome was at war with the 
 Latin towns, and carried it on successfully. How many of the 
 particular events which are recorded may be historical I am 
 unable to say; but that there was a war is credible enough. 
 Ancus, it is said, carried away after this war many thousands 
 of Latins, and gave them settlements on the Aventine. The 
 ancients express various opinions about him ; sometimes he is
 
 I 3 8 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 
 
 described as a captator aur<z popularis ; sometimes he is called 
 bonus Ancus. Like the first three kings, he is said to have been 
 a legislator, a fact which is not mentioned in reference to the 
 later kings. He is moreover stated to have established the 
 colony of Ostia, and thus his kingdom must have extended as 
 far as the mouth of the Tiber. 
 
 Ancus and Tullus seem to me to be historical personages ; 
 but we can scarcely suppose that the latter was succeeded by 
 the former, and that the events assigned to their reigns actually 
 occurred in them. These events must be conceived in the fol- 
 lowing manner: Toward the end of the fourth reign, when, 
 after a feud which lasted many years, the Romans came to an 
 understanding with the Latins about the renewal of the long- 
 neglected alliance, Rome gave up its claims to the supremacy 
 which it could not maintain, and indemnified itself by extending 
 its dominion in another and safer direction. The eastern colo- 
 nies joined the Latin towns which still existed : this is evident, 
 though it is nowhere expressly mentioned ; and a portion of the 
 Latin country was ceded to Rome, with which the rest of the 
 Latins formed a connection of friendship, perhaps of isopolity. 
 Rome here acted as wisely as England did when she recognized 
 the independence of North America. 
 
 In this manner Rome obtained a territory. The many 
 thousand settlers whom Ancus is said to have led to the Aven- 
 tine were the population of the Latin towns which became sub- 
 ject to Rome, and they were far more numerous than the two 
 ancient tribes, even after the latter had been increased by their 
 union with the third tribe. In these country districts lay the 
 power of Rome, and from them she raised the armies with 
 which she carried on her wars. It would have been natural to 
 admit this population as a fourth tribe, but such a measure was 
 not agreeable to the Romans : the constitution of the state was 
 completed and was looked upon as a sacred trust in which no 
 change ought to be introduced. It was with the Greeks and 
 Romans as it was with our own ancestors, whose separate tribes 
 clung to their hereditary laws, and differed from one another in 
 this respect as much as they did from the Gauls in the color of 
 their eyes and hair. They knew well enough that it was in their 
 power to alter the laws, but they considered them as something
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF ROME 139 
 
 which ought not to be altered. Thus when the emperor Otho 
 was doubtful on a point of the law of inheritance, he caused the 
 case to be decided by an ordeal or judgment of God. In Sicily, 
 one city had Chalcidian, another Doric laws, although their 
 populations, as well as their dialects, were greatly mixed ; but 
 the leaders of those colonies had been Chalcidians in the one 
 case and Dorians in the others. The Chalcidians, moreover, 
 were divided into four, the Dorians into three tribes, and their 
 differences in these respects were manifested even in their 
 weights and measures. The division into three tribes was a 
 genuine Latin institution ; and there are reasons which render 
 it probable that the Sabines had a division of their states into 
 four tribes. The transportation of the Latins to Rome must 
 be regarded as the origin of \h&plebs
 
 PRINCE JIMMU FOUNDS JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 B.C. 660 
 
 SIR EDWARD REED THE "NEHONGI" 
 
 Prince Jimmu is the founder of the Empire of Japan, according to 
 Japanese tradition. The whole of his history is overlaid with myth and 
 legend. But it points to the immigration of western Asiatics by way of 
 Corea into the Japanese islands of Izumo and Kyushu. 
 
 The historical records of the Japanese relate that Jimmu, accompa- 
 nied by an elder brother, Prince Itsuse, started from their grandfather's 
 palace on Mount Takaclicho. They marched with a large number of 
 followers, a horde of men, women, and children, as well as a band of 
 armed men. On landing in Japan, after many years wandering by sea 
 and land, they had serious conflicts with the native tribes. They eventu- 
 ally succeeded in overcoming all opposition and in conquering the coun- 
 try, so that Prince Jimmu was enabled to build a palace and set up a 
 capital, Kashiha-bara, in Yamato. This prince is regarded by Japanese 
 historians as the founder of the Japanese Empire. He is said to have 
 reigned seventy-five years after his accession, and to have died at the 
 age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and his burial place is 
 pointed out on the northern side of Mount Unebi, in the province of 
 Yamato. 
 
 Prince Jimmu, or whoever was the foreign ruler who conquered and 
 founded an empire in Japan, must have been a bold, enterprising, and 
 sagacious man. The islands he subdued were barbarous, and he civil- 
 ized them ; the inhabitants were warlike and cruel, and he kept them in 
 peace. He founded a dynasty which extended its dominion over Nagato, 
 Izumo, and Owari, and still has representatives in rulers whose people 
 are by far the most progressive dwellers in the East. 
 
 That part of the following historical matter, which is translated from 
 the old Japanese chronicle, the Nehongi, is marked by local color and by 
 Oriental characteristics, whereby it curiously contrasts with the plain 
 recitals of modern and Western history. 
 
 SIR EDWARD REED 
 
 T 
 
 HERE are endless varying legends about this god-period 
 of Japan. All that we need now say in the way of reciting 
 the legends of the gods has relation to the descent of the 
 mikados of Japan from the deities. 
 
 140
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 141 
 
 It was the misconduct of Susanoo that drove the sun-god- 
 dess into the cave and for this misconduct he was banished. 
 Some say that, instead of proceeding to his place of banishment, 
 he descended, with his son Idakiso no Mikoto, upon Shiraga (in 
 Corea), but not liking the place went back by a vessel to the 
 bank of the Hinokawa River, in Idzumo, Japan. 
 
 At the time of their descent, Idakiso had many plants or 
 seeds of trees with him, but he planted none in Shiraga, but 
 took them across with him, and scattered them from Kuishiu 
 all over Japan, so that the whole country became green with 
 trees. It is said that Idakiso is respected as the god of merit, 
 and is worshipped in Kinokuni. His two sisters also took care 
 of the plantation. One of the gods who reigned over the coun- 
 try in the prehistoric period was Ohonamuchi, who is said by 
 some to be the son of Susanoo, and by others to be one of his 
 later descendants ; " And which is right, it is more than we can 
 say," remarked one of my scholarly friends. 
 
 However, during his reign he was anxious about the people, 
 and, consulting with Sukuna no Mikoto, applied " his whole 
 heart," we are told, to their good government, and they all 
 became loyal to him. One time he said to his friend just 
 named, "Do you think we are governing the people well?" 
 And his friend answered : " In some respects well, and in some 
 not," so that they were frank and honest with each other in 
 those days. 
 
 When Sukunahikona went away, Ohonamuchi said : " It is 
 I who should govern this country. Is there any who will assist 
 me ? " Then there appeared over the sea a divine light, and 
 there came a god floating and floating, and said : " You cannot 
 govern the country without me." And this proved to be the 
 god Ohomiwa no Kami, who built a palace at Mimuro, in 
 Yamato, and dwelt therein. He affords a direct link with the 
 Mikado family, for his daughter became the empress of the first 
 historic emperor Jimmu. Her name was Humetatara Izudsu- 
 hime. 
 
 All the descendants of her father are named, like him, 
 Ohomiwa no Kami, and it is said that the present empress of 
 Japan is probably a descendant of this god. As regards the 
 descent of the Emperor Jimmu himself we already know that
 
 I 4 2 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 Ninigi no Mikoto, " the sovran grandchild " of the sun-god- 
 dess, was sent down with the sacred symbols of empire given 
 to him in the sun by the sun-goddess herself before he started 
 for the earth. Now Ninigi married (reader, forgive me for 
 quoting the lady's name and her father's) Konohaneno-sakuya- 
 hime, the daughter of Ohoyamazumino-Kami, and the pair had 
 three sons, of whom the last named Howori no Mikoto suc- 
 ceeded to the throne. He is sometimes called by the following 
 simple and possibly endearing name : Amatsuhitakahi Koho- 
 ho-demi no Mikoto. 
 
 He married Toyatama-hime, the daughter of the sea-god, 
 and they had a son, Ugaya-fuki-ayedsu no Mikoto, born, it is 
 said, under an unfinished roof of cormorants' wings, who suc- 
 ceeded the father, and who married Tamayori-hime, also a 
 daughter of the sea-god. This illustrious couple had four sons, 
 of whom the last succeeded to the throne in the year B.C. 660. 
 He was named Kamuyamatoi warehiko no Mikoto, but poster- 
 ity has fortunately simplified his designation to the now familiar 
 Jimmu-Tenno, the first historic Emperor of Japan, and the 
 ancestor of the present emperor. 
 
 The histories of Japan, prepared under the sanction of the 
 present Japanese government, date the commencement of the 
 historic period from the first year of the reign of the first 
 emperor, Jimmu-Tenno, who is said to have ruled for seventy- 
 six years, viz., from B.C. 660 to 585. Some persons consider 
 that this reign, and a few reigns that succeeded it, probably or 
 possibly belong to the legendary period, because while, on the 
 one hand, the Emperor Jimmu is described as the founder of 
 the present empire and the ancestor of the present emperor, 
 on the other, he is described as the fourth son of Ukay 
 Fukiaezu no Mikoto, who was fifth in direct descent from the 
 beautiful sun-goddess, Tensho-Daijin. But as no such thing 
 as writing existed in Japan in those days, or for many centuries 
 afterward, it would not be surprising if a real monarch should 
 have a mythical origin assigned to him ; and as I have quite 
 lately heard the guns firing at Nagasaki an imperial salute in 
 honor of his coronation, and have seen the flags waving over 
 the capital city, Tokio, in honor of the birthday, the Emperor 
 Jimmu is quite historical enough for my present purpose.
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 143 
 
 The commencement of his reign shall fix for us, as it does 
 tor others, the Japanese year i, which was 660 years prior to 
 our year i, so that any date of the Christian era can be con- 
 verted into one of the Japanese era by the addition of 660 
 years, and vice-versa. Some of the emperors will be found to 
 have lived very long lives, no doubt ; but as I have said else- 
 where, none of them lived nearly so long as our Adam, Methu- 
 selah, and others, in whose longevity so many of us profess to 
 believe ; and besides, it is impossible for me to attempt to cor- 
 rect a chronology which Japanese scholars, and Englishmen 
 versed in the Japanese language, have thus far left without 
 specific correction. Deferring for after consideration the inci- 
 dents of the successive imperial reigns, except in so far as they 
 bear directly upon the descent of the crown, let us, then, first 
 glance at the succession of emperors and empresses who have 
 ruled in the Morning Land. 
 
 After the death of the Emperor Jimmu there appears to 
 have been an interregnum for three years although it is sel- 
 dom taken account of the second Emperor Suisei, who was 
 the fifth son of the first emperor, having ascended the throne 
 B.C. 581 and reigned, till 549. The cause of the interregnum 
 appears to have been the extreme grief which Suisei felt at the 
 death of his father, in consequence of which he committed the 
 administration of the empire, for a time, to one of his relatives 
 an unworthy fellow, as he proved, named Tagishi Mimi no 
 Mikoto, who tried to assassinate his master and seize the 
 throne for himself, and who was put to death by Suisei 
 for his pains. The fifth son of the Emperor Jimmu was 
 nominated by him as the successor, and it is probable that 
 older sons were living and passed over, and that the throne 
 was inherited in part by nomination even in this its first 
 transfer. 
 
 Some writers on Japanese history profess to see in the pan- 
 theon of Japan, pictured in the Kojiki and Nihonki, nothing 
 more than a collection of distinguished personages who lived 
 and labored and contended in the country before the historic 
 period, thus bringing deified men and women down to earth 
 again. Such persons accept the records of Jimmu-Tenno's 
 origin as essentially accurate in so far as they state what is
 
 144 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 human and reasonable, rejecting them only when they set forth 
 what is supernatural, and, to them, unbelievable. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, consider, or profess to consider, 
 the supernatural portions of those narratives as perfectly trust- 
 worthy, and discredit only those statements concerning the 
 first of the sacred emperors which would seem in any way to 
 detract from his divinity. I should be sorry to have to argue 
 the case with either of these parties, but I must take the liberty 
 of accepting as sufficiently accurate as much of the recorded 
 lives of Jimmu and his successors as the modern prosaic his- 
 tories in Japan are content to put forth, and no more. 
 
 Proceeding upon this basis, there is not much to be said of 
 the reigns of the mikados who ruled before the Christian era, 
 beyond what has been already stated. As regards the first 
 emperor, his ancestor Ninigi no Mikoto whether a god or 
 not, or whether he came down from the sun by means of 
 " the bridge of heaven " or not appears to have established 
 his residence at the ancient Himuka, now Hiuga; there it 
 was that Jimmu-Tenno first resided, and thence it was that he 
 started on his historic and memorable career. The central 
 parts of Japan were militarily occupied by rebels (whose 
 names are preserved), and it was to subdue them that he pro- 
 ceeded eastward. He stopped for three years at Taka Shima, 
 constructing the necessary vessels for crossing the waters, and 
 then, in the course of years, making his way victoriously as far 
 as Nanieva, the modern Osaka, encountered his foes at Kawa- 
 chi, and defeated them, the chief general being left dead on the 
 battle-field. 
 
 Jimmu was now sole master of Japan, as then known, and 
 in the following year he mounted the throne. The eastern and 
 northern parts of the country were, however, still, and long 
 afterwards, peopled by the Aino race, who were at a later 
 period treated as troublesome savages, and conquered by a 
 famous prince, Yamato-Dake, by help of the sacred sword. 
 The spot selected by the Emperor Jimmu for his capital was 
 Kashiwabara, in the province of Yamato, not far from the 
 present western capital of Kioto. He there did honor to 
 the gods, married, built himself a palace, and deposited in the 
 throne-room the sacred mirror, sword, and ball, the insignia of
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 145 
 
 the imperial power handed down from the sun-goddess. He 
 organized two imperial guards, one as a body-guard to protect 
 the interior of the palace, and the other to act as sentinels 
 around the palace. 
 
 THE "NEHONGI" 
 
 The Emperor Kami Yamato Iharebiko's personal name was 
 Hikohoho-demi. He was the fourth child of Hiko-nagisa-take- 
 ugaya-fuki-ahezu no Mikoto. His mother's name was Tama- 
 yori-hime, daughter of the sea-god. From his birth this em- 
 peror was of clear intelligence and resolute will. At the age of 
 fifteen he was made heir to the throne. When he grew up he 
 married Ahira-tsu-hime, of the district of Ata in the province 
 of Hiuga, and made her his consort. By her he had Tagishi- 
 mimi no Mikoto and Kisu-mimi no Mikoto. 
 
 When he reached the age of forty-five, he addressed his 
 elder brothers and his children, saying : " Of old, our heavenly 
 deities Taka-mi-Musubi no Mikoto, and Oho-hiru-me no Mikoto, 
 pointing to this land of fair rice-ears of the fertile reed-plain, 
 gave it to our heavenly ancestor, Hiko-ho no Ninigi no Mikoto. 
 Thereupon Hiko-ho no Ninigi no Mikoto, throwing open the 
 barrier of heaven and clearing a cloud-path, urged on his super- 
 human course until he came to rest. At this time the world 
 was given over to widespread desolation. It was an age of 
 darkness and disorder. In this gloom, therefore, he fostered 
 justice, and so governed this western border. 
 
 " Our imperial ancestors and imperial parent, like gods, like 
 sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory. Many years 
 elapsed from the date when our heavenly ancestor descended 
 until now it is over 1,792,470 years. But the remote regions 
 do not yet enjoy the blessings of imperial rule. Every town 
 has always been allowed to have its lord, and every village its 
 chief, who, each one for himself, makes division of territory and 
 practises mutual aggression and conflict. 
 
 " Now I have heard from the Ancient of the Sea, that in the 
 East there is a fair land encircled on all sides by blue moun- 
 tains. Moreover, there is there one who flew down riding in a 
 heavenly rock-boat. I think that this land will undoubtedly be 
 suitable for the extension of the heavenly task, so that its 
 
 E., VOL. I. 'O
 
 I 4 6 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 glory should fill the universe. It is doubtless the centre of 
 the world. The person who flew down was, I believe, Nigi- 
 haya-hi. Why should we not proceed thither, and make it the 
 capital ? " 
 
 All the imperial princes answered, and said : " The truth of 
 this is manifest. This thought is constantly present to our 
 minds also. Let us go thither quickly." This was the year 
 Kinoye Tora (5ist) of the Great Year. 
 
 In that year, in winter, on the Kanoto Tori day (the 5th) 
 of the loth month, the new moon of which was on the day 
 Hinoto Mi, the emperor in person led the imperial princes and 
 a naval force on an expedition against the East. When he 
 arrived at the Haya-suhi gate, there was there a fisherman who 
 came riding in a boat. The emperor summoned him and then 
 inquired of him, saying: "Who art thou? " He answered and 
 said : " Thy servant is a country-god, and his name is Utsuhiko. 
 I angle for fish in the bays of ocean. Hearing that the son of 
 the heavenly deity was coming, therefore I forthwith came to 
 receive him." Again he inquired of him, saying : " Canst thou 
 act as my guide ? " He answered and said : " I will do so." 
 The emperor ordered the end of a pole of Shihi wood to be 
 given to the fisher, and caused him to be taken and pulled into 
 the imperial vessel, of which he was made pilot. 
 
 A name was especially granted him, and he was called 
 Shihi-ne-tsu-hiko. He was the first ancestor of the Yamato 
 no Atahe. 
 
 Proceeding on their voyage, they arrived at Usa in the land 
 of Tsukushi. At this time there appeared the ancestors of the 
 Kuni-tsu-ko of Usa, named Usa-tsu-hiko and Usa-tsu-hime. 
 They built a palace raised on one pillar on the banks of the 
 River Usa, and offered them a banquet. Then, by imperial 
 command, Usa-tsu-hime was given in marriage to the emperor's 
 attendant minister Ama notane no Mikoto. Now, Ama no- 
 tane no Mikoto was the remote ancestor of the Nakatomi Uji. 
 
 Eleventh month, gih day. The emperor arrived at the har- 
 bor of Oka in the Land of Tsukushi. 
 
 Twelfth month, 2;th day. He arrived at the province of 
 Aki, where he dwelt in the palace of Ye. 
 
 The year Kinoto U, Spring, 3d month, 6th day. Going
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 147 
 
 onward, he entered the land of Kibi, and built a temporary 
 palace in which he dwelt. It was called the palace of Taka- 
 shima. Three years passed, during which time he set in order 
 the helms of his ships, and prepared a store of provisions. It 
 was his desire by a single effort to subdue the empire. 
 
 The year Tsuchinoye Muma, Spring, 2d month, nth day. 
 The imperial forces at length proceeded eastward, the prow 
 of one ship touching the stern of another. Just when they 
 reached Cape Naniho they encountered a current of great 
 swiftness. Whereupon that place was called Nami-haya (wave- 
 swift) or Nami-hana (wave-flower). It is now called Naniha, 
 which is a corruption of this. 
 
 Third month, loth day. Proceeding upwards against the 
 stream, they went straight on, and arrived at the port of Awo- 
 Kumo no Shira-date, in the township of Kusaka, in the prov- 
 ince of Kafuchi. 
 
 Summer, 4th month, gth day. The imperial forces in mar- 
 tial array marched on to Tatsuta. The road was narrow and 
 precipitous, and the men were unable to march abreast, so they 
 returned and again endeavored to go eastward, crossing over 
 Mount Ikoma. In this way they entered the inner country. 
 
 Now when Naga-sune-hiko heard this, he said : "The object 
 of the children of the heavenly deity in coming hither is 
 assuredly to rob me of my country." So he straightway levied 
 all the forces under his dominion, and intercepted them at the 
 Hill of Kusaka. A battle was engaged, and Itsuse no Mikoto 
 was hit by a random arrow on the elbow. The imperial forces 
 were unable to advance against the enemy. The emperor was 
 vexed, and revolved in his inmost heart a divine plan, saying: 
 " I am the descendant of the sun-goddess, and if I proceed 
 against the sun to attack the enemy, I shall act contrary to the 
 way of heaven. Better to retreat and make a show of weak- 
 ness. Then, sacrificing to the gods of heaven and earth, and 
 bringing on our backs the might of the sun goddess, let us fol- 
 low her rays and trample them down. If we do so, the enemy 
 will assuredly be routed of themselves, and we shall not stain 
 our swords with blood." 
 
 They all said : " It is good." Thereupon he gave orders to 
 the army, saying: "\Vait a while and advance no further."
 
 I 4 8 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 So he withdrew his forces, and the enemy also did not dare to 
 attack him. He then retired to the port of Kusaka, where he 
 set up shields, and made a warlike show. Therefore the name 
 of this port was changed to Tatetsu, which is now corrupted 
 into Tadetsu. 
 
 Before this, at the battle of Kusaka, there was a man who 
 hid in a great tree, and by so doing escaped danger. So point- 
 ing to this tree, he said : " I am grateful to it, as to my mother." 
 Therefore the people of the day called that place Omo no ki no 
 Mura. 
 
 Fifth month, 8th day. The army arrived at the port of Ya- 
 maki in Chinu (also called Port Yama no wi). Now Itsuse no 
 Mikoto's arrow wound was extremely painful. He grasped his 
 sword, and striking a martial attitude, said : " How exasperat- 
 ing it is that a man should die of a wound received at the hands 
 of slaves, and should not avenge it ! " The people of that day 
 therefore called the place Wo no Minoto. 
 
 Proceeding onward, they reached Mount Kama in the Land 
 of Kii, where Itsuse no Mikoto died in the army, and was there- 
 fore buried at Mount Kama. 
 
 Sixth month, 23d day. The army arrived at the village of 
 Nagusa, where they put to death the Tohe of Nagusa. Finally 
 they crossed the moor of Sano, and arrived at the village of 
 Kami in Kumano. Here he embarked in the rock-boat of 
 heaven, and leading his army, proceeded onward by slow 
 degrees. In the midst of the sea, they .suddenly met with a 
 violent wind, and the imperial vessel was tossed about. Then 
 Ina-ihi no Mikoto exclaimed and said : " Alas ! my ancestors 
 were heavenly deities, and my mother was a goddess of the 
 sea. Why do they harass me by land, and why, moreover, do 
 they harass me by sea ? " When he had said this, he drew his 
 sword and plunged into the sea, where he became changed into 
 the god Sabi-Mochi. 
 
 Mild In no no Mikoto, also indignant at this, said : " My 
 mother and my aunt are both sea-goddesses; why do they 
 raise great billows to overwhelm us ? " So, treading upon the 
 waves, he went to the Eternal Land. The emperor was now 
 alone with the imperial prince, Tagishi-Mimi no Mikoto. Lead- 
 ing his army forward, he arrived at Port Arazaka in Kumano
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 149 
 
 (also called Nishiki Bay), where he put to death the Tohe of 
 Nishiki. At this time the gods belched up a poisonous vapor, 
 from which every one suffered. For this reason the imperial 
 army was again unable to exert itself. Then there was there a 
 man by name Kumano no Takakuraji, who unexpectedly had 
 a dream, in which Ama-terasu no Ohokami spoke to Take-mika- 
 tsuchi no Kami, saying : " I still hear a sound of disturbance 
 from the central land of reed-plains. Do thou again go and 
 chastise it." 
 
 Take-mika-tsuchi no Kami answered and said : " Even if I 
 go not I can send down my sword, with which I subdued the 
 land, upon which the country will of its own accord become 
 peaceful." To this Ama-terasu no Kami assented. Thereupon 
 Take-mika-tsuchi no Kami addressed Taka Kuraji, saying : " My 
 sword, which is called Futsu no Mitama, I will now place 
 in the storehouse. Do thou take it and present it to the 
 heavenly grandchild." Taka Kuraji said, "Yes," and there- 
 upon awoke. The next morning, as instructed in his dream, 
 he opened the storehouse, and on looking in, there was indeed 
 there a sword which had fallen down (from heaven) and was 
 standing upside down on the plank floor of the storehouse. 
 So he took it and offered it to the emperor. At this time the 
 emperor happened to be asleep. He awoke suddenly, and said : 
 " What a long time I have slept. " 
 
 On inquiry he found that the troops who had been affected 
 by the poison had all recovered their senses and were afoot. 
 The emperor then endeavored to advance into the interior, but 
 among the mountains it was so precipitous that there was no 
 road by which they could travel. And they wandered about 
 not knowing whither to direct their march. 
 
 Then Ama-terasu no Oho-Kami instructed the emperor in a 
 dream of the night saying : " I will now send the Yata-garasu, 
 make it thy guide through the land." Then there did indeed 
 appear the Yata-garasu flying down from the void. 
 
 The emperor said: "The coming of this crow is in due 
 accordance with my auspicous dream. How grand ! How 
 splendid! My imperial ancestor Ama-terasu no Oho-Kami, 
 desires therewith to assist me in creating the hereditary insti- 
 tution."
 
 150 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 At this time Hi no Omi no Mikoto, ancestor of the Oho- 
 tomo House, taking with him Oho-kume as commander of the 
 main body, guided by the direction taken by the crow, looked 
 up to it and followed after, until at length they arrived at the 
 district of Lower Uda. Therefore they named the place which 
 they reached the village of Ukechi in Uda. At this time by 
 an imperial order he commended Hi no Omi no Mikoto, saying : 
 "Thou art faithful and brave, and art moreover a successful 
 guide. Therefore will I give thee a new name, and will call 
 thee Michi no Omi ! " 
 
 Autumn, 8th month, 2d day. The emperor sent to sum- 
 mon Ukeshi the elder and Ukeshi the younger. These two 
 were chiefs of the district of Uda. Now Ukeshi the elder did 
 not come. But Ukeshi the younger came, and making obei- 
 sance at the gate of the camp, declared as follows : " Thy ser- 
 vant's elder brother, Ukeshi the elder, shows signs of resistance. 
 Hearing that the descendant of heaven was about to arrive, he 
 forthwith raised an army with which to make an attack. But 
 having seen from afar the might of the imperial army, he was 
 afraid, and did not dare to oppose it. Therefore he has 
 secretly placed his troops in ambush, and has built for the occa- 
 sion a new palace, in the hall of which he has prepared engines. 
 It is his intention to invite the emperor to a banquet there, and 
 then to do him a mischief. I pray that this treachery be noted, 
 and that good care be taken to make preparation against it." 
 
 The emperor straightway sent Michi no Omi no Mikoto to 
 observe the signs of his opposition. Michi no Omi no Mikoto 
 clearly ascertained his hostile intentions, and being greatly 
 enraged, shouted at him in a blustering manner : " Wretch ! 
 thou shalt thyself dwell in the house which thou hast made." 
 So grasping his sword and drawing his bow, he urged him and 
 drove him within it. Ukeshi the elder being guilty before 
 heaven, and the matter not admitting of excuse, of his own 
 accord trod upon the engine and was crushed to death. His 
 body was then brought out and decapitated, and the blood 
 which flowed from it reached above the ankle. Therefore that 
 place was called Udan no chi-hara. After this Ukeshi the 
 younger prepared a great feast of beef and sake, with which he 
 entertained the imperial army. The emperor distributed this
 
 flesh and sake to the common soldiers, upon which they sang 
 the following verses : 
 
 "In the high { c t a r s e ^ e | of Uda 
 
 I set a snare for woodcock, 
 And waited, 
 
 But no woodcock came to it; 
 A valiant whale came to it." 
 
 This is called a Kume song. At the present time, when the 
 department of music performs this song, there is still the meas- 
 urement of great and small by the hand, as well as a distinction 
 of coarse and fine in the notes of the voice. This is by a rule 
 handed down from antiquity. After this the emperor wished 
 to respect the Land of Yoshino, so, taking personal command 
 of the light troops, he made a progress round by way of Ukechi 
 Mura in Uda. When he came to Yoshino, there was a man 
 who came out of a well. He shone and had a tail. The 
 emperor inquired of him, saying : " What man art thou ? " He 
 answered and said: "Thy servant is a local deity, and his name 
 is Wihikari." He it is who was the first ancestor of the 
 Yoshino no Obito. 
 
 Proceeding a little further, there was another man with a 
 tail, who burst open a rock and came forth from it. The 
 emperor inquired of him, saying : " What man art thou ? " He 
 answered and said : " Thy servant is the child of Iha-oshiwake." 
 It is he who was the first ancestor of the Kuzu of Yoshino. 
 Then, skirting the river, he preceded westward, when there 
 appeared another man, who had made a fishtrap and was catch- 
 ing fish. On the emperor making inquiry of him, he answered 
 and said : " Thy servant is the son of Nihe-molsu." He it is 
 who was the first ancestor of the U-kahi of Ata. 
 
 Ninth month, 5th day. The emperor ascended to the peak 
 of Mount Takakura in Uda, whence he had a prospect over all 
 the land. On Kuni-mi Hill there were descried eighty bandits. 
 
 Moreover at the acclivity of the Me-Zaka there was posted 
 an army of women, and at the acclivity of Wo-Zaka there was 
 stationed a force of men. At the acclivity of Sumi-Zaka was
 
 152 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 placed burning charcoal. This was the origin of the names 
 Me-Zaka, Wo-Zaka and Sumi-Zaka. 
 
 Again there was the army of Ye-Shiki, which covered all 
 the village of Ihare. All the places occupied by the enemy 
 were strong positions, and therefore the roads were cut off and 
 obstructed, so that there was no room for passage. The em- 
 peror, indignant at this, made prayer on that night in person, 
 and then fell asleep. The heavenly deity appeared to him in 
 a dream, and instructed him, saying : " Take earth from within 
 the shrine of the heavenly mount Kagu, and of it make eighty 
 heavenly platters. Also make sacred jars and therewith sacri- 
 fice to the gods of heaven and earth. Moreover pronounce a 
 solemn imprecation. If thou doest so, the enemy will render 
 submission of their own accord." 
 
 The emperor received with reverence the directions given 
 in his dream, and proceeded to carry them into execution. 
 Now Ukeshi the younger again addressed the emperor, saying : 
 "There are in the province of Yamato, in the village of Shiki, 
 eighty Shiki bandits. Moreover in the village of Taka-wohari 
 (some say Katsuraki) there are eighty Akagane bandits. 
 
 " All these tribes intend to give battle to the emperor, and 
 thy servant is anxious in his own mind on his account. It were 
 now good to take clay from the heavenly mount Kagu and 
 therewith to make heavenly platters with which to sacrifice to 
 the gods of the heavenly shrines and of the earthly shrines. 
 If after doing so thou dost attack the enemy, they may be 
 easily driven off." 
 
 The emperor, who had already taken the words of his dream 
 for a good omen, when he now heard the words of Ukeshi the 
 younger, was still more pleased in his heart. He caused Shihi- 
 netsu-hiko to put on ragged garments and a grass hat and to 
 disguise himself as an old man. He also caused Ukeshi the 
 younger to cover himself with a winnowing tray, so as to 
 assume the appearance of an old woman, and then addressed 
 them, saying: "Do ye two proceed to the heavenly mount 
 Kagu, and secretly take earth from its summit. Having done 
 so, return hither. By means of you I shall then divine whether 
 my undertaking will be successful or not. Do your utmost 
 and be watchful." Now the enemy's army filled the road,
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 153 
 
 and made all passage impossible. Then Shihi-netsu-hiko 
 prayed, and said : " If it will be possible for our emperor to 
 conquer this land, let the road by which we must travel become 
 open. But if not, let the brigands surely oppose our passage." 
 
 Having thus spoken they set forth and went straight 
 onward. Now the hostile band, seeing the two men, laughed 
 loudly, and said : " What an uncouth old man and old woman ! " 
 So with one accord they left the road, and allowed the two 
 men to pass and proceed to the mountain, where they took the 
 clay and returned with it. Hereupon the emperor was greatly 
 pleased, and with this clay he made eighty platters, eighty 
 heavenly small jars and sacred jars, with which he went to the 
 upper waters of the River Nifu and sacrificed to the gods of 
 heaven and earth. Immediately, on the Asahara plain by the 
 river of Uda, it became as it were like foam on the water, 
 the result of the curse cleaving to them. Moreover the em- 
 peror went on to utter a vow, saying: " I will now make Ante in 
 the eighty platters without using water. If the Ante is formed, 
 then shall I assuredly without effort and without recourse to 
 the might of arms reduce the empire to peace." So he made 
 Ame, which forthwith became formed of itself. Again he 
 made a vow, saying: " I will now take the sacred jars and sink 
 them in the River Nifu. If the fishes, whether great or small, 
 become every one drunken and are carried down the stream, 
 like as it were to floating maki leaves, then shall I assuredly 
 succeed in establishing this land. But if this be not so, there 
 will never be any results." 
 
 Thereupon he sank the jars in the river with their mouths 
 downward. After a while the fish all came to the surface gap- 
 ing, gasping as they floated down the stream. Then Shihi- 
 netsu-hiko, seeing this, represented it to the emperor, who was 
 greatly rejoiced, and plucking up a five-hundred-branched 
 masakaki tree of the upper waters of the River Nifu, he did 
 worship therewith to all the gods. It was with this that the 
 custom began of selling sacred jars. 
 
 At this time he commanded Michi no Omi no Mikoto, say- 
 ing : " We are now in person about to celebrate a public festi- 
 val to Taka-mi-Musubi no Mikoto, and I appoint thee ruler of 
 the festival, and I grant thee the title of Idzu-hime. The
 
 I 5 4 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 earthen jars which are set up shall be called the Idzube or 
 sacred jars, the fire shall be called Idzu no Kagu-tsuchi or sacred- 
 fire-elder, the water shall be called Idzu no Midzu-ha no me 
 or sacred-water-female, the food shall be called Idzuuka no 
 me, or sacred-food-female, the firewood shall be called Idzu no 
 Yama-tsuchi or sacred-mountain-elder, and the grass shall be 
 called Idzu no no-tsuchi or sacred-moor-elder." 
 
 Winter, roth month, ist day. The emperor tasted the food 
 of the Idzube, and arraying his troops set forth upon his march. 
 He first of all attacked the eighty bandits at Mount Kunimi, 
 routed and slew them. It was in this campaign that the 
 emperor, fully resolved on victory, made these verses, saying : 
 
 " Like the Shitadami 
 Which creep round 
 The great rock 
 Of the Sea of Ise, 
 Where blows the divine wind 
 Like the Shitadami, 
 My boys ! My boys ! 
 We will creep around 
 And smite them utterly, 
 And smite them utterly." 
 
 In this poem, by the "great rock" is intended the Hill of 
 Kunimi. 
 
 After this the band which remained was still numerous, and 
 their disposition could not be fathomed. So the emperor pri- 
 vately commanded Michi no Omi no Mikoto, saying : " Do thou 
 take with thee the Oho Kume, and make a great muro at the 
 village of Osaka. Prepare a copious banquet, invite the enemy 
 to it, and then capture them." Michi no Omi no Mikoto there- 
 upon, in obedience to the emperor's sacred behest, dug a muro 
 at Osaka, and having selected his bravest soldiers, stayed 
 therein mingled with the enemy. He secretly arranged with 
 them, saying: "When they have got tipsy with sake, I will 
 strike up a song. Do you when you hear the sound of my 
 song, all at the same time stab the enemy." 
 
 Having made this arrangement they took their seats, and 
 the drinking bout proceeded. The enemy, unaware that there 
 was any plot, abandoned themselves to their feelings, and
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 155 
 
 promptly became intoxicated. Then Michi no Omi no Mikoto 
 struck up the following song : 
 
 " At Osaka 
 
 In the great Muro-house, 
 Though men in plenty 
 Enter and stay, 
 We the glorious 
 Sons of warriors, 
 Wielding our mallet-heads, 
 Wielding our stone-mallets, 
 Will smite them utterly." 
 
 Now when our troops heard this song, they all drew at the 
 same time their mallet-headed swords, and simultaneously slew 
 the enemy, so that there were no eaters left. The imperial 
 army were greatly delighted; they looked up to heaven and 
 laughed. Therefore he made a song saying : 
 
 "Though folk say 
 That one Yemishi 
 Is a match for one hundred men, 
 They do not so much as resist." 
 
 The practice according to which, at the present time, the 
 Kume sing this and then laugh loud, had this origin. Again 
 he sang, saying: 
 
 " Ho ! now is the time 1 
 
 Ho ! now is the time ! 
 
 Ha! Ha! Psha ! 
 
 Even now 
 
 My boys ! 
 
 Even now, 
 
 My boys !" 
 
 All these songs were sung in accordance with the secret 
 behest of the emperor. He had not presumed to compose 
 them with his own motion. 
 
 Then the emperor said : " It is the part of a good general 
 when victorious to avoid arrogance. The chief brigands have 
 now been destroyed, but there are ten bands of villains of a 
 similar stamp, who are disputatious. 
 
 " Their disposition cannot be ascertained. Why should we
 
 156 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 remain for a long time in one place ? By so doing we could not 
 have control over emergencies ! " So he removed his camp to 
 another place. 
 
 Eleventh month, 7th day. The imperial army proceeded 
 in great force to attack the Hiko of Shiki. First of all the 
 emperor sent a messenger to summon Shiki the elder, but he 
 refused to obey. Again the Yata-garasu was sent to bring 
 him. When the crow reached his camp it cried to him, saying : 
 "The child of the heavenly deity sends for thee. Haste! 
 haste ! " Shiki the elder was enraged at this and said : " Just 
 when I heard that the conquering deity of heaven was coming 
 I was indignant at this ; why shouldst thou, a bird of the crow 
 tribe, utter such an abominable cry ? " So he drew his bow 
 and aimed at it. The crow forthwith fled away, and next pro- 
 ceeded to the house of Shiki the younger, where it cried, say- 
 ing: "The child of the heavenly deity summons thee. Haste! 
 haste!" Then Shiki the younger was afraid, and changing 
 countenance, said: "Thy servant, hearing of the approach of 
 the conquering deity of heaven, is full of dread morning and 
 evening. Well hast thou cried to me, O crow ! " 
 
 He straightway made eight leaf -platters, on which he dis- 
 posed food, and entertained the crow. Accordingly, in obedi- 
 ence to the crow, he proceeded to the emperor and informed 
 him, saying: "My elder brother, Shiki the elder, hearing of 
 the approach of the child of the heavenly deity, forthwith 
 assembled eighty bandits and provided arms, with which he 
 is about to do battle with thee. It will be well to take meas- 
 ures against him without delay." The emperor accordingly 
 assembled his generals and inquired of them, saying: "It 
 appears that Shiki the elder has now rebellious intentions. I 
 summoned him, but again he will not come. What is to be 
 done ? " The generals said : " Shiki the elder is a crafty knave. 
 It will be well, first of all, to send Shiki the younger to make 
 matters clear to him, and at the same time to make explana- 
 tions to Kuraji the elder and Kuraji the younger. If after 
 that they still refuse submission, it will not be too late to take 
 warlike measures against them." 
 
 Shiki the younger was accordingly sent to explain to them 
 their interests. But Shiki the elder and the others adhered
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 157 
 
 to their foolish design, and would not consent to submit. Then 
 Shiki-netsu-hiko advised as follows : " Let us first send out our 
 feebler troops by the Osaka road. When the enemy sees them 
 he will assuredly proceed thither with all his best troops. We 
 should then straightway urge forward our robust troops, and 
 make straight for Sumi-Zaka. 
 
 " Then with the water of the River Uda we should sprinkle 
 the burning charcoal, and suddenly take them unawares; 
 when they cannot fail to be routed." The emperor approved 
 this plan, and sent out the feebler troops toward the enemy, 
 who, thinking that a powerful force was approaching, awaited 
 them with all their power. Now up to this time, whenever the 
 imperial army attacked, they invariably captured, and when 
 they fought they were invariably victorious, so that the fight- 
 ing men were all wearied out. Therefore the emperor, to com- 
 fort the hearts of his leaders and men, struck off this verse : 
 
 " As we fight 
 Going forth and watching 
 From between the trees 
 Of Mount Inasa, 
 We are famished. 
 Ye keepers of cormorants 
 (Birds of the island) 
 Come now to our aid." 
 
 In the end he crossed Sumi-Zaka with the stronger troops, 
 and, going round by the rear, attacked them from two sides 
 and put them to the rout, killing their chieftains, Shiki the 
 elder, and the others. 
 
 Third month, /th day. The emperor made an order, say- 
 ing: "During the six years that our expedition against the 
 East has lasted, owing to my reliance on the majesty of Impe- 
 rial Heaven, the wicked bands have met death. It is true that 
 the frontier lands are still unpurified, and that a remnant of 
 evil is still refractory. But in the region of the Central Land 
 there is no more wind and dust. Truly we should make a vast 
 and spacious capital and plan it great and strong. 
 
 " At present things are in a crude and obscure condition, and 
 the people's minds are unsophisticated. They roost in nests 
 or dwell in caves. Their manners are simply what is custom-
 
 158 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 
 
 ary. Now if a great man were to establish laws, justice could 
 not fail to flourish. And even if some gain should accrue to 
 the people, in what way would this interfere with the sage's 
 action? Moreover it will be well to open up and clear the 
 mountains and forests, and to construct a palace. Then I may 
 reverently assume the precious dignity, and so give peace to 
 my good subjects. Above, I should then respond to the kind- 
 ness of the heavenly powers in granting me the kingdom ; and 
 below, I should extend the line of the imperial descendants and 
 foster rightmindedness. Thereafter the capital may be ex- 
 tended so as to embrace all the six cardinal points (sic), and 
 the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof. Will 
 this not be well? When I observe the Kashiha-bara plain, 
 which lies southwest of Mount Unebi, it seems the centre of 
 the land. I must set it in order." Accordingly, he, in this 
 month, commanded officers to set about the construction of an 
 imperial residence. 
 
 Year Kanoye Saru, Autumn, 8th month, i6th day. The 
 emperor, intending to appoint a wife, sought afresh children of 
 noble families. Now there was a man who made representa- 
 tion to him, saying : " There is a child who was born to Koto- 
 Shiro-Nushi no Kami by his union with Tama-Kushi-hime, 
 daughter of Mizo-kuhi-ni no Kami of Mishima. Her name is 
 Hime-tatara-i-suzu-hime no Mikoto. She is a woman of re- 
 markable beauty." The emperor was rejoiced. And on the 
 24th day of the gth month he received Hime-tatara-i-suzu- 
 hime no Mikoto and made her his wife. 
 
 Year Kanoto Tori, Spring, ist month, ist day. The em- 
 peror assumed the imperial dignity in the palace of Kashiha- 
 bara. This year is reckoned the first year of his reign. He 
 honored his wife by making her empress. The children born 
 to him by her were Kami-ya-wi-Mimi no Mikoto and Kami- 
 Nunagaha-Mimi no Mikoto. Therefore there is an ancient say- 
 ing in praise of this, as follows : " In Kashiha-bara in Unebi, 
 he mightily established his palace-pillars on the foundation of 
 the bottom rock, and reared aloft the cross roof-timbers to 
 the plain of high heaven. The name of the emperor who 
 thus began to rule the empire was Kami Yamato lhare-biko 
 Hohodemi."
 
 FOUNDING OF JAPAN'S CAPITAL 159 
 
 Fourth year, Spring, 2d month, 23d day. The emperor 
 issued the following decree : " The spirits of our imperial ances- 
 tors, reflecting their radiance down from heaven, illuminate and 
 assist us. All our enemies have now been subdued, and there 
 is peace within the seas. We ought to take advantage of this 
 to perform sacrifice to the heavenly deities, and therewith 
 develop filial duty." 
 
 He accordingly established spirit-terraces among the Tomi 
 hills, which were called Kami-tsu-wono no Kaki-hara and 
 Shimo tsu-wono no Kaki-hara. There he worshipped his im- 
 perial ancestors, the heavenly deities. 
 
 Seventy-sixth year, Spring, 3d month, nth day. The em- 
 peror died in the palace of Kashiha-bara. His age was then 127. 
 The following year, Autumn, the 1 2th day of the Qth month, he 
 was buried in the Misasigi, northeast of Mount Unebi.
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 B.C. 623 
 
 THOMAS WILLIAM RHYS-DAVIDS 
 
 Not so many years ago, at the time when Buddhism first became 
 known in Europe through philosophic writings of about six centuries 
 after Buddha, then newly translated, it caused amazement that a religion 
 which had brought three hundred millions of people under its sway should 
 acknowledge no god. But the religion of Buddha, during a thousand 
 years of practice by the Hindus, is entirely different from the representa- 
 tions given us in these translations. As shown by the bas-reliefs cover- 
 ing the ancient monuments of India, this religion, changed by modern 
 scientists into a belief in atheism, is, in fact, of all religions the most 
 polytheistic. 
 
 In the first Buddhist monuments, dating back eighteen to twenty cen- 
 turies, the reformer simply figures as an emblem. The imprint of his 
 feet, the figure of the " Bo tree " under which he entered the state of su- 
 preme wisdom, are worshipped; and though he disdained all gods, and 
 only sought to teach a new code of morals, we shortly see Buddha him- 
 self depicted as a god. In the early stages he is generally represented 
 as alone, but gradually appears in the company of the Brahman gods. 
 He is finally lost in a crowd of gods, and becomes nothing more than an 
 incarnation of one of the Brahman deities. From that time Buddhism 
 has been practically extinct in India. 
 
 This transformation took a thousand years to bring about. During 
 part of this great interval Buddha was being worshipped as an all-powerful 
 god. Legends are told of his appearance to his disciples, and of favors 
 he granted them. 
 
 It has been said that Buddha tried to set aside the laws of caste. 
 This is an error. Neither did he attempt to break the Brahmanic 
 Pantheon. 
 
 Buddhism, which to-day is the religion of three hundred million peo- 
 ple, about one-fifth of the world's inhabitants, toward the seventh or 
 eighth century of our era almost entirely disappeared from its birthplace, 
 India, whence it had spread over the rest of Asia, China, Russian Tar- 
 tary, Burmah, etc. Only the two extreme frontiers of India, Nepal, hi 
 the north, and Ceylon, in the south, now practise the Buddhist cult. 
 
 Gautama Buddha left behind him no written works. The Buddhists 
 believe that he composed works which his immediate disciples learned 
 
 160
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 161 
 
 by heart, and which were committed to writing long afterward. This is 
 not impossible, as the Vedas 1 were handed down in this manner for many 
 hundreds of years. 
 
 There was certainly an historical basis for the Buddhist legend. In 
 fact, the legends group themselves round a number of very distinct 
 occurrences. 
 
 At the end of the sixth century B.C. those Aryan tribes sprung from 
 the same stem as our own ancestors, who have preserved for us in their 
 Vedic songs so precious a relic of ancient thought and life, had pushed 
 on beyond the five rivers of the Punjab, and were settled far down into 
 the valley of the Ganges. They had given up their nomadic habits, 
 dwelling in villages and towns, their wealth being in land, produce, and 
 cattle. 
 
 From democratic beginnings the whole nation had gradually become 
 bound by an iron system of caste. The country was split up into little 
 sections, each governed by some petty despot, and harassed by interne- 
 cine feuds. Religion had become a debasing ritualism, with charms and 
 incantations, fear of the influence of the stars, and belief in dreams and 
 omens. The idea of the existence of a soul was supplemented by the 
 doctrine of transmigration. 
 
 The priests were well-meaning, ignorant, and possessed of a sincere 
 belief in their own divinity. The religious use of the Vedas and the 
 right to sacrifice were strictly confined to the Brahmans. There were 
 travelling logicians, anchorites, ascetics, and solitary hermits. Although 
 the ranks of the priesthood were closed against intruders, still a man of 
 lower caste might become a religious teacher and reformer. Such were 
 the conditions which welcomed Gautama Buddha. 
 
 hundred miles northeast of Benares, at Kapilavastu, 
 on the banks of the river Rohini, the modern Kohana, 
 there lived about five hundred years before Christ a tribe 
 called Sakyas. The peaks of the mighty Himalayas could 
 be seen in the distance. The Sakyas frequently quarrelled 
 with the Koliyans, a neighboring tribe, over their water sup- 
 plies from the river. Just now the two clans were at peace, 
 and two daughters of the rajah of the Koliyans were wives of 
 Suddhodana, the rajah of the Sakyas. Both were childless. 
 This was deemed a very great misfortune among the Aryans, 
 who thought that the star of a man's existence after death 
 depended upon ceremonies to be performed by his heir. There 
 
 1 Vedas: The sacred books of the Hindus, in Sanscrit; probably 
 written about six or seven centuries before Christ. Veda means knowl- 
 edge. The books comprise hymns, prayers, and liturgical forms. 
 
 E., VOL. I. IT
 
 162 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 was great rejoicing, therefore, when, in about the forty-fifth 
 year of her age, the elder sister promised her husband a 
 son. In due time she started with the intention of being con- 
 fined at her parents' house, but it was on the way, under the 
 shade of some lofty satin trees in a pleasant grove called Lum- 
 bini, that her son, the future Buddha, was unexpectedly born. 
 The mother and child were carried back to Suddhodana's 
 house, and there, seven days afterward, the mother died ; but 
 the boy found a careful nurse in his mother's sister, his father's 
 other wife. 
 
 Many marvellous stories have been told about the miracu- 
 lous birth and precocious wisdom and power of Gautama. The 
 name Siddhartha is said to have been given him as a child, 
 Gautama being the family name. Numerous were his later 
 titles, such as Sakyasinha, the lion of the tribe of Sakya; 
 Sakya-muni, the Sakya sage ; Sugata, the happy one ; Sattha, 
 the teacher; Jina, the conqueror; Bhagava, the blessed one, 
 and many others. 
 
 In his twentieth year he was married to his cousin, Yaso- 
 dhara, daughter of the rajah of Koli. Devoting himself to 
 home pleasures, he was accused by his relations of neglecting 
 those manly exercises necessary for one who might at any 
 time have to lead his people in war. Gautama heard of this, 
 and appointed a day for a general tournament, at which he dis- 
 tinguished himself by being easily the first at all the trials of 
 skill and prowess, thus winning the good opinions of all the 
 clansmen. This is the solitary record of his youth. 
 
 Nothing more is heard of him until, in his twenty-ninth 
 year, Gautama suddenly abandoned his home to devote himself 
 entirely to the study of religion and philosophy. It is said 
 that an angel appeared to him in four visions : a man broken 
 down by age, a sick man, a decaying corpse, and lastly, a dig- 
 nified hermit. Each time Channa, his charioteer, told him 
 that decay and death were the fate of all living beings. The 
 charioteer also explained to him the character and aims of the 
 ascetics, exemplified by the hermit. 
 
 Thoughts of the calm life of the hermit strongly stirred him. 
 One day, the occasion of the last vision, as he was entering his 
 chariot to return home, news was brought to him that his wife
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 163 
 
 Yasodhara had given birth to a son, his only child, who was 
 called Rahula. This was about ten years after his marriage. 
 The idea that this new tie might become too strong for him to 
 break seems to have been the immediate cause of his flight. 
 He returned home thoughtful and sad. 
 
 But the people of Kapilavastu were greatly delighted at the 
 birth of the young heir, their rajah's only grandson. Gautama's 
 return became an ovation, and he entered the town amid a 
 general celebration of the happy event. Amid the singers was 
 a young girl, his cousin, whose song contained the words, 
 " Happy the father, happy the mother, happy the wife of such 
 a son and husband." In the word "Happy" there was a 
 double meaning : it meant also " freed " from the chains of sin 
 and of existence, saved. In gratitude to one who at such a 
 time reminded him of his higher duties, Gautama took off his 
 necklace of pearls and sent it to her. She imagined that she 
 had won the love of young Siddhartha, but he took no further 
 notice of her. 
 
 That night the dancing girls came, but he paid them no 
 attention, and gradually fell into an uneasy slumber. At mid- 
 night he awoke, and sent Channa for his horse. While wait- 
 ing for the steed Gautama gently opened the door of the room 
 where Yasodhara was sleeping, surrounded by flowers, with 
 one hand on the head of her child. After one loving, fond 
 glance he tore himself away. Accompanied only by Channa 
 he left his home and wealth and power, his wife and only child 
 behind him, to become a penniless wanderer. This was the 
 Great Renunciation. 
 
 There follows a story of a vision. Mara, the great tempter, 
 the spirit of evil, appears in the sky, urging Gautama to stop. 
 He promises him a universal kingdom over the four great con- 
 tinents if he will but give up his enterprise. The tempter does 
 not prevail, but from that time he followed Gautama as a 
 shadow, hoping to seduce him from that right way. 
 
 All night Gautama rode, and at the dawn, when beyond the 
 confines of his father's domain, dismounts. He cuts off his 
 long hair with his sword, and sends back all his ornaments and 
 his horse by the faithful charioteer. 
 
 Seven days he spends alone beneath the shade of a mango
 
 164 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 grove, and then fares onward to Rajogriha, the capital of 
 Magadha. This town was the seat of Bimbasara, one of the 
 most powerful princes in the eastern valley of the Ganges. 
 In the hillside caves near at hand were several hermits. To 
 one of these Brahman teachers, Alara, Gautama attached him- 
 self, and later to another named Udraka From these he 
 learned all that Hindu philosophy could teach. 
 
 Still unsatisfied, Gautama next retired to the jungle of 
 Uruvela, on the most northerly spur of the Viadhya range of 
 mountains, near the present temple of Buddha Gaya. Here 
 for six years he gave himself up to the severest penance until 
 he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and self-mortifica- 
 tion. Such self-control spread his fame "like the sound of a 
 great bell hung in the skies." But the more he fasted and 
 denied himself, the more he felt himself a prey to a mental 
 torture worse than any bodily suffering. 
 
 At last one day when walking slowly up and down, lost in 
 thought, through extreme weakness he staggered and fell to 
 the ground. His disciples thought he was dead, but he recov- 
 ered. Despairing of further profit from such rigorous penance, 
 he began to take regular food and gave up his self-mortifica- 
 tion. At this his disciples forsook him and went away to 
 Benares. In their opinion mental conquest lay only through 
 bodily suppression. 
 
 There now ensued a second crisis in Gautama's career which 
 culminated in his withstanding the renewed attacks of the 
 tempter after violent struggles. 
 
 Soon after, if not on the very day when his disciples had left 
 him, he wandered out toward the banks of the Nairaujara, 
 receiving his morning meal from the hands of Sujuta, the 
 daughter of a neighboring villager, and sat down to eat it under 
 the shade of a large tree (ficus religiosa), called from that day 
 the sacred " Bo tree," or tree of wisdom. He remained there 
 all day long, pondering what next to do. All the attractions 
 of the luxurious home he had abandoned rose up before him 
 most alluringly. But as the day ended his lofty spirit had won 
 the victory. All doubts had lifted as mists before the morning 
 sun. He had become Buddha, that is, enlightened. He had 
 grasped the solution of the great mystery of sorrow. He
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 165 
 
 thought, having solved its causes and its cure, he had gained 
 the haven of peace, and believed that in the power over the 
 human heart of inward culture and of love to others he had 
 discovered a foundation which could never be shaken. 
 
 From this time Gautama claimed no merit for penances. A 
 feeling of great loneliness possessed him as he arrived at his 
 psychological and ethical conclusions. He almost despaired of 
 winning his fellow-men to his system of salvation, salvation 
 merely by self-control and eve, without any of the rites, cere- 
 monies, charms, or incantations of the Hindu religion. 
 
 The thought of mankind, otherwise, as he imagined, utterly 
 doomed and lost, made Gautama resolve, at whatever hazard, 
 to proclaim his doctrine to the world. It is certain that he 
 had a most intense belief in himself and his mission. 
 
 He had intended first to proclaim his new doctrine to his old 
 teachers, Alara and Udraka, but finding that they were dead, 
 he proceeded to the deer forest near Benares where his former 
 disciples were then living. In the cool of the evening he 
 enters the deer-park near the city, but his former disciples 
 resolve not to recognize him as a master. He tells them that 
 they are still in the way of death, whereas he has found the 
 way of salvation and can lead them to it, having become a 
 Buddha. And as they reply with objections to his claims, he 
 explains the fundamental truths of his system and principles 
 of his new gospel, which the aged Kondanya was the first to 
 accept from his master's lips. This exposition is preserved in 
 the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Sutra of the Founda- 
 tions of the Kingdom of Righteousness. 
 
 Gautama Buddha taught that every tiling corporeal is material 
 and therefore impermanent. Man in his bodily existence is 
 liable to sorrow, decay, and death. The reign of unholy desires 
 in his heart produces unsatisfactory longings, useless weari- 
 ness, and care. Attempted purification by oppressing the body 
 is only wasted effort. It is the moral evil of the heart which 
 keeps a man chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, 
 which binds him in a union with the material world. Virtue 
 and goodness will only insure him for a time, and, in another 
 birth, a higher form of material life. From the chains of exist- 
 ence only the complete eradication of all evil will set him free
 
 166 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 But these ideas must not be confused with Christian beliefs, 
 for Buddhism teaches nothing of any immaterial existence. The 
 foundations of its creed have been summed up in the Four 
 Great Truths, which are as follows : 
 
 1. That misery always accompanies existence; 
 
 2. That all modes of existence of men or animals, in death 
 or heaven, result from passion or desire (tanha) ; 
 
 3. That there is no escape from existence except by destruc- 
 tion of desire ; 
 
 4. That this may be accomplished by following the fourfold 
 way to Nirvana. 
 
 The four stages are called the Paths, the first being an 
 awakening of the heart. The first enemy which the believer 
 has to fight against is sensuality and the last is unkindliness. 
 Above everything is universal charity. Till he has gained 
 that the believer is still bound, his mind is still dark. True 
 enlightenment, true freedom, are complete only in love. The 
 last great reward is " Nirvana," eternal rest or extinction. 
 
 For forty-five years Gautama taught in the valley of the 
 Ganges. In the twentieth year his cousin Ananda became a 
 mendicant and attended on Gautama. Another cousin, how- 
 ever, stirred up some persecution of the great teacher, and the 
 oppositions of the Brahmans had to be faced. 
 
 There are clear accounts of the last few days of Gautama's 
 life. On a journey toward Kusi-nagara he had rested in a 
 grove at Pawa, presented to the society by a goldsmith of that 
 place named Chunda. After a midday meal of rice and pork, 
 prepared by Chunda, the Master started for Kusi-nagara, but 
 stopped to rest at the river Kukusta. Feeling that he was 
 dying, he left a message for Chunda, promising him a great 
 reward in some future existence. He died at the river Ku- 
 kusta, near Kusi-nagara, teaching to the last. 
 
 Gautama's power arose from his practical philanthropy. 
 His philosophy and ethics attracted the masses. He did not 
 seek to found a new religion, but thought that all men would 
 accept his form of the ancient creed. It was his society, the 
 Sangha, or Buddhist order, rather than his doctrine, which gave 
 to his religion its practical vitality.
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 167 
 
 The following lines, filled with the poetic beauty of the 
 Orient, are taken from the last spoken words of the great 
 founder of Buddhism and the Book of the Great Decease. 
 They give a clew to the cult of that religion and breathe the 
 spirit of Nirvana in every scintillating sentence. As nearly as 
 may be the translation is a literal one, done by Rhys-Davids, 
 the world's greatest living authority on this subject : 
 
 Now the Blessed One addressed the venerable Ananda, and 
 said : " It may be, Ananda, that in some of you the thought 
 may arise, ' The word of the Master is ended, we have no 
 teacher more ! ' But it is not thus, Ananda, that you should 
 regard it. The truths and the rules of the order which I have 
 set forth and laid down for you all, let them, after I am gone, 
 be the Teacher to you. 
 
 " Ananda 1 when I am gone address not one another in the 
 way in which the brethren have heretofore addressed each other 
 with the epithet, that is, of 'Avuso' (Friend). A younger 
 brother may be addressed by an elder with his name, or his 
 family name, or the title ' Friend.' But an elder should be 
 addressed by a younger brother as * Lord ' or as ' Venerable 
 Sir.' 
 
 " When I am gone, Ananda, let the order, if it should so 
 wish, abolish all the lesser and minor precepts. 
 
 "When I am gone, Ananda, let the higher penalty be 
 imposed on brother Khanna." 
 
 " But what, Lord, is the higher penalty ? " 
 
 "Let Khanna say whatever he may like, Ananda; the 
 brethren should neither speak to him, nor exhort him, nor 
 admonish him." 
 
 Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: 
 " It may be, brethren, that there may be doubt or misgiving 
 in the mind of some brother as to the Buddha, or the truth, or 
 the path, or the way. Inquire, brethren, freely. Do not have 
 to reproach yourselves afterward with the thought, ' Our 
 teacher was face to face with us, and we could not bring our- 
 selves to inquire of the Blessed One when we were face to face 
 with him.' " 
 
 And when he had thus spoken the brethren were silent. 
 
 And again the second and the third time the Blessed One
 
 168 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 addressed the brethren, and said : " It may be, brethren, that 
 there may be doubt or misgiving in the mind of some brother 
 as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way. 
 Inquire, brethren, freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves 
 afterward with the thought, ' Our teacher was face to face 
 with us, and we could not bring ourselves to inquire of the 
 Blessed One when we were face to face with him.' " 
 
 And even the third time the brethren were silent. 
 
 Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said: 
 " It may be, brethren, that you put no questions out of rever- 
 ence for the teacher. Let one friend communicate to another." 
 
 And when he had thus spoken the brethren were silent. 
 
 And the venerable Ananda said to the Blessed One : " How 
 wonderful a thing is it, Lord, and how marvellous ! Verily, I 
 believe that in this whole assembly of the brethren there is not 
 one brother who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, 
 or the truth, or the path, or the way ! " 
 
 "It is out of the fulness of faith that thou hast spoken, 
 Ananda ! But, Ananda, the Tathagata knows for certain that 
 in this whole assembly of the brethren there is not one brother 
 who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, or the truth, 
 or the path, or the way! For even the most backward, 
 Ananda, of all these five hundred brethren has become con- 
 verted, and is no longer liable to be born in a state of suffer- 
 ing, and is assured of final salvation." 
 
 Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren, and said : 
 " Behold now, brethren, I exhort you, saying, ' Decay is inher- 
 ent in all component things ! Work out your salvation with 
 diligence ! ' " 
 
 This was the last word of the Tathagata ! 
 
 Then the Blessed One entered into the first stage of deep 
 meditation. And rising out of the first stage he passed into 
 the second. And rising out of the second he passed into the 
 third. And rising out of the third stage he passed into 
 the fourth. And rising out of the fourth stage of deep medi- 
 tation he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of 
 space is alone present. And passing out of the mere conscious- 
 ness of the infinity of space he entered into the state of mind 
 to which nothing at all was specially present. And passing out
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 169 
 
 )f the consciousness of no special object he fell into a state 
 oetween consciousness and unconsciousness. And passing out 
 of the state between consciousness and unconsciousness he fell 
 into a state in which the consciousness both of sensations and 
 of ideas had wholly passed away. 
 
 Then the venerable Ananda said to the venerable Anurud- 
 
 dha : " O my Lord, O Anuruddha, the Blessed One is dead ! " 
 
 " Nay ! brother Ananda, the Blessed One is not dead. He 
 
 has entered into that state in which both sensations and ideas 
 
 have ceased to be ! " 
 
 Then the Blessed One passing out of the state in which 
 both sensations and ideas have ceased to be, entered into the 
 state between consciousness and unconsciousness. And pass- 
 ing out of the state between consciousness and unconscious- 
 ness he entered into the state of mind to which nothing at all 
 is specially present. And passing out of the consciousness of 
 no special object he entered into the state of mind to which the 
 infinity of thought is alone present. And passing out of the 
 mere consciousness of the infinity of thought he entered into 
 the state of mind to which the infinity of space is alone pres- 
 ent. And passing out of the mere consciousness of the infin- 
 ity of space he entered into the fourth stage of deep meditation. 
 And passing out of the fourth stage he entered into the third. 
 And passing out of the third stage he entered into the second. 
 And passing out of the second he entered into the first. And 
 passing out of the first stage of deep meditation he entered the 
 second. And passing out of the second stage he entered into 
 the third. And passing out of the third stage he entered into 
 the fourth stage of deep meditation. And passing out of the 
 last stage of deep meditation he immediately expired. 
 
 When the Blessed One died there arose, at the moment of 
 his passing out of existence, a mighty earthquake, terrible^ and 
 awe-inspiring : and the thunders of heaven burst forth. 
 
 When the Blessed One died, Brahma Sahampati, at the 
 moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza : 
 
 " They all, all beings that have life, shall lay 
 Aside their complex form that aggregation 
 Of mental arvd material qualities, 
 That gives them, or in heaven or on earth,
 
 i;o THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 Their fleeting individuality ! 
 E'en as the teacher being such a one, 
 Unequalled among all the men that are, 
 Successor of the prophets of old time, 
 Mighty by wisdom, and in insight dear- 
 Hath died 1" 
 
 When the Blessed One died, Sakka, the king of the gods, 
 at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this 
 stanza: 
 
 " They're transient all, each being's parts and powers, 
 Growth is their nature, and decay. 
 They are produced, they are dissolved again, 
 And then is best, when they have sunk to rest ! " 
 
 When the Blessed One died, the venerable Anuruddha, at 
 the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered these 
 stanzas: 
 
 " When he who from all craving want was free, 
 Who to Nirvana's tranquil state had reached, 
 When the great sage finished his span of life, 
 No gasping struggle vexed that steadfast heart I 
 All resolute, and with unshaken mind, 
 He calmly triumphed o'er the pain of death. 
 E'en as a bright flame dies away, so was 
 His last deliverance from the bonds of life !" 
 
 When the Blessed One died, the venerable Ananda, at the 
 moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza : 
 
 " Then was there terror ! 
 Then stood the hair on end 1 
 When he endowed with every grace 
 The supreme Buddha died ! " 
 
 When the Blessed One died, of those of the brethren who 
 were not free from the passions, some stretched out their arms 
 and wept, and some fell headlong to the ground, rolling to and 
 fro in anguish at the thought: "Too soon has the Blessed 
 One died ! Too soon has the Happy One passed away from 
 existence ! Too soon has the Light gone out in the world ! " 
 But those of the brethren who were free from the passions 
 (the Arahats) bore their grief collected and composed at the
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 171 
 
 thought : " Impermanent are all component things ! How is 
 it possible that [they should not be dissolved] ? " 
 
 Then the venerable Anuruddha exhorted the brethren, and 
 said: "Enough, my brethren! Weep not, neither lament! 
 Has not the Blessed One formerly declared this to us, that it 
 is in the very nature of all things near and dear unto us, that we 
 must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves 
 from them ? How, then, brethren, can this be possible that 
 whereas anything whatever born, brought into being, and or- 
 ganized, contains within itself the inherent necessity of dis- 
 solution how then can this be possible that such a being 
 should not be dissolved ? No such condition can exist ! Even 
 the spirits, brethren, will reproach us." 
 
 " But of what kind of spirits is the Lord, the venerable Anu- 
 ruddha, thinking ? " 
 
 "There are spirits, brother Ananda, in the sky, but of 
 worldly mind, who dishevel their hair and weep, and stretch 
 forth their arms and weep, fall prostrate on the ground, and 
 roll to and fro in anguish at the thought : ' Too soon has the 
 Blessed One died ! Too soon has the Happy One passed away ! 
 Too soon has the Light gone out in the world ! ' 
 
 " There are spirits, too, Ananda, on the earth, and of worldly 
 mind, who tear their hair and weep, and stretch forth their 
 arms and weep, fall prostrate on the ground, and roll to and 
 fro in anguish at the thought : ' Too soon has the Blessed One 
 died ! Too soon has the Happy One passed away ! Too soon 
 has the Light gone out in the world ! ' 
 
 " But the spirits who are free from passion hear it, calm and 
 self-possessed, mindful of the saying which begins, ' Imperma- 
 nent indeed are all component things. How then is it possible 
 [that such a being should not be dissolved] ? ' ' 
 
 Now the venerable Anuruddha and the venerable Ananda 
 spent the rest of that night in religious discourse. Then the 
 venerable Anuruddha said to the venerable Ananda : " Go now, 
 brother Ananda, into Kusinara and inform the Mallas of 
 Kusinara, saying, 'The Blessed One, O Vasetthas, is dead: do, 
 then, whatever seemeth to you fit ! " 
 
 " Even so, Lord ! " said the venerable Ananda, in assent to 
 the venerable Anuruddha. And having robed himself eaxly in
 
 I 7 2 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 the morning, he took his bowl, and went into Kusinara with 
 one of the brethren as an attendant. 
 
 Now at that time the Mallas of Kusinara were assembled 
 in the council hall concerning that very matter. 
 
 And the venerable Ananda went to the council hall of the 
 Mallas of Kusinara ; and when he had arrived there, he informed 
 them, saying, "The Blessed One, O Vasetthas, is dead; do, 
 then, whatever seemeth to you fit ! " 
 
 And when they had heard this saying of the venerable 
 Ananda, the Mallas, with their young men and their maidens 
 and their wives, were grieved, and sad, and afflicted at heart. 
 And some of them wept, dishevelling their hair, and some 
 stretched forth their arms and wept, and some fell prostrate on 
 the ground, and some reeled to and fro in anguish at the 
 thought : " Too soon has the Blessed One died ! Too soon has 
 the Happy One passed away ! Too soon has the Light gone 
 out in the world ! " 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara gave orders to their attend- 
 ants, saying, " Gather together perfumes and garlands, and all 
 the music in Kusinara ! " 
 
 And the Mallas of Kusinara took the perfumes and gar- 
 lands, and all the musical instruments, and five hundred suits 
 of apparel, and went to the Upavattana, to the Sala Grove of 
 the Mallas, where the body of the Blessed One lay. There 
 they passed the day in paying honor, reverence, respect, and 
 homage to the remains of the Blessed One with dancing, and 
 hymns, and music, and with garlands and perfumes; and in 
 making canopies of their garments, and preparing decoration 
 wreaths to hang thereon. 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara thought : " It is much too late 
 to burn the body of the Blessed One to-day. Let us now per- 
 form the cremation to-morrow." And in paying honor, rever- 
 ence, respect, and homage to the remains of the Blessed One 
 with dancing, and hymns, and music, and with garlands and per- 
 fumes ; and in making canopies of their garments, and prepar- 
 ing decoration wreaths to hang thereon, they passed the second 
 day too, and then the third day, and the fourth, and the fifth, 
 and the sixth day also. 
 
 Then on the seventh day the Mallas of Kusinara thought:
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 173 
 
 " Let us carry the body of the Blessed One, by the south and 
 outside, to a spot on the south, and outside of the city, pay- 
 ing it honor, and reverence, and respect, and homage, with 
 dance and song and music, with garlands and perfumes, and 
 there, to the south of the city, let us perform the cremation 
 ceremony ! " 
 
 And thereupon eight chieftains among the Mallas bathed 
 their heads, and clad themselves in new garments with the 
 intention of bearing the body of the Blessed One. But, behold, 
 they could not lift it up ! 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Anu- 
 ruddha: "What, Lord, can be the reason, what can be the 
 cause that eight chieftains of the Mallas who have bathed their 
 heads, and clad themselves in new garments with the intention 
 of bearing the body of the Blessed One, are unable to lift it 
 up?" 
 
 " It is because you, O Vasetthas, have one purpose and the 
 spirits have another purpose." 
 
 " But what, Lord, is the purpose of the spirits ? " 
 
 " Your purpose, O Vasetthas, is this : * Let us carry the body 
 of the Blessed One, by the south and outside, to a spot on the 
 south, and outside of the city, paying it honor, and reverence, 
 and respect, and homage, with dance and song and music, with 
 garlands and perfumes, and there, to the south of the city, let 
 us perform the cremation ceremony.' But the purpose of the 
 spirits, Vasetthas, is this : * Let us carry the body of the Blessed 
 One by the north to the north of the city, and entering the 
 city by the north gate, let us bring it through the midst of 
 the city into the midst thereof. And going out again by the 
 eastern gate, paying honor, and reverence, and respect, and 
 homage to the body of the Blessed One, with heavenly dance, 
 and song, and music, and garlands, and perfumes, let us carry 
 it to the shrine of the Mallas called Makuta-bandhana, to the 
 east of the city, and there let us perform the cremation cere- 
 mony.' " 
 
 " Even according to the purpose of the spirits, so, Lord, 
 let it be ! " 
 
 Then immediately all Kusinara down even to the dust-bins 
 and rubbish heaps became strewn knee-deep with Mandarava
 
 174 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 flowers from heaven ! and while both the spirits from the skies, 
 and the Mallas of Kusinara upon earth, paid honor, and rever- 
 ence, and respect, and homage to the body of the Blessed One, 
 with dance and song and music, with garlands and with per- 
 fumes, they carried the body by the north to the north of the 
 city ; and entering the city by the north gate they carried it 
 through the midst of the city into the midst thereof; and going 
 out again by the eastern gate they carried it to the shrine of 
 the Mallas, called ' Makuta-bandhana ; and there, to the east 
 of the city, they laid down the body of the Blessed One. 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Ananda : 
 " What should be done, Lord, with the remains of the Tatha- 
 gata?" 
 
 " As men treat the remains of a king of kings, so, Vasetthas, 
 should they treat the remains of a Tathagata." 
 
 "And how, Lord, do they treat the remains of a king of 
 kings ? " 
 
 " They wrap the body of a king of kings, Vasetthas, in a 
 new cloth. When that is done they wrap it in cotton wool. 
 When that is done they wrap it in a new cloth, and so on till 
 they have wrapped the body in five hundred successive layers 
 of both kinds. Then they place the body in an oil vessel of 
 iron, and cover that close up with another oil vessel of iron. 
 They then build a funeral pile of all kinds of perfumes, and 
 burn the body of the king of kings. And then at the four 
 cross roads they erect a dagaba to the king of kings. This, 
 Vasetthas, is the way in which they treat the remains of a king 
 of kings. And as they treat the remains of a king of kings, so, 
 Vasetthas, should they treat the remains of the Tathagata. At 
 the four cross roads a dagaba should be erected to the Tatha- 
 gata. And whosoever shall there place garlands or perfumes 
 or paint, or make salutation there, or become in its presence 
 calm in heart that shall long be to them for a profit and a joy." 
 
 Therefore the Mallas gave orders to their attendants, say- 
 ing, " Gather together all the carded cotton wool of the Mallas ! " 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara wrapped the body of the 
 Blessed One in a new cloth. And when that was done they 
 wrapped it in cotton wool. And when that was done, they 
 wrapped it in a new cloth, and so on till they had wrapped
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 175 
 
 the body of the Blessed One in five hundred layers of both 
 kinds. And then they placed the body in an oil vessel of iron, 
 and covered that close up with another vessel of iron. And 
 then they built a funeral pile of all kinds of perfumes, and upon 
 it they placed the body of the Blessed One. 
 
 Now at that time the venerable Maha Kassapa was journey- 
 ing along the high road from Pava to Kusinara with a great 
 company of the brethren, with about five hundred of the 
 brethren. And the venerable Maha Kassapa left the high 
 road, and sat himself down at the foot of a certain tree. 
 
 Just at that time a certain naked ascetic who had picked up 
 a Mandarava flower in Kusinara was coming along the high 
 road to Pava. And the venerable Maha Kassapa saw the naked 
 ascetic coming in the distance ; and when he had seen him he 
 said to the naked ascetic : " O friend ! surely thou knowest our 
 Master?" 
 
 " Yea, friend ! I know him. This day the Samana Gautama 
 has been dead a week 1 That is how I obtained this Mandarava 
 flower." 
 
 And immediately of those of the brethren who were not 
 yet free from the passions, some stretched out their arms and 
 wept, and some fell headlong on the ground, and some reeled 
 to and fro in anguish at the thought: "Too soon has the 
 Blessed One died ! Too soon has the Happy One passed away 
 from existence! Too soon has the Light gone out in the 
 world ! " 
 
 But those of the brethren who were free from the passions 
 (the Arahats) bore their grief collected and composed at the 
 thought : " Impermanent are all component things ! How is it 
 possible that they should not be dissolved ? " 
 
 Now at that time a brother named Subhadda, who had been 
 received into the order in his old age, was seated there in their 
 company. And Subhadda the old addressed the brethren and 
 said : " Enough, brethren ! Weep not, neither lament ! We 
 are well rid of the great Samana. We used to be annoyed by 
 being told, ' This beseems you, this beseems you not.' But 
 now we shall be able to do whatever we like ; and what we do 
 not like that we shall not have to do ! " 
 
 But the venerable Maha Kassapa addressed the brethren,
 
 i;6 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 and said : " Enough, my brethren ! Weep not, neither lament ! 
 Has not the Blessed One formerly declared this to us, that it 
 is in the very nature of all things near and dear unto us that 
 we must divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever our- 
 selves from them ? How then, brethren, can this be possible 
 that whereas anything whatever born, brought into being, and 
 organized contains within itself the inherent necessity of disso- 
 lution how then can this be possible that such a being should 
 not be dissolved ? No such condition can exist ! " 
 
 Now just at that time four chieftains of the Mallas had 
 bathed their heads and clad themselves in new garments with 
 the intention of setting on fire the funeral pile of the Blessed 
 One. But, behold, they were unable to set it alight ! Then 
 the Mallas of Kusinara said to the venerable Anuruddha: 
 " What, Lord, can be the reason, and what the cause, that four 
 chieftains of the Mallas who have bathed their heads, and clad 
 themselves in new garments, with the intention of setting on 
 fire the funeral pile of the Blessed One, are unable to set it 
 on fire?" 
 
 " It is because you, O Vasetthas, have one purpose, and the 
 spirits have another purpose." 
 
 " But what, Lord, is the purpose of the spirits ? " 
 
 "The purpose of the spirits, O Vasetthas, is this: *That 
 venerable brother Maha Kassapa is now journeying along the 
 high road from Pava to Kusinara with a great company of the 
 brethren, with five hundred of the brethren. The funeral pile 
 of the Blessed One shall not catch fire, until the venerable Maha 
 Kassapa shall have been able reverently to salute the sacred 
 feet of the Blessed One.' " 
 
 " Even according to the purpose of the spirits, so, Lord, 
 let it be ! " 
 
 Then the venerable Maha Kassapa went on to Makutzt- 
 bandhana of Kusinara, to the shrine of the Mallas, to the place 
 where the funeral pile of the Blessed One was. And when he 
 had come up to it, he arranged his robe on one shoulder ; and 
 bowing down with clasped hands he thrice walked reverently 
 round the pile ; and then, uncovering the feet, he bowed down 
 in reverence at the feet of the Blessed One. And those five 
 hundred brethren arranged their robes on one shoulder; and
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 177 
 
 bowing down with clasped hands, they thrice walked reverently 
 round the pile, and then bowed down in reverence at the feet 
 of the Blessed One. 
 
 And when the homage of the venerable Maha Kassapa and 
 of those five hundred brethren was ended, the funeral pile of 
 the Blessed One caught fire of itself. Now as the body of the 
 Blessed One burned itself away, from the skin and the integu- 
 ment, and the flesh, and the nerves, and the fluid of the joints, 
 neither soot nor ash was seen : and only the bones remained 
 behind. 
 
 Just as one sees no soot nor ash when glue or oil is burned, 
 so, as the body of the Blessed One burned itself away, from 
 the skin and the integument, and the flesh, and the nerves, 
 and the fluid of the joints, neither soot nor ash was seen: and 
 only the bones remained behind. And of those five hundred 
 pieces of raiment the very innermost and outermost were both 
 consumed. And when the body of the Blessed One had been 
 burned up, there came down streams of water from the sky and 
 extinguished the funeral pile of the Blessed One; and there 
 burst forth streams of water from the storehouse of the waters 
 (beneath the earth), and extinguished the funeral pile of the 
 Blessed One. The Mallas of Kusinara also brought water 
 scented with all kinds of perfumes, and extinguished the funeral 
 pile of the Blessed One. 
 
 Then the Mallas of Kusinara surrounded the bones of the 
 Blessed One in their council hall with a lattice work of spears, 
 and with a rampart of bows; and there for seven days they 
 paid honor and reverence and respect and homage to them with 
 dance and song and music, and with garlands and perfumes. 
 
 Now the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, the son of the queen 
 of the Videha clan, heard the news that the Blessed One had 
 died at Kusinara. Then the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, 
 the son of the queen of the Videha clan, sent a messenger to 
 the Mallas, saying, " The Blessed One belonged to the soldier 
 caste, and I too am of the soldier caste. I am worthy to 
 receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the 
 remains of the Blessed One will I put up a sacred cairn, and in 
 honor thereof will I celebrate a feast ! " 
 
 And the Likkhavis of Vesali heard the news that the 
 
 E. f VOL. I. IZ
 
 i;8 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Likkhavis of 
 Vesali sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, " The Blessed 
 One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the sol- 
 dier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of 
 the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will 
 we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate 
 a feast ! " 
 
 And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu heard the news that the 
 Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Sakiyas of Kapila- 
 vatthu sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying " The Blessed 
 One was the pride of our race. We are worthy to receive a 
 portion of the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains 
 of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor 
 thereof will we celebrate a feast ! " 
 
 And the Bulis of Allakappa heard the news that the Blessed 
 One had died at Kusinara. And the Bulis of Allakappa sent 
 a messenger to the Mallas, saying, " The Blessed One belonged 
 to the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We 
 are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed 
 One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a 
 sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast ! " 
 
 And the Brahman of Vethadipa heard the news that the 
 Blessed One had died at Kusinara. And the Brahman of 
 Vethadipa sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The 
 Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and I am a Brah- 
 man. I am worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the 
 Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed One will I put 
 up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will I celebrate a feast ! " 
 
 And the Mallas of Pava heard the news that the Blessed One 
 had died at Kusinara. Then the Mallas of Pava sent a mes- 
 senger to the Mallas, saying, " The Blessed One belonged to 
 the soldier caste, and we too are of the soldier caste. We are 
 worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Blessed One. 
 Over the remains of the Blessed One will we put up a sacred 
 cairn, and in honor thereof will we celebrate a feast ! " 
 
 When they heard these things the Mallas of Kusinara spoke 
 to the assembled brethren, saying, " The Blessed One died in 
 our village domain. We will not give away any part of the 
 remains of the Blessed One ! " When they had thus spoken,
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 179 
 
 Dona the Brahman addressed the assembled brethren, and 
 said: 
 
 " Hear, reverend sir, one single word from me. 
 Forbearance was our Buddha wont to teach. 
 Unseemly is it that over the division 
 Of the remains of him who was the best of beings 
 Strife should arise, and wounds, and war ! 
 Let us all, sirs, with one accord unite 
 In friendly harmony to make eight portions. 
 Wide spread let Thupas rise hi every land 
 That in the Enlightened One mankind may trust ! * 
 
 " Do thou then, O Brahman, thyself divide the remains of 
 the Blessed One equally into eight parts with fair division." 
 
 "Be it so, sir!" said Dona, in assent, to the assembled 
 brethren. And he divided the remains of the Blessed One 
 equally into eight parts, with fair division. And he said to 
 them : " Give me, sirs, this vessel, and I will set up over it a 
 sacred cairn, and in its honor will I establish a feast." And 
 they gave the vessel to Dona the Brahman. 
 
 And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana heard the news that the 
 Blessed One had died at Kusinara. Then the Moriyas of 
 Pipphalivana sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying, "The 
 Blessed One belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of 
 the soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of the 
 relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of the Blessed 
 One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in honor thereof will we 
 celebrate a feast ! " And when they heard the answer, saying, 
 " There is no portion of the remains of the Blessed One left 
 over. The remains of the Blessed One are all distributed," 
 then they took away the embers. 
 
 Then the king of Magadha, Agatasattu, the son of the 
 queen of the Videha clan, made a mound in Ragagaha over 
 the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the 
 Likkhavis of Vesali made a mound in Vesali over the remains 
 of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Bulis of Alla- 
 kappa made a mound in Allakappa over the remains of the 
 Blessed One, and held a feast. And the Koliyas of Ramagama 
 made a mound in Ramagama over the remains of the Blessed 
 One, and held a feast. And Vethadipaka the Brahman made
 
 1 8o THE FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM 
 
 a mound in Vethadipa over the remains of the Blessed One, 
 and held a feast. And the Mallas of Pava made a mound in 
 Pava over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. 
 And the Mallas of Kusinara made a mound in Kusinara over 
 the remains of the Blessed One, and held a feast. And Dona 
 the Brahman made a mound over the vessel in which the body 
 had been burned, and held a feast. And the Moriyas of Pippha- 
 livana made a mound over the embers, and held a feast. 
 
 Thus were there eight mounds [Thupas] for the remains, 
 and one for the vessel, and one for the embers. This was how 
 it used to be. Eight measures of relics there were of him of 
 the far-seeing eye, of the best of the best of men. In India 
 seven are worshipped, and one measure in Ramagama, by the 
 kings of the serpent race. One tooth, too, is honored in 
 heaven, and one in Gandhara's city, one in the Kalinga realm, 
 and one more by the Naga race. Through their glory the boun- 
 tiful earth is made bright with offerings painless, for with 
 such are the Great Teacher's relics best honored by those 
 who are honored, by gods and by Nagas and kings, yea, thus 
 by the noblest of monarchs bow down with clasped hands ! 
 Hard, hard is a Buddha to meet with through hundreds of ages ! 
 
 End of the Book of the Great Decease
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 B.C. 585 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Among the leading features of Greek life, especially those belonging 
 to its religious customs and observances none are more characteristic, 
 and none possess a more attractive interest for the modern reader and 
 student than the peculiar festivals which it was their practice to hold. 
 The four great national festivals or games were : The Olympic, held 
 every four years, in honor of Zeus, on the banks of the Alpheus, in Elis ; 
 the Pythian, celebrated once in four years, in honor of Apollo, at Delphi ; 
 the Isthmian, held every two years, at the isthmian sanctuary in the 
 Isthmus of Corinth, in honor of Poseidon (Neptune); and the Nemean, 
 celebrated at Nemea, in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, 
 in honor of the Nemean Juno. 
 
 With regard to the influence of these games or festivals upon the 
 political and social life of Greece, much has been written by historians 
 and special students of the Grecian states. While the celebrations do 
 not appear to have accomplished much for the political union of Greece, 
 they are to be credited with marked beneficial effects in the promotion 
 of a pan-Hellenic spirit which, if it failed to produce such a union of the 
 Greek race, nevertheless quickened and strengthened the common feel- 
 ing of family relationship. Thus a sense of their identical origin and 
 racial traits was kept alive, and the tendencies of Greek development 
 and culture preserved their essential character and distinction. By 
 means of these periodical gatherings, representing all parts of the Greek 
 world, not only was friendly competition in every field of talent and per- 
 formance secured, but even trade and commerce found through them 
 new channels of activity. So in various ways the national games proved 
 a source of fresh energy and broader enterprise among the various 
 branches of the Grecian people. The particular character and signifi- 
 cance of the Pythian games at Delphi, and their relation to the other 
 national festivals, form an interesting subject for study in connection 
 with the general history of Greece. 
 
 \A7HAT are called the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isth- 
 mian games (the four most conspicuous amid many oth- 
 ers analogous) were in reality great religious festivals for the 
 gods then gave their special sanction, name, and presence to 
 
 181
 
 182 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 recreative meetings the closest association then prevailed be- 
 tween the feelings of common worship and the sympathy in 
 common amusement. Though this association is now no 
 longer recognized, it is nevertheless essential that we should 
 keep it fully before us if we desire to understand the life and 
 proceedings of the Greek. To Herodotus and his contempo- 
 raries these great festivals, then frequented by crowds from 
 every part of Greece, were of overwhelming importance and 
 interest ; yet they had once been purely local, attracting no 
 visitors except from a very narrow neighborhood. In the Ho- 
 meric poems much is said about the common gods, and about 
 special places consecrated to and occupied by several of them ; 
 the chiefs celebrate funeral games in honor of a deceased 
 father, which are visited by competitors from different parts of 
 Greece, but nothing appears to manifest public or town festi- 
 vals open to Grecian visitors generally. And though the 
 rocky Pytho with its temple stands out in the Iliad as a 
 place both venerated and rich the Pythian games, under 
 the superintendence of the Amphictyons, with continuous 
 enrollment of victors and a pan-Hellenic reputation, do not 
 begin until after the Sacred War, in the 48th Olympiad, or 
 B.C. 586. 
 
 The Olympic games, more conspicuous than the Pythian as 
 well as considerably older, are also remarkable on another 
 ground, inasmuch as they supplied historical computers with the 
 oldest backward record of continuous time. It was in the year 
 B.C. 776 that the Eleans inscribed the name of their country- 
 man Coroebus as victor in the competition of runners, and that 
 they began the practice of inscribing in like manner, in each 
 Olympic or fifth recurring year, the name of the runner who 
 won the prize. Even for a long time after this, however, the 
 Olympic games seem to have remained a local festival ; the 
 prize being uniformly carried off, at the first twelve Olympiads, 
 by some competitor either of Elis or its immediate neighbor- 
 hood. The Nemean and Isthmian games did not become no- 
 torious or frequented until later even than the Pythian. Solon 
 in his legislation proclaimed the large reward of 500 drams for 
 every Athenian who gained an Olympic prize, and the lower 
 sum of loo drams for an Isthmiac prize. He counts the former
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 183 
 
 as pan-Hellenic rank and renown, an ornament even to the city 
 of which the victor was a member the latter as partial and 
 confined to the neighborhood. 
 
 Of the beginnings of these great solemnities we cannot pre- 
 sume to speak, except in mythical language ; we know them 
 only in their comparative maturity. But the habit of common 
 sacrifice, on a small scale and between near neighbors, is a part 
 of the earliest habits of Greece. The sentiment of fraternity, 
 between two tribes or villages, first manifested itself by sending 
 a sacred legation or Theoria to offer sacrifices to each other's 
 festivals and to partake in the recreations which followed; 
 thus establishing a truce with solemn guarantee, and bringing 
 themselves into direct connexion each with the god of the 
 other under his appropriate local surname. The pacific com- 
 munion so fostered, and the increased asssurance of intercourse, 
 as Greece gradually emerged from the turbulence and pugnac- 
 ity of the heroic age, operated especially in extending the range 
 of this ancient habit : the village festivals became town festi- 
 vals, largely frequented by the citizens of other towns, and 
 sometimes with special invitations sent round to attract Theors 
 from every Hellenic community and thus these once humble 
 assemblages gradually swelled into the pomp and immense con- 
 fluence of the Olympic and Pythian games. The city adminis- 
 tering such holy ceremonies enjoyed inviolability of territory 
 during the month of their occurrence, being itself under obli- 
 gation at that time to refrain from all aggression, as well as to 
 notify by heralds the commencement of the truce to all other 
 cities not in avowed hostility with it Elis imposed heavy 
 fines upon other towns evert on the powerful Lacedasmon 
 for violation of the Olympic truce, on pain of exclusion from 
 the festival in case of non-payment. 
 
 Sometimes this tendency to religious fraternity took a form 
 called an Ampkictyony, different from the common festival. 
 A certain number of towns entered into an exclusive religious 
 partnership for the celebration of sacrifices periodically to the 
 god of a particular temple, which was supposed to be the com- 
 mon property and under the common protection of all, though 
 one of the number was often named as permanent administra- 
 tor; while all other Greeks were excluded. That there were
 
 184 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 many religious partnerships of this sort, which have never ac- 
 quired a place in history, among the early Grecian villages, we 
 may perhaps gather from the etymology of the word Am 
 phictyons designating residents around, or neighbors, consid- 
 ered in the point of view of fellow-religionists as well as from 
 the indications preserved to us in reference to various parts of 
 the country. Thus there was an Amphictyony of seven cities 
 at the holy island of Caluria, close to the harbor of Trcezen. 
 Hermione, Epidaurus, ^gina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and 
 Orchomenus, jointly maintained the temple and sanctuary of 
 Poseidon in that island with which it would seem that the city 
 of Trcezen, though close at hand, had no connection meeting 
 there at stated periods, to offer formal sacrifices. These seven 
 cities indeed were not immediate neighbors, but the speciality 
 and exclusiveness of their interest in the temple is seen from 
 the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they adopted 
 and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior 
 inhabitants: so also did the Lacedaemonians when they had 
 captured Prasiae. Again, in Triphylia, situated between the 
 Pisatid and Messenia in the western part of Peloponnesus, 
 there was a similar religious meeting and partnership of the 
 Triphylians on Cape Samicon, at the temple of the Samian 
 Poseidon. Here the inhabitants of Maciston were intrusted 
 with the details of superintendence, as well as with the duty 
 of notifying beforehand the exact time of meeting (a precau- 
 tion essential amidst the diversities and irregularities of the 
 Greek calendar) and also of proclaiming what was called the 
 Samian truce a temporary abstinence from hostilities which 
 bound all Triphylians during the holy period. This latter cus- 
 tom discloses the salutary influence of such institutions in 
 presenting to men's minds a common object of reverence, com- 
 mon duties, and common enjoyments; thus generating sympa- 
 thies and feelings of mutual obligation amid petty communi- 
 ties not less fierce than suspicious. So, too, the twelve chief 
 Ionic cities in and near Asia Minor had their pan-Ionic Am- 
 phictyony peculiar to themselves : the six Doric cities, in and 
 near the southern corner of that peninsula, combined for the 
 like purpose at the temple of the Triopian Apollo, and the 
 feeling of special partnership is here particularly illustrated by
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 185 
 
 the fact that Halicarnassus, one of the six, was formally ex- 
 truded by the remaining five in consequence of a violation of 
 the rules. There was also an Amphictyonic union at Onches- 
 tus in Bceotia, in the venerated grove and temple at Poseidon : 
 of whom it consisted we are not informed. There are some 
 specimens of the sort of special religious conventions and as- 
 semblies which seem to have been frequent throughout Greece. 
 Nor ought we to omit those religious meetings and sacrifices 
 which were common to all the members of one Hellenic subdi- 
 vision, such as the pan-Boeotia to all the Boeotians, celebrated 
 at the temple of the Ionian Athene near Coroneia ; the com- 
 mon observances, rendered to the temple of Apollo Pythaeus 
 at Argos, by all those neighboring towns which had once been 
 attached by this religious thread to the Argian; the similar 
 periodical ceremonies, frequented by all who bore the Achaean 
 or yEtolian name ; and the splendid and exhilarating festivals, 
 so favorable to the diffusion of the early Grecian poetry, which 
 brought all lonians at stated intervals to the sacred island of 
 Delos. This later class of festivals agreed with the Amphic- 
 tyony in being of a special and exclusive character, not open to 
 all Greeks. 
 
 But there was one among these many Amphictyonies, 
 which, though starting from the smallest beginnings, gradually 
 expanded into so comprehensive a character, had acquired so 
 marked a predominance over the rest, as to be called the " Am- 
 phictyonic assembly, "and even to have been mistaken by some 
 authors for a sort of federal Hellenic diet. Twelve sub-races, 
 out of the number which made up entire Hellas, belonged to 
 this ancient Amphictyony, the meetings of which were -held 
 twice in every year : in spring at the temple of Apollo at Del- 
 phi ; in autumn at Thermopylae, in the sacred precinct of De- 
 meter Amphictyonis. Sacred deputies, including a chief called 
 the Hieromnemon and subordinates called the Pylagorce, at- 
 tended at these meetings from each of the twelve races: a 
 crowd of volunteers seem to have accompanied them, for pur- 
 poses of sacrifice, trade, or enjoyment. Their special, and 
 most important, function consisted in watching over the Del- 
 phian temple, in which all the twelve sub-races had a joint in- 
 terest, and it was the immense wealth and national ascendency
 
 1 86 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 of this temple which enhanced to so great a pitch the dignity 
 of its acknowledged administrators. 
 
 The twelve constituent members were as follows : Thessa- 
 lians, Boeotians, Dorians, lonians, Perrhaebians, Magnetes, 
 Locrians, CEtaeans, Achaeans, Phocians, Dolopes, and Malians. 
 All are counted as races (if we treat the Hellenes as a race, we 
 must call these sub-races), no mention being made of cities : all 
 count equally in respect to voting, two votes being given by 
 the deputies from each of the twelve : moreover, we are told 
 that in determining the deputies to be sent or the manner in 
 which the votes of each race should be given, the powerful 
 Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had no more influence than the 
 humblest Ionian, Dorian, or Boeotian city. This latter fact is 
 distinctly stated by yschines, himself a Pylagore sent to Del- 
 phi by Athens. And so, doubtless, the theory of the case 
 stood : the votes of the Ionic races counted for neither more 
 nor less than two, whether given by deputies from Athens, or 
 from the small towns of Erythras and Priene ; and in like man- 
 ner the Dorian votes were as good in the division, when given 
 by deputies from Bceon and Cytinion in the little territory of 
 Doris, as if the men delivering them had been Spartans. But 
 there can be as little question that in practice the little Ionic 
 cities and the little Doric cities pretended to no share in the 
 Amphictyonic deliberations. As the Ionic vote came to be 
 substantially the vote of Athens, so, if Sparta was ever ob- 
 structed in the management of the Doric vote, it must have 
 been by powerful Doric cities like Argos or Corinth, not by 
 the insignificant towns of Doris. But the theory of Amphicty- 
 onic suffrage as laid down by ^Eschines, however little realized 
 in practice during his day, is important inasmuch as it shows 
 in full evidence the primitive and original constitution. The 
 first establishment of the Amphictyonic convocation dates 
 from a time when all the twelve members were on a footing of 
 equal independence, and when there were no overwhelming 
 cities such as Sparta and Athens to cast in the shade the 
 humbler members ; when Sparta was only one Doric city, and 
 Athens only one Ionic city, among various others of considera- 
 tion not much inferior. 
 
 There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 187 
 
 of this Amphictyonic convocation. ^Eschines gives us an ex- 
 tract from the oath which had been taken by the sacred depu- 
 ties who attended on behalf of their respective races, ever since 
 its first establishment, and which still apparently continued to 
 be taken in his day. The antique simplicity of this oath, and 
 of the conditions to which the members bind themselves, be- 
 trays the early age in which it originated, as well as the hum- 
 ble resources of those towns to which it was applied. " We 
 will not destroy any Amphictyonic town we will not cut off 
 any Amphictyonic town from running water " such are the 
 two prominent obligations which ^Eschines specifies out of the 
 old oath. The second of the two carries us back to the sim- 
 plest state of society, and to towns of the smallest size, when 
 the maidens went out with their basins to fetch water from the 
 spring, like the daughters of Celeos at Eleusis, or those of 
 Athens from the fountain Callirrhoe. We may even conceive 
 that the special mention of this detail, in the covenant between 
 the twelve races, is borrowed literally from agreements still 
 earlier, among the villages or little towns in which the mem- 
 bers of each race were distributed. At any rate, it proves sat- 
 isfactorily the very ancient date to which the commencement 
 of the Amphictyonic convocations must be referred. The be- 
 lief of ^Eschines (perhaps also the belief general in his time) 
 was, that it commenced simultaneously with the first founda- 
 tion of the Delphian temple an event of which we have no 
 historical knowledge ; but there seems reason to suppose that 
 its original establishment is connected with Thermopylae and 
 Demeter Amphictyonia, rather than with Delphi and Apollo. 
 The special surname by which Demeter and her temple at 
 Thermopylae was known the temple of the hero Amphictyon 
 which stood at its side the word Pyl&a, which obtained foot- 
 ing in the language to designate the half-yearly meeting of .the 
 deputies both at Thermopylae and at Delphi these indications 
 point to Thermopylae (the real central point for all the twelve) 
 as the primary place of meeting, and to the Delphian half-year 
 as something secondary and superadded. On such a matter, 
 however, we cannot go beyond a conjecture. 
 
 The hero Amphictyon, whose temple stood at Thermopylae, 
 passed in mythical genealogy for the brother of Hellen. And
 
 i88 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 it may be affirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Am- 
 phictyonic unions, and of frequenting each other's religious 
 festivals, was the great means of creating and fostering the 
 primitive feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellen, 
 in those early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity 
 did so much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary 
 habits and sentiments, such as that which the Amphictyonic 
 oath embodies, in regard to abstinence from injury as well as 
 to mutual protection, gradually found their way into men's 
 minds : the obligations thus brought into play acquired a sub- 
 stantive efficacy of their own, and the religious feeling which 
 always remained connected with them, came afterward to be 
 only one out of many complex agencies by which the later his- 
 torical Greek was moved. Athens and Sparta in the days of 
 their might, and the inferior cities in relation to them, played 
 each their own political game, in which religious considerations 
 will be found to bear only a subordinate part. 
 
 The special function of the Amphictyonic council, so far as 
 we know it, consisted in watching over the safety, the inter- 
 ests, and the treasures of the Delphian temple. " If any one 
 shall plunder the property of the god, or shall be cognizant 
 thereof, or shall take treacherous counsel against the things in 
 the temple, we will punish him with foot, and hand, and voice, 
 and by every means in our power." So ran the old Amphicty- 
 onic oath, with an energetic imprecation attached to it. And 
 there are some examples in which the council constitutes its 
 functions 'so largely as to receive and adjudicate upon com- 
 plaints against entire cities, for offences against the religious 
 and patriotic sentiment of the Greeks generally. But for the 
 most part its interference relates directly to the Delphian tem- 
 ple. The earliest case in which it is brought to our view is the 
 Sacred War against Cirrha, in the 46th Olympiad or B.C. 595, 
 conducted by Eurolychus the Thessalian, and Clisthenes of 
 Sicyon, and proposed by Solon of Athens : we find the Am- 
 phictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the 
 duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world, 
 and making the contract with the Alcmaeonids for rebuilding 
 the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this 
 council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent charac-
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 189 
 
 ter. Sometimes it appears forward to decide, and its deci- 
 sions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking 
 the general course of known Grecian history ; while there are 
 other occasions, and those too especially affecting the Delphian 
 temple, on which we are surprised to find nothing said about 
 it. In the long and perturbed period which Thucydides de- 
 scribes, he never once mentions the Amphictyons, though the 
 temple and the safety of its treasures form the repeated sub- 
 ject as well of dispute as of express stipulation between Ath- 
 ens and Sparta. Moreover, among the twelve constituent 
 members of the council, we find three the Perrhsebians, the 
 Magnetes, and the Achaeans of Phthia who were not even in- 
 dependent, but subject to the Thessalians ; so that its meet- 
 ings, when they were not matters of mere form, probably ex- 
 pressed only the feelings of the three or four leading mem- 
 bers. When one or more of these great powers had a party 
 purpose to accomplish against others when Philip of Macedon 
 wished to extrude one of the members in order to procure ad- 
 mission for himself it became convenient to turn this ancient 
 form into a serious reality ; and we shall see the Athenian ALs- 
 chines providing a pretext for Philip to meddle in favor of the 
 minor Boeotian cities against Thebes, by alleging that these 
 cities were under the protection of the old Amphictyonic oath. 
 It is thus that we have to consider the council as an ele- 
 ment in Grecian affairs an ancient institution, one among 
 many instances of the primitive habit of religious fraterniza- 
 tion, but wider and more comprehensive than the rest ; at first 
 purely religious, then religious and political at once, lastly 
 more the latter than the former ; highly valuable in the infancy, 
 but unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and called into real 
 working only on rare occasions, when its efficiency happened 
 to fall in with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of 
 Macedon. In such special moments it shines with a transient 
 light which affords a partial pretense for the imposing title 
 bestowed on it by Cicero commune Gr&cice concilium ; but we 
 should completely misinterpret Grecian history if we regarded 
 it as a federal council habitually directed or habitually obeyed. 
 Had there existed any such " commune concilium " of tolerable 
 wisdom and patriotism, and had the tendencies of the Hellenic
 
 IQO PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 mind been capable of adapting themselves to it, the whole 
 course of later Grecian history would probably have been 
 altered ; the Macedonian kings would have remained only as 
 respectable neighbors, borrowing civilization from Greece and 
 expending their military energies upon Thracians and Illyrians ; 
 while united Hellas might even have maintained her own terri- 
 tory against the conquering legions of Rome. 
 
 The twelve constituent Amphictyonic races remained un- 
 changed until the Sacred War against the Phocians (B.C. 355), 
 after which, though the number twelve was continued, the 
 Phocians were disfranchised, and their votes transferred to 
 Philip of Macedon. It has been already mentioned that these 
 twelve did not exhaust the whole of Hellas. Arcadians, Ele- 
 ans, Pisans, Minyae, Dryopes, JEtolians, all genuine Hellenes, 
 are not comprehended in it ; but all of them had a right to 
 make use of the temple of Delphi, and to contend in the Pyth- 
 ian and Olympic games. The Pythian games, celebrated near 
 Delphi, were under the superintendence of the Amphictyons, 
 or of some acting magistrate chosen by and presumed to repre- 
 sent them. Like the Olympic games, they came round every 
 four years (the interval between one celebration and another 
 being four complete years, which the Greeks called a Pentce- 
 tetis): the Isthmian and Nemean games recurred every two 
 years. In its first humble form a competition among bards to 
 sing a hymn in praise of Apollo, this festival was doubtless of 
 immemorial antiquity; but the first extension of it into pan- 
 Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remarked), the first mul- 
 tiplication of the subjects of competition, and the first intro- 
 duction of a continuous record of the conquerors, date only 
 from the time when it came under the presidency of the Am- 
 phictyon, at the close of the Sacred War against Cirrha What 
 is called the first Pythian contest coincides with the third year 
 of the 48th Olympiad, or B.C. 585. From that period forward 
 the games become crowded and celebrated : but the date just 
 named, nearly two centuries after the first Olympiad, is a proof 
 that the habit of periodical frequentation of festivals, by num 
 bers and from distant parts, grew up but slowly in the Grecian 
 world. 
 
 The foundation of the temple of Delphi itself reaches fan
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 191 
 
 beyond all historical knowledge, forming one of the aboriginal 
 institutions of Hellas. It is a sanctified and wealthy place 
 even in the Iliad ; the legislation of Lycurgus at Sparta is in- 
 troduced under its auspices, and the earliest Grecian colonies, 
 those of Sicily and Italy in the eighth century B.C., are estab- 
 lished in consonance with its mandate. Delphi and Dodona 
 appear, in the most ancient circumstances of Greece, as uni- 
 versally venerated oracles and sanctuaries: and Delphi not 
 only receives honors and donations, but also answers questions 
 from Lydians, Phrygians, Etruscans, Romans, etc. : it is not 
 exclusively Hellenic. One of the valuable services which a 
 Greek looked for from this and other great religious establish- 
 ments was, that it should resolve his doubts in cases of per- 
 plexity ; that it should advise him whether to begin a new, or 
 to persist in an old project ; that it should foretell what would 
 be his fate under given circumstances, and inform him, it suf- 
 fering under distress, on what conditions the gods would grant 
 him relief. 
 
 The three priestesses of Dodona with their venerable oak, 
 and the priestess of Delphi sitting on her tripod under the in- 
 fluence of a certain gas or vapor exhaling from the rock, were 
 alike competent to determine these difficult points: and we 
 shall have constant occasion to notice in this history with what 
 complete faith both the question was put and the answer treas- 
 ured up what serious influence it often exercised both upon 
 public and private proceeding. The hexameter verses in which 
 the Pythian priestess delivered herself were indeed often so 
 equivocal or unintelligible, that the most serious believer, with 
 all anxiety to interpret and obey them, often found himself 
 ruined by the result. Yet the general faith in the oracle was 
 no way shaken by such painful experience. For as the unfor- 
 tunate issue always admitted of being explained upon two hy- 
 potheses either that the god had spoken falsely, or that his 
 meaning had not been correctly understood no man of genu- 
 ine piety ever hesitated to adopt the latter. There were many 
 other oracles throughout Greece besides Delphi and Dodona ; 
 Apollo was open to the inquiries of the faithful at Ptoon in 
 Boeotia, at Abae in Phocis, at Branchidae near Miletus, at Pa- 
 tara in Lycia, and other places : in like manner, Zeus gave
 
 192 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 answers at Olympia, Poseidon at Taenarus, Amphiaraus at 
 Thebes, Amphilochus at Mallus, etc. And this habit of con- 
 sulting the oracle formed part of the still more general ten- 
 dency of the Greek mind to undertake no enterprise without 
 having first ascertained how the gods viewed it, and what meas- 
 ures they were likely to take. Sacrifices were offered, and the 
 interior of the victim carefully examined, with the same intent : 
 omens, prodigies, unlooked-for coincidences, casual expres- 
 sions, etc., were all construed as significant of the divine will. 
 To sacrifice with a view to this or that undertaking, or to con- 
 sult the oracle with the same view, are familiar expressions 
 embodied in the language. Nor could any man set about a 
 scheme with comfort until he had satisfied himself in some 
 manner or other that the gods were favorable to it. 
 
 The disposition here adverted to is one of these mental 
 analogies pervading the whole Hellenic nation, which Herodo- 
 tus indicates. And the common habit among all Greeks of 
 respectfully listening to the oracle of Delphi will be found on 
 many occasions useful in maintaining unanimity among men 
 not accustomed to obey the same political superior. In the 
 numerous colonies especially, founded by mixed multitudes 
 from distant parts of Greece, the minds of the emigrants were 
 greatly determined toward cordial cooperation by their knowl- 
 edge that the expedition had been directed, the cecist indi- 
 cated, and the spot either chosen or approved by Apollo of 
 Delphi. Such in most cases was the fact : that god, according 
 to the conception of the Greeks, " takes delight always in the 
 foundation of new cities, and himself in person lays the first 
 stone." 
 
 These are the elements of union with which the historical 
 Hellenes take their start : community of blood, language, relig- 
 ious point of view, legends, sacrifices, festivals, and also (with 
 certain allowances) of manners and character. The analogy 
 of manners and character between the rude inhabitants of the 
 Arcadian Cynsetha and the polite Athens, was, indeed, accom- 
 panied with wide differences ; yet if we compare the two with 
 foreign contemporaries, we shall find certain negative charac- 
 teristics of much importance common to both. In no city of 
 historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 193 
 
 deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, 
 feet, etc. ; or castration ; or selling of children into slavery ; or 
 polygamy ; or the feeling of unlimited obedience toward one 
 man: all customs which might be pointed out as existing 
 among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, 
 Thracians, etc. The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, etc., 
 in gymnastic contests, with the body perfectly naked, was 
 common to all Greeks, having been first adopted as a Laceda2- 
 monian fashion in the fourteenth Olympiad : Thucydides and 
 Herodotus remark that it was not only not practised, but 
 even regarded as unseemly, among non-Hellenes. Of such 
 customs, indeed, at once common to all the Greeks, and 
 peculiar to them as distinguished from others, we cannot 
 specify a great number, but we may see enough to convince 
 ourselves that there did really exist, in spite of local differ- 
 ences, a general Hellenic sentiment and character, which 
 counted among the cementing causes of a union apparently so 
 little assured. 
 
 During the two centuries succeeding B.C. 776, the festival 
 of the Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a 
 local to a national character, and acquired an attractive force 
 capable of bringing together into temporary union the dispersed 
 fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this 
 important function it did not long stand alone. During the 
 sixth century B.C., three other festivals, at first local, became 
 successively nationalized the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia 
 near Corinth, the Nemea near Cleone, between Sicyon and 
 Argos. 
 
 In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of 
 the particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitu- 
 tion and enlargement were brought about a notice the more 
 interesting inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a 
 manifestation of something like pan-Hellenic patriotism, stand- 
 ing almost alone in an age which presents little else in opera- 
 tion except distinct city interests. At the time when the Ho- 
 meric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably 
 in the seventh century B.C), the Pythian festival had as yet 
 acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo 
 was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of com 
 E., VOL. i. 13
 
 1 9 4 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 municating to pious inquirers " the counsels of the Immortals.'' 
 Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice 
 victims and to deposit costly offerings ; but while the god de- 
 lighted in the sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the 
 singing of paeans, he was by no means anxious to encourage 
 horse-races and chariot-races in the neighborhood. Nay, this 
 psalmist considers that the noise of horses would be " a nui- 
 sance," the drinking of mules a desecration to the sacred 
 fountains, and the ostentation of fine-built chariots objection- 
 able, as tending to divert the attention of spectators away from 
 the great temple and its wealth. From such inconveniences 
 the god was protected by placing his sanctuary " in the rocky 
 Pytho " a rugged and uneven recess, of no great dimensions, 
 embosomed in the southern declivity of Parnassus, and about 
 two thousand feet above the level of the sea, while the topmost 
 Parnassian summits reach a height of near eight thousand 
 feet. The situation was extremely imposing, but unsuited by 
 nature for the congregation of any considerable number of 
 spectators; altogether impracticable for chariot-races; and 
 only rendered practicable by later art and outlay for the theatre 
 as well as for the stadium. Such a site furnished little means 
 of subsistence, but the sacrifices and presents of visitors ena- 
 bled the ministers of the temple to live in abundance, and gath- 
 ered together by degrees a village around it. 
 
 Near the sanctuary of Pytho, and about the same altitude, 
 was situated the ancient Phocian town of Crissa, on a project- 
 ing spur of Parnassus overhung above by the line of rocky 
 precipice called the Phasdriades, and itself overhanging below 
 the deep ravine through which flows the river Peistus. On the 
 other side of this river rises the steep mountain Cirphis, which 
 projects southward into the Corinthian gulf the river reach- 
 ing that gulf through the broad Crisscean plain, which stretches 
 westward nearly to the Locrian town of Amphissa ; a plain for 
 the most part fertile and productive, though least so in its east- 
 ern part immediately under the Cirphis, where the seaport Cir- 
 rha was placed. The temple, the oracle, and the wealth of 
 Pytho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity. 
 But the octennial solemnity in honor of the god included at 
 first no other competition except that of bards, who sang each
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 195 
 
 a paean with the harp. The Amphictyonic assembly held one 
 of its half-yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other 
 at Thermopylae. 
 
 In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 
 was composed, the town of Crissa appears to have been great 
 and powerful, possessing all the broad plain between Parnas- 
 sus, Cirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name 
 and possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the 
 adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies 
 with Crissa, not indicating Delphi as a separate place. The 
 Crissaeans doubtless derived great profits from the number of 
 visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and 
 Cirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradu- 
 ally, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at 
 the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came 
 to equal Cyrene and Barca, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled 
 into Devonport ; while at the same time the sanctuary of Pytho 
 with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and 
 came to claim an independent existence of its own. The origi- 
 nal relations between Crissa, Cirrha, and Delphi, were in this 
 manner at length subverted, the first declining and the two 
 latter rising. The Crissaeans found themselves dispossessed 
 of the management of the temple, which passed to the Del' 
 phians; as well as of the profits arising from the visitors, 
 whose disbursements went to enrich the inhabitants of Cirrha. 
 Crissa was a primitive city of the Phocian name, and could 
 boast of a place as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her 
 loss of importance was not likely to be quietly endured. 
 Moreover, in addition to the above facts, already sufficient in 
 themselves as seeds of quarrel, we are told that the Cirrhaeans 
 abused their position as masters of the avenue to the temple 
 by sea, and levied exorbitant tolls on the visitors who landed 
 there a number constantly increasing from the multiplication 
 of the transmarine colonies, and from the prosperity of those 
 in Italy and Sicily. Besides such offence against the general 
 Grecian public, they had also incurred the enmity of their Pho- 
 cian neighbors by outrages upon women, Phocian as well as 
 Argian, who were returning from the temple. 
 
 Thus stood the case, apparently, about B.C. 595, when the
 
 106 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 Amphictyonic meeting interfered either prompted by the 
 Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of 
 regard to the temple to punish the Cirrhaeans, After a war 
 of ten years, the first sacred war in Greece, this object was 
 completely accomplished by a joint force of Thessalians under 
 Eurolychus, Sicyonians under Clisthenes, and Athenians 
 under Alcmseon ; the Athenian Solon being the person who 
 originated and enforced in the Amphictyonic council the prop- 
 osition of interference. Cirrha appears to have made a strenu- 
 ous resistance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted 
 by the naval force of the Sicyonian Clisthenes. Even after 
 the town was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves for 
 some time on the heights of Cirphis. At length, however, 
 they were thoroughly subdued. Their town was destroyed or 
 left to subsist merely as a landing-place; while the whole 
 adjoining plain was consecrated to the Delphian god, whose 
 domains thus touched the sea. Under this sentence, pro- 
 nounced by the religious feeling of Greece, and sanctified by a 
 solemn oath publicly sworn and inscribed at Delphi, the land 
 was condemned to remain untilled and unplanted, without any 
 species of human care, and serving only for the pasturage of cat- 
 tle. The latter circumstance was convenient to the temple, 
 inasmuch as it furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims 
 who landed and came to sacrifice for without preliminary sacri- 
 fice no man could consult the oracle ; while the entire prohibi- 
 tion of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of 
 another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard. The ruin of 
 Cirrha in this war is certain : though the necessity of a harbor 
 for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the town 
 upon a humbler scale of pretension. But the fate of Crissa is 
 not so clear, nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left 
 subsisting in a position of inferiority with regard to Delphi. 
 From this time forward, however, the Delphian community 
 appear as substantive and autonomous, exercising in their own 
 right the management of the temple; though we shall find, on 
 more than one occasion, that the Phocians contest this right, 
 and lay claim to the management of it for themselves a rem- 
 nant of that early period when the oracle stood in the do- 
 main of the Phocian Crissa. There seems, moreover, to
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 197 
 
 been a standing antipathy between the Delphians and the 
 Phocians. 
 
 The Sacred War emanating from a solemn Amphictyomc 
 decree, carried on jointly by troops of different states whom we 
 do not know to have ever before cooperated, and directed 
 exclusively toward an object of common interest is in itself a 
 fact of high importance, as manifesting a decided growth of pan- 
 Hellenic feeling. Sparta is not named as interfering a cir- 
 cumstance which seems remarkable when we consider both her 
 power, even as it then stood, and her intimate connection with 
 the Delphian oracle while the Athenians appear as the chief 
 movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens. The 
 credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon 
 them. 
 
 But if this sacred war itself is a proof that the pan-Hellenic 
 spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it 
 ended reinforced that spirit still farther. The spoils of Cirrha 
 were employed by the victorious allies in founding the Pythian 
 games. The octennial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in 
 honor of the god, including no other competition except in the 
 harp and the paean, was expanded into comprehensive games 
 on the model of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, 
 but also of gymnastics and chariots celebrated, not at Delphi 
 itself, but on the maritime plain near the ruined Cirrha and 
 under the direct superintendence of the Amphictyons them- 
 selves. I have already mentioned that Solon provided large 
 rewards for such Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic 
 and Isthmian games, thereby indicating his sense of the great 
 value of the national games as means of promoting Hellenic 
 intercommunion. It was the same feeling which instigated the 
 foundation of the new games on the Cirrhaean plain, in com- 
 memoration cf the vindicated honor of Apollo, and in the terri- 
 tory newly made over to him. They were celebrated in the 
 autumn, or first half of every third Olympic year; the Am- 
 phictyons being the ostensible Agonothets or administrators, 
 and appointing persons to discharge the duty in their names. 
 At the first Pythian ceremony (in B.C. 586), valuable rewards 
 were given to the different victors; at the second (B.C. 582), 
 nothing was conferred but wreaths of laurel the rapidly at-
 
 198 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 tained celebrity of the games being such as to render any further 
 recompense superfluous. The Sicyonian despot, Clisthenes 
 himself, once the leader in the conquest of Cirrha, gained the 
 prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. We find other 
 great personages in Greece frequently mentioned as competi- 
 tors, and the games long maintained a dignit) second only to 
 the Olympic, over which indeed they had some advantages ; 
 first, that they were not abused for the purpose of promoting 
 petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering state, as 
 the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleans on more 
 than one occasion ; next, that they comprised music and poe- 
 try as well as bodily display. From the circumstances attend- 
 ing their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even more 
 than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demos- 
 thenes " the common Agon of the Greeks." 
 
 The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be 
 the most venerated solemnities in Greece. Yet the Nemea 
 and Isthmia acquired a celebrity not much inferior; the Olym- 
 pic prize counting for the highest of all. Both the Nemea and 
 Isthmia were distinguished from the other two festivals by 
 occurring not once in four years, but once in two years ; the 
 former in the second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the 
 latter in the first and third years. To both is assigned, accord- 
 ing to Greek custom, an origin connected with the interesting 
 persons and circumstances of legendary antiquity; but our 
 historical knowledge of both begins with the sixth century B.C. 
 The first historical Nemead is presented as belonging to 
 Olympiad B.C. 52 or 53 (572-568), a few years subsequent to 
 the Sacred War above mentioned and to the origin of the 
 Pythia. The festival was celebrated in honor of the N em can 
 Zeus, in the valley of Nemea between Philus and Cleonse. 
 The Cleonaeans themselves were originally its presidents, 
 until, some period after B.C. 460, the Argians deprived them 
 of that honor and assumed the honors of administration to 
 themselves. The Nemean games had their Hellanodicae to 
 superintend, to keep order, and to distribute the prizes, as well 
 as the Olympic. 
 
 Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first historical infor- 
 mation is a little earlier, for it has already been stated that
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 199 
 
 Solon conferred a premium upon every Athenian citizen who 
 gained a prize at that festival as well as at the Olympian in 
 or after B.C. 594. It was celebrated by the Corinthians at 
 their isthmus, in honor of Poseidon, and if we may draw any 
 inference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is 
 ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have 
 identified it with the antiquities of their own state. 
 
 We thus perceive that the interval between B.C. 600-560, 
 exhibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isth- 
 mia, and Nemea the first expansion of all the three from 
 local into pan-Hellenic festivals. To the Olympic games, for 
 some time the only great centre of union among all the widely 
 dispersed Greeks, are now added three other sacred Agones of 
 the like public, open, national character ; constituting visible 
 marks, as well as tutelary bonds, of collective Hellenism, and 
 insuring to every Greek who went to compete in the matches, 
 a safe and inviolate transit even through hostile Hellenic 
 states. These four, all in or near Peloponnesus, and one of 
 which occurred in each year, formed the period or cycle of sa- 
 cred games, and those who had gained prizes at all the four 
 received the enviable designation of Periodonices. The hon- 
 ors paid to Olympic victors, on their return to their native city, 
 were prodigious even in the sixth century B.C., and became 
 even more extravagant afterward. We may remark that in 
 the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most illus- 
 trious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was 
 wanting. All the three more recent Agones included crowns 
 for exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, char- 
 iots, and horses. 
 
 It was not only in the distinguishing national stamp set 
 upon these four great festivals, that the gradual increase of 
 Hellenic family feeling exhibited itself, during the course of 
 this earliest period of Grecian history. Pursuant to the same 
 tendencies, religious festivals in all the considerable towns 
 gradually became more and more open and accessible, attract- 
 ing guests as well as competitors from beyond the border. 
 The comparative dignity of the city, as well as the honor ren- 
 dered to the presiding god, were measured by the numbers, ad- 
 miration, and envy, of the frequenting visitors. There is no
 
 200 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 positive evidence indeed of such expansion in the Attic festi- 
 vals earlier than the reign of Pisistratus, who first added the 
 quadrennial or greater Panathenae to the ancient annual or les- 
 ser Panathenaea. Nor can we trace the steps of progress in 
 regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespias, Megara, Sicyon, 
 Pellene, JEgina, Argos, etc., but we find full reason for believ- 
 ing that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic or 
 Isthmian victors whom Pindar and Simonides celebrated, many 
 derived a portion of their renown from previous victories 
 acquired at several of these local contests victories some- 
 times so numerous as to prove how wide-spread the habit of 
 reciprocal f requentation had become : though we find, even in 
 the third century B.C., treaties of alliance between different 
 cities in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual 
 right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the 
 distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of 
 great value. Timasus even asserted, as a proof of the over- 
 weening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to 
 supplant the preeminence of the Olympic games by instituting 
 games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at 
 the same time a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet 
 nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry known to prevail 
 among the Grecian cities in procuring for themselves splendid 
 and crowded games. At the time when the Homeric hymn to 
 Demeter was composed, the worship of that goddess seems to 
 have been purely local at Eleusis. But before the Persian war, 
 the festival celebrated by the Athenians every year, in honor 
 of the Eleusinian Demeter, admitted Greeks of all cities to be 
 initiated, and was attended by vast crowds of them. 
 
 It was thus that the simplicity and strict local application 
 of the primitive religious festival among the greater states in 
 Greece gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodi- 
 cally recurring, into an elaborate and regulated series of exhi- 
 bitions not merely admitting, but soliciting, the fraternal 
 presence of all Hellenic spectators. In this respect Sparta 
 seems to have formed an exception to the remaining states. 
 Her festivals were for herself alone, and her general rudeness 
 toward other Greeks was not materially softened even at the 
 Carneia and Hyacinthia, or Gymnopaediae. On the other
 
 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 201 
 
 hand, the Attic Dionysia were gradually exalted, from their 
 original rude spontaneous outburst of village feeling in thank- 
 fulness to the god, followed by song, dance and revelry of va- 
 rious kinds, into costly and diversified performances, first by a 
 trained chorus, next by actors superadded to it. 
 
 And the dramatic compositions thus produced, as they em- 
 bodied the perfection of Grecian art, so they were eminently 
 calculated to invite a pan-Hellenic audience and to encourage 
 the sentiment of Hellenic unity. The dramatic literature of 
 Athens however belongs properly to a later period. Previous 
 to the year B.C 560, we see only those commencements of inno- 
 vation which drew upon Thespis the rebuke of Solon ; who 
 however himself contributed to impart to the Panathenaic fes- 
 tival a more solemn and attractive character by checking the 
 license of the rhapsodes and insuring to those present a full 
 orderly recital of the Iliad. 
 
 The sacred games and festivals took hold of the Greek 
 mind by so great a variety of feelings as to counterbalance in 
 a high degree the political disseverance, and to keep alive 
 among their widespread cities, in the midst of constant jealousy 
 and frequent quarrel, a feeling of brotherhood and congenial 
 sentiment such as must otherwise have died away. The The- 
 ors, or sacred envoys who came to Olympia or Delphi from so 
 many different points, all sacrificed to the same god and at the 
 same altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed by their 
 donatives to enrich or adorn one respective scene. Moreover 
 the festival afforded opportunity for a sort of fair, including 
 much traffic amid so large a mass of spectators ; and besides 
 the exhibitions of the games themselves, there were recitations 
 and lectures in a spacious council-room for those who chose to 
 listen to them, by poets, rhapsodes, philosophers and historians 
 among which last the history of Herodotus is said to have 
 been publicly read by its author. Of the wealthy and great 
 men in the various cities, many contended simply for the char- 
 iot-victories and horse-victories. But there were others whose 
 ambition was of a character more strictly personal, and who 
 stripped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers, or pancratiasts, 
 having gone through the extreme fatigue of a complete previ- 
 ous training, Cylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp the
 
 202 PYTHIAN GAMES AT DELPHI 
 
 scepter at Athens has been recounted, had gained the prize in 
 the Olympic stadium; Alexander son of Amyntas, the prince 
 of Macedon, had run for it ; the great family of the Diagoridse 
 at Rhodes, who furnished magistrates and generals to their na- 
 tive city, supplied a still greater number of successful boxers 
 and pancratiasts at Olympia, while other instances also occur 
 of generals named by various cities from the list of successful 
 Olympic gymnasts; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly 
 purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were 
 found in that list. The perfect popularity and equality of per- 
 sons at these great games, is a feature not less remarkable 
 than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, and the self- 
 imposed submission of the immense crowd to a handful of ser- 
 vants armed with sticks, who executed the orders of the Elean 
 Hellanodice. The ground upon which the ceremony took 
 place, and even the territory of the administering state, was 
 protected by a " Truce of God " during the month of the festi- 
 val, the commencement of which was formally announced by 
 heralds sent round to the different states. Treaties of peace 
 between different cities were often formally commemorated by 
 pillars there erected, and the general impression of the scene 
 suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among 
 Greeks. And I may remark that the impression of the games 
 as belonging to all Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was 
 stronger and clearer during the interval between B.C. 600-300 
 than it came to be afterward. For the Macedonian conquests 
 had the effect of diluting and corrupting Hellenism, by spread- 
 ing an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and manners ovei a 
 wide area of incongruous foreigners who were incapable of the 
 real elevation of the Hellenic character ; so that although in 
 later times the games continued undiminished both in attrac- 
 tion and in number of visitors, the spirit of pan-Hellenic 
 communion which had once animated the scene was gone 
 forever.
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 B.C. 594 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 Lycurgus, the reputed Spartan lawgiver, is credited with the construc- 
 tion, about B.C. 800, of the earliest Grecian commonwealth founded upon 
 a specific code of laws. These laws had mainly a military basis, and 
 through obedience to them the Spartans became a people of great hardi- 
 ness, accustomed to self -discipline, famous for their prowess and endur- 
 ance in war, and for sternness of individual and social virtues. 
 
 In Athens there were no written laws until the time of Draco, B.C. 
 621, the government before that period having been long in the hands of 
 an oligarchy. In the year above named Draco was archon, and to him 
 was intrusted the work of framing a legal code, conditions under the 
 oligarchic rule having become intolerable to the people at large. The 
 chief features of Draco's legislation had reference to the punishment of 
 crime, and so extreme were the severities of the system and so cruel the 
 penalties it prescribed that in later times it was declared to have been 
 written in blood. 
 
 The Draconian laws remained in force until superseded by the great 
 system of Solon, whose advent as the new lawgiver was brought about 
 mainly through the conspiracy of Cylon, twelve years after the legisla- 
 tion of Draco. Affairs in Athens were in a deplorable state of confusion 
 and violence, the revolt of the poor against the power and privilege of 
 the rich leading to dangerous dissensions and collisions. Solon, who 
 enjoyed a universal reputation for wisdom and uprightness, was called 
 upon by the oligarchy, which again held rule, to assume what was, in 
 fact, almost absolute power. The character of his legislation and its 
 influence upon the course of Greek history have been set forth by many 
 authors, and the following account is perhaps the best that has appeared 
 in modern literature. 
 
 C OLON, son of Execestides, was a Eupatrid of middling for- 
 tune, but of the purest heroic blood, belonging to the gens 
 or family of the Codrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to 
 the god Poseidon. His father is said to have diminished his 
 substance by prodigality, which compelled Solon in his earlier 
 years to have recourse to trade, and in this pursuit he visited 
 many parts of Greece and Asia. He was thus enabled to en- 
 
 303
 
 204 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 large the sphere of his observation, and to provide material for 
 thought as well as for composition. His poetical talents dis- 
 played themselves at a very early age, first on light, afterward 
 on serious subjects. It will be recollected that there was at 
 that time no Greek prose writing, and that the acquisitions as 
 well as the effusions of an intellectual man, even in their sim- 
 plest form, adjusted themselves not to the limitations of the 
 period and the semicolon, but to those of the hexameter and 
 pentameter. Nor, in point of fact, do the verses of Solon aspire 
 to any higher effect than we are accustomed to associate with 
 an earnest, touching, and admonitory prose composition. The 
 advice and appeals which he frequently addressed to his coun- 
 trymen were delivered in this easy metre, doubtless far less 
 difficult than the elaborate prose of subsequent writers or 
 speakers, such as Thucydides, Isocrates, or Demosthenes. 
 His poetry and his reputation became known throughout many 
 parts of Greece, so that he was classed along with Thales of 
 Miletus, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mitylene, Periander of Cor- 
 inth, Cleobulus of Lindus, Cheilon of Lacedaemon altogether 
 forming the constellation afterward renowned as the seven wise 
 men. 
 
 The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears 
 as an active politician, is the possession of the island of Sala- 
 mis, then disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was 
 at that time able to contest with Athens, and for some time to 
 contest with success, the occupation of this important island 
 a remarkable fact, which perhaps may be explained by suppos- 
 ing that the inhabitants of Athens and its neighborhood carried 
 on the struggle with only partial aid from the rest of Attica. 
 However this may be, it appears that the Megarians had act- 
 ually established themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon 
 began his political career, and that the Athenians had expe- 
 rienced so much loss in the struggle as to have formally pro- 
 hibited any citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its 
 reconquest. Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon 
 counterfeited a state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the 
 agora, and there on the stone usually occupied by the official 
 herald, pronounced to the surrounding crowd a short elegiac 
 poem which he had previously composed on the subject of
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 205 
 
 Salamis. Enforcing upon them the disgrace of abandoning the 
 island, he wrought so powerfully upon their feelings that they 
 rescinded the prohibitory law. " Rather (he exclaimed) would 
 I forfeit my native city and become a citizen of Pholegandrus, 
 than be still named an Athenian, branded with the shame of 
 surrendered Salamis ! " The Athenians again entered into the 
 war, and conferred upon him the command of it partly, as we 
 are told, at the instigation of Pisistratus, though the latter 
 must have been at this time (B.C. 600-594) a very young man, 
 or rather a boy. 
 
 The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was 
 recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing to 
 Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers. 
 Unfortunately no authority is given for any of them. Accord- 
 ing to that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by 
 the Delphian god first to propitiate the local heroes of the isl- 
 and ; and he accordingly crossed over to it by night, for the 
 purpose of sacrificing to the heroes Periphemus and Cychreus 
 on the Salaminian shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers 
 were then levied for the attack of the island, under the stipu- 
 lation that if they were victorious they should hold it in prop- 
 erty and citizenship. They were safely landed on an outlying 
 promontory, while Solon, having been fortunate enough to 
 seize a ship which the Megarians had sent to watch the pro- 
 ceedings, manned it with Athenians and sailed straight toward 
 the city of Salamis, to which the Athenians who had landed 
 also directed their march. The Megarians marched out from 
 the city to repel the latter, and during the heat of the engage- 
 ment Solon, with his Megarian ship and Athenian crew, .sailed 
 directly to the city. The Megarians, interpreting this as the 
 return of their own crew, permitted the ship to approach with- 
 out resistance, and the city was thus taken by surprise. Per- 
 mission having been given to the Megarians to quit the island, 
 Solon took possession of it for the Athenians, erecting a temple 
 to Enyalius, the god of war, on Cape Sciradium, near the city 
 of Salamis. 
 
 The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for 
 the recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued 
 long as well as disastrous to both parties. At last it was agreed
 
 206 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 between them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, 
 and five Spartans were appointed to decide it Critolaidas, 
 Amompharetus, Hypsechidas, Anaxilas, and Cleomenes. The 
 verdict in favor of Athens was founded on evidence which it is 
 somewhat curious to trace. Both parties attempted to show 
 that the dead bodies buried in the island conformed to their 
 own peculiar mode of interment, and both parties are said to 
 have cited verses from the catalogue of the Iliad each accus- 
 ing the other of error or interpolation. But the Athenians had 
 the advantage on two points: first, there were oracles from 
 Delphi, wherein Salamis was mentioned with the epithet Ionian ; 
 next Philaeus and Eurysaces, sons of the Telamonian Ajax, the 
 great hero of the island, had accepted the citizenship of Athens, 
 made over Salamis to the Athenians, and transferred their own 
 residences to Brauron and Melite in Attica, where the deme, or 
 gens, Philaidae still worshipped Philaeus as its eponymous an- 
 cestor. Such a title was held sufficient, and Salamis was ad- 
 judged by the five Spartans to Attica, with which it ever after- 
 ward remained incorporated until the days of Macedonian 
 supremacy. Two centuries and a half later, when the orator 
 ^Eschines argued the Athenian right to Amphipolis against 
 Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements of the title were 
 indeed put forward, but more in the way of preface or introduc- 
 tion to the substantial political grounds. But in the year 600 
 B.C. the authority of the legend was more deep-seated and oper- 
 ative, and adequate by itself to determine a favorable verdict. 
 
 In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his 
 reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple 
 against the extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Cir- 
 rha, and the favor of the oracle was probably not without its 
 effect in procuring for him that encouraging prophecy with 
 which his legislative career opened. 
 
 It is on the occasion of Solon's legislation that we obtain 
 our first glimpse unfortunately but a glimpse of the actual 
 state of Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive 
 picture, presenting to us political discord and private suffering 
 combined. 
 
 Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of At- 
 tica, who were separated into three factions the Pedieis, or
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 207 
 
 men of the plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neigh- 
 boring territory, among whom the greatest number of rich fami- 
 lies were included ; the mountaineers in the east and north of 
 Attica, called Diacrii, who were, on the whole, the poorest 
 party ; and the Paralii in the southern portion of Attica from 
 sea to sea, whose means and social position were intermediate 
 between the two. Upon what particular points these intestine 
 disputes turned we are not distinctly informed. They were 
 not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the 
 archonship of Solon. They had prevailed before, and they reap- 
 pear afterward prior to the despotism of Pisistratus ; the latter 
 standing forward as the leader of the Diacrii, and as champion, 
 real or pretended, of the poorer population. 
 
 But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels were ag- 
 gravated by something much more difficult to deal with a 
 general mutiny of the poorer population against the rich, result- 
 ing from misery combined with oppression. The Thetes, whose 
 condition we have already contemplated in the poems of Homer 
 and Hesiod, are now presented to us as forming the bulk of 
 the population of Attica the cultivating tenants, metayers, 
 and small proprietors of the country. They are exhibited as 
 weighed down by debts and dependence, and driven in large 
 numbers out of a state of freedom into slavery the whole mass 
 of them (we are told) being in debt to the rich, who were pro- 
 prietors of the greater part of the soil. They had either bor- 
 rowed money for their own necessities, or they tilled the lands 
 of the rich as dependent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of 
 the produce, and in this capacity they were largely in arrear. 
 
 All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh 
 law of debtor and creditor once prevalent in Greece, Italy, 
 Asia, and a large portion of the world combined with the rec- 
 ognition of slavery as a legitimate status, and of the right of 
 one man to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy 
 him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to 
 be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find 
 means either of paying it or working it out ; and not only he 
 himself, but his minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters 
 also, whom the law gave him the power of selling. The poor 
 man thus borrowed upon the security of his body (to translate
 
 2 o8 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 literally the Greek phrase) and upon that of the persons in his 
 family. So severely had these oppressive contracts been en- 
 forced, that many debtors had been reduced from freedom to 
 slavery in Attica itself, many others had been sold for expor- 
 tation, and some had only hitherto preserved their own free- 
 dom by selling their children. Moreover, a great number of 
 the smaller properties in Attica were under mortgage, signified 
 according to the formality usual in the Attic law, and continued 
 down throughout the historical times by a stone pillar erected 
 on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender and the 
 amount of the loan. The proprietors of these mortgaged lands, 
 in case of an unfavorable turn of events, had no other prospect 
 except that of irremediable slavery for themselves and their 
 families, either in their own native country robbed of all its 
 delights, or in some barbarian region where the Attic accent 
 would never meet their ears. Some had fled the country to 
 escape legal adjudication of their persons, and earned a miser- 
 able subsistence in foreign parts by degrading occupations. 
 Upon several, too, this deplorable lot had fallen by unjust con- 
 demnation and corrupt judges; the conduct of the rich, in 
 regard to money sacred and profane, in regard to matters public 
 as well as private, being thoroughly unprincipled and rapacious. 
 The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor under 
 this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more toler- 
 able than that of the Gallic plebs and the injustices of the rich, 
 in whom all political power was then vested are facts well at- 
 tested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short frag- 
 ments preserved to us. It appears that immediately preceding 
 the time of his archonship the evils had ripened to such a point, 
 and the determination of the mass of sufferers to extort for 
 themselves some mode of relief had become so pronounced, 
 that the existing laws could no longer be enforced. According 
 to the profound remark of Aristotle that seditions are gen- 
 erated by great causes but out of small incidents we may con- 
 ceive that some recent events had occurred as immediate stim- 
 ulants to the outbreak of the debtors, like those which lent so 
 striking an interest to the early Roman annals, as the inflaming 
 sparks of violent popular movements for which the train had 
 long before been laid. Condemnations by the archons of in-
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 209 
 
 solvent debtors may have been unusually numerous; or the 
 maltreatment of some particular debtor, once a respected free- 
 man, in his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act 
 vividly upon the public sympathies ; like the case of the old 
 plebeian centurion at Rome first impoverished by the plunder 
 of the enemy, then reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to 
 his creditor as an insolvent who claimed the protection of the 
 people in the forum, rousing their feelings to the highest pitch 
 by the marks of the slave-whip visible on his person. Some 
 such incidents had probably happened, though we have no his- 
 torians to recount them. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to 
 imagine that that public mental affliction which the purifier 
 Epimenides had been invoked to appease, as it sprung in part 
 from pestilence, so it had its cause partly in years of sterility, 
 which must of course have aggravated the distress of the small 
 cultivators. However this may be, such was the condition of 
 things in B.C. 594 through mutiny of the poor freemen and 
 Thetes, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, that the gov- 
 erning oligarchy, unable either to enforce their private debts or 
 to maintain their political power, were obliged to invoke the 
 well-known wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though his vigor- 
 ous protest which doubtless rendered him acceptable to the 
 mass of the people against the iniquity of the existing system 
 had already been proclaimed in his poems, they still hoped 
 that he would serve as an auxiliary to help them over their dif- 
 ficulties. They therefore chose him, nominally as archon along 
 with Philombrotus, but with power in substance dictatorial. 
 
 It had happened in several Grecian states that the govern- 
 ing oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or 
 by the general bad condition of the people under their govern- 
 ment, were deprived of that hold upon the public mind which 
 was essential to their power. Sometimes as in the case of 
 Pittacus of Mitylene anterior to the archonship of Solon, and 
 often in the factions of the Italian republics in the middle ages 
 the collision of opposing forces had rendered society intolerable, 
 and driven all parties to acquiesce in the choice of some reform- 
 ing dictator. Usually, however, in the early Greek oligarchies, 
 this ultimate crisis was anticipated by some ambitious individual, 
 who availed himself of the public discontent to overthrow the 
 
 H. E., VOL. I. 14
 
 210 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 oligarchy and usurp the powers of a despot. And so probably 
 it might have happened in Athens, had not the recent failure 
 of Cylon, with all its miserable consequences, operated as a 
 deterring motive. It is curious to read, in the words of Solon 
 himself, the temper in which his appointment was construed by 
 a large portion of the community, but more especially by his 
 own friends : bearing in mind that at this early day, so far as 
 our knowledge goes, democratical government was a thing un- 
 known in Greece all Grecian governments were either oligar- 
 chical or despotic the mass of the freemen having not yet 
 tasted of constitutional privilege. His own friends and sup- 
 porters were the first to urge him, while redressing the preva- 
 lent discontents, to multiply partisans for himself personally, 
 and seize the supreme power. They even " chid him as a mad- 
 man, for declining to haul up the net when the fish were already 
 enmeshed." The mass of the people, in despair with their lot, 
 would gladly have seconded him in such an attempt; while 
 many even among the oligarchy might have acquiesced in his 
 personal government, from the mere apprehension of something 
 worse if they resisted it. That Solon might easily have made 
 himself despot admits of little doubt. And though the position 
 of a Greek despot was always perilous, he would have had 
 greater facility for maintaining himself in it than Pisistratus 
 possessed after him ; so that nothing but the combination of 
 prudence and virtue, which marks his lofty character, restricted 
 him within the trust specially confided to him. To the surprise 
 of every one to the dissatisfaction of his own friends under 
 the complaints alike (as he says) of various extreme and dis- 
 sentient parties, who required him to adopt measures fatal to 
 the peace of society he set himself honestly to solve the very 
 difficult and critical problem submitted to him. 
 
 Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the 
 poorer class of debtors. To their relief Solon's first measure, 
 the memorable Seisachtheia, or shaking off of burdens, was 
 directed. The relief which it afforded was complete and imme- 
 diate. It cancelled at once all those contracts in which the 
 debtor had borrowed on the security either of his person or of 
 his land : it forbade all future loans or contracts in which the 
 person of the debtor was pledged as security : it deprived the.
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 211 
 
 creditor in future of all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort 
 work, from his debtor, and confined him to an effective judg- 
 ment at law authorizing the seizure of the property of the latter. 
 It swept off all the numerous mortgage pillars from the landed 
 properties in Attica, leaving the land free from all past claims. 
 It liberated and restored to their full rights all debtors actually 
 in slavery under previous legal adjudication; and it even pro- 
 vided the means (we do not know how) of repurchasing in for- 
 eign lands, and bringing back to a renewed life of liberty in 
 Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for exportation. 
 And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge or sell his 
 own person into slavery, he took a step farther in the same di- 
 rection by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son, his daughter, 
 or an unmarried sister under his tutelage excepting only the 
 case in which either of the latter might be detected in unchas- 
 tity. Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous with 
 the Seisachtheia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms, 
 seems doubtful. 
 
 By this extensive measure the poor debtors the Thetes, 
 small tenants, and proprietors together with their families, 
 were rescued from suffering and peril. But these were not the 
 only debtors in the state : the creditors and landlords of the 
 exonerated Thetes were doubtless in their turn debtors to 
 others, and were less able to discharge their obligations in con- 
 sequence of the loss inflicted upon them by the Seisachtheia. 
 It was to assist these wealthier debtors, whose bodies were in 
 no danger yet without exonerating them entirely that Solon 
 resorted to the additional expedient of debasing the money 
 standard. He lowered the standard of the drachma in a pro- 
 portion of something more than 25 per cent., so that 100 
 drachmas of the new standard contained no more silver than 
 73 of the old, or 100 of the old were equivalent to 138 of the 
 new. By this change the creditors of these more substantial 
 debtors were obliged to submit to a loss, while the debtors ac- 
 quired an exemption to the extent of about 27 per cent. 
 
 Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been con- 
 demned by the archons to atimy (civil disfranchisement) should 
 be restored to their full privileges of citizens excepting, how- 
 ever, from this indulgence those who had been condemned by
 
 212 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 the Ephetae, or by the Areopagus, or by the Phylo-Basileis (the 
 four kings of the tribes), after trial in the Prytaneum, on 
 charges either of murder or treason. So wholesale a measure 
 of amnesty affords strong grounds for believing that the pre- 
 vious judgments of thearchons had been intolerably harsh ; and 
 it is to be recollected that the Draconian ordinances were then 
 in force. 
 
 Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the 
 dangerous discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men 
 and leaders of the people whose insolence and iniquity he has 
 himself severely denounced in his poems, and whose views in 
 nominating him he had greatly disappointed should have de- 
 tested propositions which robbed them without compensation 
 of many legal rights, it is easy to imagine. But the statement 
 of Plutarch that the poor emancipated debtors were also dis- 
 satisfied, from having expected that Solon would not only remit 
 their debts, but also redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly 
 incredible; nor is it confirmed by any passage now remaining 
 of the Solonian poems. Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as 
 having in their minds the comparison with Lycurgus and the 
 equality of property at Sparta, which, in my opinion, is 
 clearly a matter of fiction ; and even had it been true as a 
 matter of history long past and antiquated, would not have 
 been likely to work upon the minds of the multitude of Attica 
 in the forcible way that the biographer supposes. The Sei- 
 sachtheia must have exasperated the feelings and diminished 
 the fortunes of many persons ; but it gave to the large body of 
 Thetes and small proprietors all that they could possibly have 
 hoped. We are told that after a short interval it became emi- 
 nently acceptable in the general public mind, and procured for 
 Solon a great increase of popularity all ranks concurring in a 
 common sacrifice of thanksgiving and harmony. One incident 
 there was which occasioned an outcry of indignation. Three 
 rich friends of Solon, all men of great family in the state, and 
 bearing names which appear in history as borne by their de- 
 scendants namely: Conon, Cleinias, and Hipponicus having 
 obtained from Solon some previous hint of his designs, profited 
 by it, first to borrow money, and next to make purchases of 
 lands; and this selfish breach of confidence would have dis-
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 213 
 
 graced Solon himself, had it not been found that he was per- 
 sonally a great loser, having lent money to the extent of five 
 talents. 
 
 In regard to the whole measure of the Seisachtheia, indeed, 
 though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient 
 authors gave different statements both of its purport and of its 
 extent. Most of them construed it as having cancelled indis- 
 criminately all money contracts; while Androtion and others 
 thought that it did nothing more than lower the rate of inter- 
 est and depreciate the currency to the extent of 27 per cent., 
 leaving the letter of the contracts unchanged. How Andro- 
 tion came to maintain such an opinion we cannot easily under- 
 stand. For the fragments now remaining from Solon seem 
 distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand, they do not 
 go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite view 
 entertained by many writers that all money contracts indis- 
 criminately were rescinded against which there is also a further 
 reason, that if the fact had been so, Solon could have had no 
 motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement sup- 
 poses that there must have been some debtors at least whose 
 contracts remained valid, and whom nevertheless he desired 
 partially to assist. His poems distinctly mention three things : 
 i. The removal of the mortgage-pillars. 2. The enfranchise- 
 ment of the land. 3. The protection, liberation, and restora- 
 tion of the persons of endangered or enslaved debtors. All 
 these expressions point distinctly to the Thetes and small pro- 
 prietors, whose sufferings and peril were the most urgent, and 
 whose case required a remedy immediate as well as complete. 
 We find that his repudiation of debts was carried far enough to 
 exonerate them, but no farther. 
 
 It seems to have been the respect entertained for the char- 
 acter of Solon which partly occasioned these various miscon- 
 ceptions of his ordinances for the relief of debtors. Androtion 
 in ancient, and some eminent critics in modern times are anx- 
 ious to make out that he gave relief without loss or injustice to 
 any one. But this opinion seems inadmissible. The loss to 
 creditors by the wholesale abrogation of numerous preexisting 
 contracts, and by the partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact 
 not to be disguised. The Seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far
 
 214 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 as it rescinded previous agreements, but highly salutary in its 
 consequences, is to be vindicated by showing that in no other 
 way could the bonds of government have been held together, or 
 the misery of the multitude alleviated. We are to consider, 
 first, the great personal cruelty of these preexisting contracts, 
 which condemned the body of the free debtor and his family to 
 slavery ; next, the profound detestation created by such a sys- 
 tem in the large mass of the poor, against both the judges and 
 the creditors by whom it had been enforced, which rendered 
 their feelings unmanageable so soon as they came together un- 
 der the sentiment of a common danger and with the determi- 
 nation to insure to each other mutual protection. Moreover, 
 the law which vests a creditor with power over the person of 
 his debtor so as to convert him into a slave, is likely to give 
 rise to a class of loans which inspire nothing but abhorrence 
 money lent with the foreknowledge that the borrower will be 
 unable to repay it, but also in the conviction that the value of 
 his person as a slave will make good the loss ; thus reducing 
 him to a condition of extreme misery, for the purpose some- 
 times of aggrandizing, sometimes of enriching, the lender. 
 Now the foundation on which the respect for contracts rests, 
 under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the very reverse of 
 this. It rests on the firm conviction that such contracts are 
 advantageous to both parties as a class, and that to break up the 
 confidence essential to their existence would produce extensive 
 mischief throughout all society. The man whose reverence for 
 the obligation of a contract is now the most profound, would 
 have entertained a very different sentiment if he had witnessed 
 the dealings of lender and borrower at Athens under the old 
 ante-Solonian law. The oligarchy had tried their best to en- 
 force this law of debtor and creditor with its disastrous series 
 of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to invoke 
 the aid of Solon was because they had lost the power of en- 
 forcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awakened 
 courage and combination of the people. That which they could 
 not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, 
 even had he been willing. Nor had he in his position the 
 means either of exempting or compensating those creditors 
 who, separately taken, were open to no reproach; indeed, in
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 215 
 
 tollowing his proceedings, we see plainly that he thought com- 
 pensation due, not to the creditors, but to the past sufferings 
 of the enslaved debtor, since he redeemed several of them from 
 foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes. It is 
 certain that no measure simply and exclusively prospective 
 would have sufficed for the emergency. There was an absolute 
 necessity for overruling all that class of preexisting rights 
 which had produced so violent a social fever. While, therefore, 
 to this extent, the Seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, 
 we may confidently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an 
 indispensable price paid for the maintenance of the peace of 
 society, and for the final abrogation of a disastrous system as 
 regarded insolvents. And the feeling as well as the legislation 
 universal in the modern European world, by interdicting before- 
 hand all contracts for selling a man's person or that of his chil- 
 dren into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian 
 repudiation. 
 
 One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this meas- 
 ure, combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by 
 Solon in the law it settled finally the question to which it re- 
 ferred. Never again do we hear of the law of debtor and credi- 
 tor as disturbing Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment 
 which grew up at Athens, under the Solonian money-law and 
 under the democratical government, was one of high respect for 
 the sanctity of contracts. Not only was there never any de- 
 mand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or a deprecia- 
 tion of the money standard, but a formal abnegation of any 
 such projects was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually 
 by the numerous Dicasts, who formed the popular judicial body 
 called Heliasa or the Heliastic jurors: the same oath which 
 pledged them to uphold the democratical constitution, also 
 bound them to repudiate all proposals either for an abrogation 
 of debts or for a redivision of the lands. There can be little 
 doubt that under the Solonian law, which enabled the creditor 
 to seize the property of his debtor, but gave him no power over 
 the person, the system of money-lending assumed a more bene- 
 ficial character. The old noxious contracts, mere snares for 
 the liberty of a poor freeman and his children, disappeared, and 
 loans of money took their place, founded on the property and
 
 prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the main use- 
 ful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in the 
 moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found 
 himself compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsist- 
 ing in his time, we see money freely lent upon this same secur- 
 ity throughout the historical times of Athens, and the eviden- 
 tiary mortgage-pillars remaining ever after undisturbed. 
 
 In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman 
 law, a distinction is commonly made between the principal and 
 the interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend 
 them indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his 
 promise to repay the principal, the public will regard him as 
 having committed a wrong which he must make good by his 
 person. But there is not the same unanimity as to his promise 
 to pay interest : on the contrary, the very exaction of interest 
 will be regarded by many in the same light in which the Eng- 
 lish law considers usurious interest, as tainting the whole trans- 
 action. But in the modern mind, principal, and interest within 
 a limited rate, have so grown together, that we hardly under- 
 stand how it can ever have been pronounced unworthy of an 
 honorable citizen to lend money on interest. Yet such is the 
 declared opinion of Aristotle and other superior men of an- 
 tiquity ; while at Rome, Cato the censor went so far as to de- 
 nounce the practice as a heinous crime. It was comprehended 
 by them among the worst of the tricks of trade and they held 
 that all trade, or profit derived from interchange, was unnatural, 
 as being made by one man at the expense of another : such pur- 
 suits therefore could not be commended, though they might be 
 tolerated to a certain extent as a matter of necessity, but they 
 belonged essentially to an inferior order of citizens. What is 
 remarkable in Greece is, that the antipathy of a very early state 
 of society against traders and money-lenders lasted longer 
 among the philosophers than among the mass of the people 
 it harmonized more with the social idtal of the former, than 
 with the practical instincts of the latter. 
 
 In a rude condition such as that of the ancient Germans de- 
 scribed by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown. Habitually 
 careless of the future, the Germans were gratified both in giv- 
 ing and receiving presents, but without any idea that they
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 217 
 
 thereby either imposed or contracted an obligation. To a peo- 
 ple in this state of feeling, a loan on interest presents the re- 
 pulsive idea of making profit out of the distress of the borrower. 
 Moreover, it is worthy of remark that the first borrowers must 
 have been for the most part men driven to this necessity by the 
 pressure of want, and contracting debt as a desperate resource, 
 without any fair prospect of ability to repay : debt and famine 
 run together in the mind of the poet Hesiod. The borrower is, 
 in this unhappy state, rather a distressed man soliciting aid 
 than a solvent man capable of making and fulfilling a contract. 
 If he cannot find a friend to make him a free gift in the former 
 character, he will not, under the latter character, obtain a loan 
 from a stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant interest, 
 and by the fullest eventual power over his person which he is 
 in a condition to grant. In process of time a new class of bor- 
 rowers arise who demand money for temporary convenience 
 or profit, but with full prospect of repayment a relation of 
 lender and borrower quite different from that of the earlier 
 period, when it presented itself in the repulsive form of misery 
 on the one side, set against the prospect of very large profit on 
 the other. If the Germans of the time of Tacitus looked to the 
 condition of the poor debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude un- 
 der a rich creditor, and swelling by hundreds the crowd of his 
 attendants, they would not be disposed to regret their own 
 ignorance of the practice of money-lending. How much the 
 interest of money was then regarded as an undue profit extorted 
 from distress is powerfully illustrated by the old Jewish law ; 
 the Jew being permitted to take interest from foreigners whom 
 the lawgiver did not think himself obliged to protect but not 
 from his own countrymen. The Koran follows out this point 
 of view consistently, and prohibits the taking of interest alto- 
 gether. In most other nations laws have been made to limit 
 the rate of interest, and at Rome especially the legal rate was 
 successively lowered though it seems, as might have been ex- 
 pected, that the restrictive ordinances were constantly eluded. 
 All such restrictions have been intended for the protection ot 
 debtors ; an effect which large experience proves them never to 
 produce, unless it be called protection to render the obtaining 
 of money on loan impracticable for the most distressed borrow-
 
 2i 8 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 ers. But there was another effect which they did tend to pro- 
 duce they softened down the primitive antipathy against the 
 practice generally, and confined the odious name of usury to 
 loans lent above the fixed legal rate. 
 
 In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their 
 tendency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time 
 not unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies aris- 
 ing out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually 
 exhibited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more 
 reciprocal, beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of 
 the bystander. 
 
 At Athens the more favorable point of view prevailed 
 throughout all the historical times. The march of industry and 
 commerce, under the mitigated law which prevailed subse- 
 quently to Solon, had been sufficient to bring it about at a very 
 early period and to suppress all public antipathy against lenders 
 at interest. We may remark, too, that this more equitable tone 
 of opinion grew up spontaneously, without any legal restriction 
 on the rate of interest no such restriction having ever been 
 imposed and the rate being expressly declared free by a law 
 ascribed to Solon himself. The same may probably be said of 
 the communities of Greece generally at least there is no in- 
 formation to make us suppose the contrary. But the feeling 
 against lending money at interest remained in the bosoms of 
 the philosophical men long after it had ceased to form a part of 
 the practical morality of the citizens, and long after it had 
 ceased to be justified by the appearances of the case as at first 
 it really had been. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Plutarch, treat 
 the practice as a branch of the commercial and money-getting 
 spirit which they are anxious to discourage; and one conse- 
 quence of this was that they were less disposed to contend 
 strenuously for the inviolability of existing money-contracts. 
 The conservative feeling on this point was stronger among the 
 mass than among the philosophers. Plato even complains of it 
 as inconveniently preponderant, and as arresting the legislator 
 in all comprehensive projects of reform. For the most part, in- 
 deed, schemes of cancelling debts and redividing lands were 
 never thought of except by men of desperate and selfish ambi- 
 tion, who made them stepping-stones to despotic power. Such
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 219 
 
 men were denounced alike by the practical sense of the com- 
 munity and by the speculative thinkers : but when we turn to 
 the case of the Spartan king, Agis III, who proposed a com- 
 plete extinction of debts and an equal redivision of the landed 
 property of the state, not with any selfish or personal views, 
 but upon pure ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, and 
 for the purpose of renovating the lost ascendancy of Sparta 
 we find Plutarch expressing the most unqualified admiration of 
 this young king and his projects, and treating the opposition 
 made to him as originating in no better feelings than meanness 
 and cupidity. The philosophical thinkers on politics conceived 
 and to a great degree justly, as I shall show hereafter that 
 the conditions of security, in the ancient world, imposed upon 
 the citizens generally the absolute necessity of keeping up a 
 military spirit and willingness to brave at all times personal 
 hardship and discomfort : so that increase of wealth, on account 
 of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, 
 was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in 
 their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, 
 they were willing to sanction great interference with preexist- 
 ing rights for the purpose of bringing it back nearer to their 
 ideal standard. And the real security for the maintenance of 
 these rights lay in the conservative feelings of the citizens gen- 
 erally, much more than in the opinions which superior minds 
 imbibed from the philosophers. 
 
 Such conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athe- 
 nian democracy peculiarly deep-rooted. The mass of the Athe- 
 nian people identified inseparably the maintenance of property 
 in all its various shapes with that of their laws and constitution. 
 And it is a remarkable fact, that though the admiration enter- 
 tained at Athens for Solon was universal, the principle of his 
 Seisachtheia and of his money-depreciation was not only never 
 imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation ; whereas at 
 Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, 
 we know that one debasement of the coin succeeded another. 
 The temptation of thus partially eluding the pressure of finan- 
 cial embarrassments proved, after one successful trial, too 
 strong to be resisted, and brought down the coin by successive 
 depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces to the
 
 220 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 standard of one half ounce. It is of some importance to take 
 notice of this fact, when we reflect how much " Grecian faith " 
 has been degraded by the Roman writers into a byword for 
 duplicity in pecuniary dealings. The democracy of Athens 
 and indeed the cities of Greece generally, both oligarchies and 
 democracies stands far above the senate of Rome, and far 
 above the modern kingdoms of France and England until com- 
 paratively recent times, in respect of honest dealing with the 
 coinage. Moreover, while there occurred at Rome several 
 political changes which brought about new tables, or at least a 
 partial depreciation of contracts, no phenomenon of the same 
 kind ever happened at Athens, during the three centuries be- 
 tween Solon and the end of the free working of the democracy. 
 Doubtless there were fraudulent debtors at Athens ; while the 
 administration of private law, though not in any way conniving 
 at their proceedings, was far too imperfect to repress them as 
 effectually as might have been wished. But the public senti- 
 ment on the point was just and decided. It may be asserted 
 with confidence that a loan of money at Athens was quite as 
 secure as it ever was at any time or place of the ancient world 
 in spite of the great and important superiority of Rome with 
 respect to the accumulation of a body of authoritative legal 
 precedent, the source of what was ultimately shaped into the 
 Roman jurisprudence. Among the various causes of sedition 
 or mischief in the Grecian communities, we hear little of the 
 pressure of private debt. 
 
 By the measures of relief above described, Solon had ac- 
 complished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had 
 healed the prevailing discontents ; and such was the confidence 
 and gratitude which he had inspired, that he was now called 
 upon to draw up a constitution and laws for the better working 
 of the government in future. His constitutional changes were 
 great and valuable : respecting his laws, what we hear is rather 
 curious than important. 
 
 It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, 
 the classification received in Attica was that of the four Ionic 
 tribes, comprising in one scale the Phratries and Gentes, and in 
 another scale the three Trittyes and forty-eight Naucraries 
 while the Eupatridae, seemingly a few specially respected
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 221 
 
 gentes, and perhaps a few distinguished families in all the 
 gentes, had in their hands all the powers of government. 
 Solon introduced a new principle of classification called in 
 Greek the " timocratic principle." He distributed all the citizens 
 of the tribes, without any reference to their gentes or phratries, 
 into four classes, according to the amount of their property, 
 which he caused to be assessed and entered in a public sched- 
 ule. Those whose annual income was equal to five hundred 
 medimni of corn (about seven hundred imperial bushels) and 
 upward one medimnus being considered equivalent to one 
 drachma in money he placed in the highest class ; those who 
 received between three hundred and five hundred medimni or 
 drachmas formed the second class; and those between two 
 hundred and three hundred, the third. The fourth and most 
 numerous class comprised all those who did not possess land 
 yielding a produce equal to two hundred medimni. The first 
 class, called Pentacosiomedimni, were alone eligible to the 
 archonship and to all commands : the second were called the 
 knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough to en- 
 able them to keep a horse and perform military service in that 
 capacity : the third class, called the Zeugitae, formed the heavy- 
 armed infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full 
 panoply. Each of these three classes was entered in the pub- 
 lic schedule as possessed of a taxable capital calculated with a 
 certain reference to his annual income, but in a proportion 
 diminishing according to the scale of that income and a man 
 paid taxes to the state according to the sum for which he stood 
 rated in the schedule ; so that this direct taxation acted really 
 like a graduated income-tax. The ratable property of the citi- 
 zen belonging to the richest class (the Pentacosiomedimnus) 
 was calculated and entered on the state schedule at a sum of 
 capital equal to twelve times his annual income ; that of the 
 Hippeus, horseman or knight, at a sum equal to ten times his 
 annual income: that of the Zeugite, at a sum equal to five 
 times his annual income. Thus a Pentacosiomedimnus, whose 
 income was exactly 500 drachmas (the minimum qualification 
 of his class), stood rated in the schedule for a taxable property 
 of 6,000 drachmas or one talent, being twelve times his income 
 if his annual income were 1,000 drachmas, he would stand
 
 222 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 rated for 12,000 drachmas or two talents, being the same pro- 
 portion of income to ratable capital. But when we pass to the 
 second class, horsemen or knights, the proportion of the two is 
 changed. The horseman possessing an income of just 300 
 drachmas (or 300 medimni) would stand rated for 3,000 drach- 
 mas, or ten times his real income, and so in the same propor- 
 tion for any income above 300 and below 500. Again, in the 
 third class, or below 300, the proportion is a second time altered 
 the Zeugite possessing exactly 200 drachmas of income was 
 rated upon a still lower calculation, at 1,000 drachmas, or a sum 
 equal to five times his income ; and all incomes of this class 
 (between 200 and 300 drachmas) would in like manner be mul- 
 tiplied by five in order to obtain the amount of ratable capital. 
 Upon these respective sums of schedule capital all direct tax- 
 ation was levied. If the state required I per cent, of direct 
 tax, the poorest Pentacosiomedimnus would pay (upon 6,000 
 drachmas) 60 drachmas; the poorest Hippeus would pay (upon 
 3,000 drachmas) 30; the poorest Zeugite would pay (upon 
 1,000 drachmas) 10 drachmas. And thus this mode of assess- 
 ment would operate like a graduated income-tax, looking at it 
 in reference to the three different classes but as an equal in- 
 come tax, looking at it in reference to the different individuals 
 comprised in one and the same class. 
 
 All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to 
 less than two hundred medimni or drachmas were placed in the 
 fourth class, and they must have constituted the large majority 
 of the community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, 
 and perhaps were not at first even entered upon the taxable 
 schedule, more especially as we do not know that any taxes 
 were actually levied upon this schedule during the Solonian 
 times. It is said that they were all called Thetes, but this ap- 
 pellation is not well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the 
 fourth compartment in the descending scale was indeed termed 
 the Thetic census, because it contained all the Thetes, and be- 
 cause most of its members were of that humble description ; 
 but it is not conceivable that a proprietor whose land yielded 
 to him a clear annual return of 100, 120, 140, or 180 drachmas, 
 could ever have been designated by that name. 
 
 Such were the divisions in the political scale established by
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 223 
 
 Solon, called by Aristotle a timocracy, in which the rights, 
 honors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured 
 out according to the assessed property of each. The highest 
 honors of the state that is, the places of the nine archons an- 
 nually chosen, as well as those in the senate of Areopagus, into 
 which the past archons always entered (perhaps also the posts 
 of Prytanes of the Naukrari) were reserved for the first class : 
 the poor Eupatrids became ineligible, while rich men, not Eu- 
 patrids, were admitted. Other posts of inferior distinction were 
 filled by the second and third classes, who were, moreover, bound 
 to military service the one on horseback, the other as heavy- 
 armed soldiers on foot. Moreover, the liturgies of the state, 
 as they were called unpaid functions such as the trierarchy, 
 choregy, gymnasiarchy, etc., which entailed expense and trouble 
 on the holder of them were distributed in some way or other 
 between the members of the three classes, though we do not 
 know how the distribution was made in these early times. On 
 the other hand, the members of the fourth or lowest class were 
 disqualified from holding any individual office of dignity. They 
 performed no liturgies, served in case of war only as light-armed 
 or with a panoply provided by the state, and paid nothing to 
 the direct property-tax or Eisphora. It would be incorrect to 
 say that they paid no taxes, for indirect taxes, such as duties on 
 imports, fell upon them in common with the rest ; and we must 
 recollect that these latter were, throughout a long period of 
 Athenian history, in steady operation, while the direct taxes 
 were only levied on rare occasions. 
 
 But though this fourth class, constituting the great numeri- 
 cal majority of the free people, were shut out from individual 
 office, their collective importance was in another way greatly 
 increased. They were invested with the right of choosing the 
 annual archons, out of the class of Pentacosiomedimni ; and 
 what was of more importance still, the archons and the magis- 
 trates generally, after their year of office, instead of being ac- 
 countable to the senate of Areopagus, were made formally ac- 
 countable to the public assembly sitting in judgment upon their 
 past conduct. They might be impeached and called upon to de- 
 fend themselves, punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred 
 from the usual honor of a seat in the senate of Areopagus.
 
 224 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone with- 
 out aid or guidance, this accountability would have proved only 
 nominal. But Solon converted it into a reality by another new 
 institution, which will hereafter be found of great moment in 
 the working out of the Athenian democracy. He created the 
 pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering senate, with intimate and espe- 
 cial reference to the public assembly to prepare matters for its 
 discussion, to convoke and superintend its meetings, and to in- 
 sure the execution of its decrees. The senate, as first consti- 
 tuted by Solon, comprised four hundred members, taken in 
 equal proportions from the four tribes ; not chosen by lot, as 
 they will be found to be in the more advanced stage of the 
 democracy, but elected by the people, in the same way as the 
 archons then were persons of the fourth, or poorest class of 
 the census, though contributing to elect, not being themselves 
 eligible. 
 
 But while Solon thus created the new pre-considering sen- 
 ate, identified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he 
 manifested no jealousy of the preexisting Areopagitic senate. 
 On the contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample 
 supervision over the execution of the laws generally, and im- 
 posed upon it the censorial duty of inspecting the lives and 
 occupation of the citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle 
 and dissolute habits. He was himself, as past archon, a mem- 
 ber of this ancient senate, and he is said to have contemplated 
 that by means of the two senates the state would be held fast, 
 as it were with a double anchor, against all shocks and storms. 
 
 Such are the only new political institutions (apart from the 
 laws to be noticed presently) which there are grounds for 
 ascribing to Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate 
 what really belongs to Solon and his age from the Athenian 
 constitution as afterward remodelled. It has been a practice 
 common with many able expositors of Grecian affairs, and fol- 
 lowed partly even by Dr. Thirlwall, to connect the name of 
 Solon with the whole political and judicial state of Athens as it 
 stood between the age of Pericles and that of Demosthenes the 
 regulations of the senate of five hundred, the numerous public 
 dicasts or jurors taken by lot from the people as well as the body 
 annually selected for law-revision, and called nomothetsvs\& the
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 225 
 
 open prosecution (called the graphe paranomoii) to be instituted 
 against the proposer of any measure illegal, unconstitutional, or 
 dangerous. There is indeed some countenance for this confu- 
 sion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in the usage 
 of the orators themselves. For Demosthenes and ^Eschines 
 employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat 
 him as the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later 
 age for example : the striking and characteristic oath of the 
 Heliastic jurors, which Demosthenes ascribes to Solon, pro- 
 claims itself in many ways as belonging to the age after Clis- 
 thenes, especially by the mention of the senate of five hundred, 
 and not of four hundred. Among the citizens who served as 
 jurors or dicasts, Solon was venerated generally as the author 
 of the Athenian laws. An orator, therefore, might well em- 
 ploy his name for the purpose of emphasis, without provoking 
 any critical inquiry whether the particular institution, which he 
 happened to be then impressing upon his audience, belonged 
 really to Solon himself or to the subsequent periods. Many of 
 those institutions, which Dr. Thirl wall mentions in conjunction 
 with the name of Solon, are among the last refinements and 
 elaborations of the democratical mind of Athens gradually 
 prepared, doubtless, during the interval between Clisthenes 
 and Pericles, but not brought into full operation until the pe- 
 riod of the latter (B.C. 460-429). For it is hardly possible to 
 conceive these numerous dicasteries and assemblies in regular, 
 frequent, and long-standing operation, without an assured pay- 
 ment to the dicasts who composed them. Now such payment 
 first began to be made about the time of Pericles, if not By his 
 actual proposition ; and Demosthenes had good reason for con- 
 tending that if it were suspended, the judicial as well as the 
 administrative system of Athens would at once fall to pieces. 
 It would be a marvel, such as nothing short of strong direct 
 evidence would justify us in believing, that in an age when even 
 partial democracy was yet untried, Solon should conceive the 
 idea of such institutions ; it would be a marvel still greater, that 
 the half -emancipated Thetes and small proprietors, for whom 
 he legislated yet trembling under the rod of the Eupatrid 
 archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective business 
 should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these 
 H. E., VOL. i. 1
 
 226 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 ascendant functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens 
 in the days of Pericles, full of the sentiment of force and ac- 
 tively identifying themselves with the dignity of their commu- 
 nity, became gradually competent, and not more than com- 
 petent, to exercise with effect. To suppose that Solon 
 contemplated and provided for the periodical revision of his 
 laws by establishing a nomothetic jury or dicastery, such as 
 that which we find in operation during the time of Demos- 
 thenes, would be at variance (in my judgment) with any rea 
 sonable estimate either of the man or of the age. Herodotus 
 says that Solon, having exacted from the Athenians solemn 
 oaths that they would not rescind any of his laws for ten years, 
 quitted Athens for that period, in order that he might not be 
 compelled to rescind them himself. Plutarch informs us that 
 he gave to his laws force for a century. Solon himself, and 
 Draco before him, had been lawgivers evoked and empow- 
 ered by the special emergency of the times : the idea of a fre- 
 quent revision of laws, by a body of lot-selected dicasts, belongs 
 to a far more advanced age, and could not well have been pres- 
 ent to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of Solon, like 
 the tables of the Roman decemvirs, were doubtless intended as 
 a permanent "fans omnis publici privatique juris" 
 
 If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that noth- 
 ing more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens 
 as it stood in the time of Pericles can reasonably be ascribed 
 to Solon. "I gave to the people (Solon says in one of his 
 short remaining fragments) as much strength as sufficed for 
 their needs, without either enlarging or diminishing their dig- 
 nity : for those too, who possessed power and were noted for 
 wealth, I took care that no unworthy treatment should be re- 
 served. I stood with the strong shield cast over both parties 
 so as not to allow an unjust triumph to either." Again, Aris- 
 totle tells us that Solon bestowed upon the people as much 
 power as was indispensable, but no more : the power to elect 
 their magistrates and hold them to accountability : if the peo- 
 ple had had less than this, they could not have been expected 
 to remain tranquil they would have been in slavery and hos- 
 tile to the constitution. Not less distinctly does Herodotus 
 speak, when he describes the revolution subsequently operated
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 227 
 
 by Clisthenes the latter (he tells us) found " the Athenian 
 people excluded from everything." These passages seem posi- 
 tively to contradict the supposition, in itself sufficiently im- 
 probable, that Solon is the author of the peculiar democratical 
 institutions of Athens, such as the constant and numerous 
 dicasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The genuine 
 and forward democratical movement of Athens begins only with 
 Clisthenes, from the moment when that distinguished Alcmae- 
 onid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted 
 in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular 
 concessions the hearty cooperation of the multitude under very 
 dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement 
 as well as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much 
 power as was strictly needful but no more Clisthenes (to 
 use the significant phrase of Herodotus), " being vanquished in 
 the party contest with his rival, took the people into partnership" 
 It was, thus, to the interests of the weaker section, in a strife 
 of contending nobles, that the Athenian people owed their first 
 admission to political ascendancy in part, at least, to this 
 cause, though the proceedings of Clisthenes indicate a hearty 
 and spontaneous popular sentiment. But such constitutional 
 admission of the people would not have been so astonishingly 
 fruitful in positive results, if the course of public events for the 
 half century after Clisthenes had not been such as to stimu- 
 late most powerfully their energy, their self-reliance, their mu- 
 tual sympathies, and their ambition. I shall recount in a future 
 chapter these historical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian 
 character, gave such efficiency and expansion to the great demo- 
 cratical impulse communicated by Clisthenes : at present it is 
 enough to remark that that impulse commences properly with 
 Clisthenes, and not with Solon. 
 
 But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, 
 was yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democ- 
 racy. And if the discontents of the miserable Athenian popu- 
 lation, instead of experiencing his disinterested and healing 
 management, had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power- 
 seekers like Cylon or Pisistratus the memorable expansion 
 of the Athenian mind during the ensuing century would never 
 have taken place, and the whole subsequent history of Greece
 
 would probably have taken a different course. Solon left the 
 essential powers of the state still in the hands of the oligarchy. 
 The party combats between Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and Megacles, 
 thirty years after his legislation, which ended in the despotism 
 of Pisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely oligarchical 
 character as they had been before Solon was appointed archon. 
 But the oligarchy which he established was very different from 
 the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with op- 
 pression and so destitute of redress, as his own poems testify. 
 
 It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling 
 property and to the general mass a locus standi against the Eu- 
 patrids. He enabled the people partially to protect themselves, 
 and familiarized them with the idea of protecting themselves, 
 by the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new 
 force, through which this protection was carried into effect, was 
 the public assembly called Helicea, regularized and armed with 
 enlarged prerogatives and further strengthened by its indis- 
 pensable ally the pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate. 
 Under the Solonian constitution, this force was merely secondary 
 and defensive, but after the renovation of Clisthenes it became 
 paramount and sovereign. It branched out gradually into those 
 numerous popular dicasteries which so powerfully modified both 
 public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undivided 
 reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees ren- 
 dered the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions. 
 The popular assembly, as constituted by Solon, appearing in 
 modified efficiency and trained to the office of reviewing and 
 judging the general conduct of a past magistrate forms the 
 intermediate stage between the passive Homeric agora and 
 those omnipotent assemblies and dicasteries which listened to 
 Pericles or Demosthenes. Compared with these last, it has in 
 it but a faint streak of democracy and so it naturally appeared 
 to Aristotle, who wrote with a practical experience of Athens in 
 the time of the orators ; but compared with the first, or with 
 the ante-Solonian constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have 
 appeared a concession eminently democratical. To impose 
 upon the Eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected, or put 
 upon his trial of after-accountability, by the rabble of freemen 
 (such would be the phrase in Eupatrid society), would be a
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 229 
 
 bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced ; 
 for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme 
 of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that 
 despots and oligarchies snared between them at that time the 
 whole Grecian world. As it appears that Solon, while consti- 
 tuting the popular assembly with its pro-bouleutic senate, had 
 no jealousy of the senate of Areopagus, and indeed, even en- 
 larged its powers, we may infer that his grand object was, not 
 to weaken the oligarchy generally, but to improve the admin- 
 istration and to repress the misconduct and irregularities of the 
 individual archons ; and that, too, not by diminishing their pow- 
 ers, but by making some degree of popularity the condition 
 both of their entry into office, and of their safety or honor 
 after it. 
 
 It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon trans- 
 ferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dicastery. 
 These magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding 
 and condemning without appeal not mere presidents of an as- 
 sembled jury, as they afterward came to be during the next 
 century. For the general exercise of such power they were 
 accountable after their year of office. Such accountability was 
 the security against abuse a very insufficient security, yet not 
 wholly inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently that 
 these archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, 
 small and poor men, had no means of keeping down rebellious 
 nobles of their own rank, such as Pisistratus, Lycurgus, and 
 Megacles, each with his armed followers. When we compare 
 the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors, ending in the 
 despotism of one of them, with the vehement parliamentary 
 strife between Themistocles and Aristides afterward, peace- 
 ably decided by the vote of the sovereign people and never dis- 
 turbing the public tranquillity we shall see that the democracy 
 of the ensuing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well 
 as of progress, better than the Solonian constitution. 
 
 To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy 
 which followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the 
 progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. 
 That democracy was achieved by gradual steps. Demos- 
 thenes and ^Eschines lived under it as a system consummated
 
 230 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 and in full activity, when the stages of its previous growth 
 were no longer matter of exact memory ; and the dicasts then 
 assembled in judgment were pleased to hear their constitution 
 associated with the names either of Solon or of Theseus. Their 
 inquisitive contemporary Aristotle was not thus misled: but 
 even commonplace Athenians of the century preceding would 
 have escaped the same delusion. For during the whole course 
 of the democratical movement, from the Persian invasion 
 down to the Peloponnesian war, and especially during the 
 changes proposed by Pericles and Ephialtes, there was always 
 a strenuous party of resistance, who would not suffer the 
 people to forget that they had already forsaken, and were on 
 the point of forsaking still more, the orbit marked out by 
 Solon. The illustrious Pericles underwent innumerable at- 
 tacks both from the orators in the assembly and from the comic 
 writers in the theatre. And among these sarcasms on the politi- 
 cal tendencies of the day we are probably to number the com- 
 plaint, breathed by the poet Cratinus, of the desuetude into 
 which both Solon and Draco had fallen " I swear (said he in 
 a fragment of one of his comedies) by Solon and Draco, whose 
 wooden tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast 
 their barley." The laws of Solon respecting penal offences, 
 respecting inheritance and adoption, respecting the private rela- 
 tions generally, etc., remained for the most part in force : his 
 quadripartite census also continued, at least for financial pur- 
 poses, until the archonship of Nausinicus in B.C. 377 so that 
 Cicero and others might be warranted in affirming that his laws 
 still prevailed at Athens : but his political and judicial arrange- 
 ments had undergone a revolution not less complete and mem- 
 orable than the character and spirit of the Athenian people 
 generally. The choice, by way of lot, of archons and other 
 magistrates and the distribution by lot of the general body of 
 dicasts or jurors into panels for judicial business may be de- 
 cidedly considered as not belonging to Solon, but adopted after 
 the revolution of Clisthenes ; probably the choice of senators 
 by lot also. The lot was a symptom of pronounced democrati- 
 cal spirit, such as we must not seek in the Solonian institutions. 
 It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political 
 position of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them.
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 231 
 
 The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, 
 insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes 
 who was not also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the 
 new pro-bouleutic, or pre-considering, senate consisted of four 
 hundred members, one hundred from each of the tribes: per- 
 sons not included in any gens or phratry could therefore have 
 had no access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, 
 according to ancient custom, for the nine archons of course, 
 also, for the senate of Areopagus. So that there remained only 
 the public assembly, in which an Athenian not a member of 
 these tribes could take part: yet he was a citizen, since he 
 could give his vote for archons and senators, and could take 
 part in the annual decision of their accountability, besides being 
 entitled to claim redress for wrong from the archons in his own 
 person while the alien could only do so through the interven- 
 tion of an avouching citizen or Prostates. It seems, therefore, 
 that all persons not included in the four tribes, whatever their 
 grade of fortune might be, were on the same level in respect to 
 political privilege as the fourth and poorest class of the Solonian 
 census. It has already been remarked, that even before the 
 time of Solon the number of Athenians not included in the 
 gentes or phratries was probably considerable : it tended to be- 
 come greater and greater, since these bodies were close and un- 
 expansive, while the policy of the new lawgiver tended to invite 
 industrious settlers from other parts of Greece and Athens. 
 Such great and increasing inequality of political privilege helps 
 to explain the weakness of the government in repelling the ag- 
 gressions of Pisistratus, and exhibits the importance of the 
 revolution afterward wrought by Clisthenes, when he abol- 
 ished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, and created 
 ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them. 
 
 In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly 
 of the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether with- 
 out information : nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian con- 
 stitution the information, comparatively ample, which we pos- 
 sess respecting these bodies under the later democracy. 
 
 The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and 
 triangular tablets, in the species of writing called Bonstrophe- 
 don (lines alternating first from left to right, and next from
 
 232 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 right to left, like the course of the ploughman and preserved 
 first in the Acropolis, subsequently in the Prytaneum. On 
 the tablets, called Cyrbis, were chiefly commemorated the 
 laws respecting sacred rites and sacrifices; on the pillars or 
 rollers, of which there were at least sixteen, were placed the 
 regulations respecting matters profane. So small are the frag- 
 ments which have come down to us, and so much has been 
 ascribed to Solon by the orators which belongs really to the 
 subsequent times, that it is hardly possible to form any critical 
 judgment respecting the legislation as a whole, or to discover 
 by what general principles or purposes he was guided. 
 
 He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices re- 
 specting the crime of homicide, connected as they were inti- 
 mately with the religious feelings of the people. The laws of 
 Draco on this subject, therefore, remained, but on other sub- 
 jects, according to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated: 
 there is, however, room for supposing that the repeal cannot 
 have been so sweeping as this biographer represents. 
 
 The Solonian laws seem to have borne more or less upon 
 all the great departments of human interest and duty. We 
 find regulations political and religious, public and private, civil 
 and criminal, commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disci- 
 plinarian. Solon provides punishment for crimes, restricts the 
 profession and status of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for 
 marriage as well as for burial, for the common use of springs 
 and wells, and for the mutual interest of conterminous farmers 
 in planting or hedging their properties. As far as we can judge 
 from the imperfect manner in which his laws come before us, 
 there does not seem to have been any attempt at a systematic 
 order or classification. Some of them are mere general and 
 vague directions, while others again run into the extreme of 
 specialty. 
 
 By far the most important of all was the amendment of the 
 law of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, 
 and the abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell 
 their daughters and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all 
 contracts on the security of the body was itself sufficient to 
 produce a vast improvement in the character and condition of 
 the poorer population, a result which seems to have been so
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 233 
 
 sensibly obtained from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and 
 some other eminent authors suppose him to have abolished vil- 
 leinage and conferred upon the poor tenants a property in their 
 lands, annulling the seigniorial rights of the landlord. But this 
 opinion rests upon no positive evidence, nor are we warranted 
 in ascribing to him any stronger measure in reference to the 
 land than the annulment of the previous mortgages. 
 
 The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting 
 exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce 
 of the Attic soil, except olive oil alone. And the sanction em- 
 ployed to enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an 
 illustration of the ideas of the time : the archon was bound, on 
 pain of forfeiting one hundred drachmas, to pronounce solemn 
 curses against every offender. We are probably to take this 
 prohibition in conjunction with other objects said to have been 
 contemplated by Solon, especially the encouragement of arti- 
 sans and manufacturers at Athens. Observing (we are told) 
 that many new immigrants were just then flocking into Attica 
 to seek an establishment, in consequence of its greater security, 
 he was anxious to turn them rather to manufacturing industry 
 than to the cultivation of a soil naturally poor. He forbade the 
 granting of citizenship to any immigrants, except to such as 
 had quitted irrevocably their former abodes and come to Athens 
 for the purpose of carrying on some industrial profession ; and 
 in order to prevent idleness, he directed the senate of Areopagus 
 to keep watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and pun- 
 ish every one who had no course of regular labor to support 
 him. If a father had not taught his son some art or profession, 
 Solon relieved the son from all obligation to maintain him in 
 his old age. And it was to encourage the multiplication of 
 these artisans that he insured, or sought to insure, to the resi- 
 dents in Attica, the exclusive right of buying and consuming 
 all its landed produce except olive oil, which was raised in abun- 
 dance, mere than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish that 
 the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting the 
 produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land. 
 
 This commercial prohibition is founded on principles sub- 
 stantially similar to those which were acted upon in the early 
 history of England, with reference both to corn and to wool, and
 
 234 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 in other European countries also. In so far as it was at all opera- 
 tive it tended to lessen the total quantity of produce raised upon 
 the soil of Attica, and thus to keep the price of it from rising. 
 But the law of Solon must have been altogether inoperative, in 
 reference to the great articles of human subsistence ; for Attica 
 imported, both largely and constantly, grain and salt provisions, 
 probably also wool and flax for the spinning and weaving of 
 the women, and certainly timber for building. Whether the 
 law was ever enforced with reference to figs and honey may 
 well be doubted ; at least these productions of Attica were in 
 after times trafficked in, and generally consumed throughout 
 Greece. Probably also in the time of Solon the silver mines 
 of Laurium had hardly begun to be worked : these afterward 
 became highly productive, and furnished to Athens a commod- 
 ity for foreign payments no less convenient than lucrative. 
 
 It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of 
 Draco, to enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and 
 self-maintaining habits ; and we shall find the same sentiment 
 proclaimed by Pericles, at the time when Athenian power was 
 at its maximum. Nor ought we to pass over this early mani- 
 festation in Attica of an opinion equitable and tolerant toward 
 sedentary industry, which in most other parts of Greece was 
 regarded as comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of 
 Grecian sentiment recognized no occupations as perfectly wor- 
 thy of a free citizen except arms, agriculture, and athletic and 
 musical exercises; and the proceedings of the Spartans, who 
 kept aloof even from agriculture and left it to their helots, 
 were admired, though they could not be copied, throughout 
 most of the Hellenic world. Even minds like Plato, Aristotle, 
 and Xenophon concurred to a considerable extent in this feel- 
 ing, which they justified on the ground that the sedentary life 
 and unceasing house-work of the artisan were inconsistent with 
 military aptitude. The town-occupations are usually described 
 by a word which carries with it contemptuous ideas, and though 
 recognized as indispensable to the existence of the city, are 
 held suitable only for an inferior and semi-privileged order of 
 citizens. This, the received sentiment among Greeks, as well 
 as foreigners, found a strong and growing opposition at 
 Athens, as I have already said corroborated also by a similar
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 235 
 
 feeling at Corinth. The trade of Corinth, as well as of Chalcis 
 in Eubcea, was extensive, at a time when that of Athens had 
 scarce any existence. But while the despotism of Periander 
 can hardly have failed to operate as a discouragement to indus- 
 try at Corinth, the contemporaneous legislation of Solon pro- 
 vided for traders and artisans a new home at Athens, giving 
 the first encouragement to that numerous town-population 
 both in the city and in the Piraeus, which we find actually 
 residing there in the succeeding century. The multiplica- 
 tion of such town residents, both citizens and metics (i.e., 
 resident persons, not citizens, but enjoying an assured posi- 
 tion and civil rights), was a capital fact in . the onward 
 march of Athens, since it determined not merely the ex- 
 tension of her trade, but also the preeminence of her naval 
 forces and thus, as a further consequence, lent extraordinary 
 vigor to her democratical government. It seems, moreover, to 
 have been a departure from the primitive temper of Atticism, 
 which tended both to cantonal residence and rural occupation. 
 We have, therefore, the greater interest in noting the first 
 mention of it as a consequence of the Solonian legislation. 
 
 To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testa- 
 mentary bequest at Athens in all cases in which a man had no 
 legitimate children. According to the preexisting custom, we 
 may rather presume that if a deceased person left neither chil- 
 dren nor blood relations, his property descended (as at Rome) 
 to his gens and phratry. Throughout most rude states of so- 
 ciety the power of willing is unknown, as among the ancient 
 Germans among the Romans prior to the twelve tables in 
 the old laws of the Hindus, etc. Society limits a man's inter- 
 est or power of enjoyment to his life, and considers his rela- 
 tives as having joint reversionary claims to his property, which 
 take effect, in certain determinate proportions, after his death. 
 Such a law was the more likely to prevail at Athens, since the 
 perpetuity of the family sacred rites, in which the children and 
 near relatives partook of right, was considered by the Atheni- 
 ans as a matter of public as well as of private concern. Solon 
 gave permission to every man dying without children to be- 
 queath his property by will as he should think fit ; and the tes- 
 tament was maintained unless it could be shown to have been
 
 236 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 procured by some compulsion or improper seduction. Speak- 
 ing generally, this continued to be the law throughout the his- 
 torical times of Athens. Sons, wherever there were sons, suc- 
 ceeded to the property of their father in equal shares, with the 
 obligation of giving out their sisters in marriage along with a 
 certain dowry. If there were no sons, then the daughters suc- 
 ceeded, though the father might by will, within certain limits, 
 determine the person to whom they should be married, with 
 their rights of succession attached to them ; or might, with the 
 consent of his daughters, make by will certain other arrange- 
 ments about his property. A person who had no children or 
 direct lineal descendants might bequeath his property at pleas- 
 ure : if he died without a will, first his father, then his brother 
 or brother's children, next his sister or sister's children suc- 
 ceeded : if none such existed, then the cousins by the father's 
 side, next the cousins by the mother's side, the male line 
 of descent having preference over the female. 
 
 Such was the principle of the Solonian laws of succession, 
 though the particulars are in several ways obscure and doubt- 
 ful. Solon, it appears, was the first who gave power of 
 superseding by testament the rights of agnates and gentiles 
 to succession, a proceeding in consonance with his plan of 
 encouraging both industrious occupation and the consequent 
 multiplication of individual acquisitions. 
 
 It has been already mentioned that Solon forbade the sale 
 of daughters or sisters into slavery by fathers or brothers ; a 
 prohibition which shows how much females had before been 
 looked upon as articles of property. And it would seem that 
 before his time the violation of a free woman must have been 
 punished at the discretion of the magistrates ; for we are told 
 that he was the first who enacted a penalty of one hundred 
 drachmas against the offender, and twenty drachmas against 
 the seducer of a free woman. Moreover, it is said that he 
 forbade a bride when given in marriage to carry with her any 
 personal ornaments and appurtenances, except to the extent of 
 three robes and certain matters of furniture not very valuable. 
 Solon further imposed upon women several restraints in regard 
 to proceeding at the obsequies of deceased relatives. He for- 
 bade profuse demonstrations of sorrow, singing of composed
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 237 
 
 dirges, and costly sacrifices and contributions. He limited 
 strictly the quantity of meat and drink admissible for the fu- 
 neral banquet, and prohibited nocturnal exit, except in a car 
 and with a light. It appears that both in Greece and Rome, 
 the feelings of duty and affection on the part of surviving rela- 
 ties prompted them to ruinous expense in a funeral, as well as 
 to unmeasured effusions both of grief and conviviality ; and the 
 general necessity experienced for legal restriction is attested 
 by the remark of Plutarch, that similar prohibitions to those 
 enacted by Solon were likewise in force at his native town of 
 Chaeronea. 
 
 Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. 
 He forbade absolutely evil speaking with respect to the dead. 
 He forbade it likewise with respect to the living, either in a 
 temple or before judges or archons, or at any public festival 
 on pain of a forfeit of three drachmas to the person aggrieved, 
 and two more to the public treasury. How mild the general 
 character of his punishments was, may be judged by this law 
 against foul language, not less than by the law before men- 
 tioned against rape. Both the one and the other of these 
 offences were much more severely dealt with under the subse- 
 quent law of democratical Athens. The peremptory edict 
 against speaking ill of a deceased person, though doubtless 
 springing in a great degree from disinterested repugnance, is 
 traceable also in part to that fear of the wrath of the departed 
 which strongly possessed the early Greek mind. 
 
 It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay 
 for the public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his 
 particular directions. We are told that he reckoned a sheep 
 and a medimnus (of wheat or barley ?) as equivalent, either of 
 them, to a drachma, and that he also prescribed the prices to 
 be paid for first-rate oxen intended for solemn occasions. But 
 it astonishes us to see the large recompense which he awarded 
 out of the public treasury to a victor at the Olympic or Isth- 
 mian games : to the former, five hundred drachmas, equal to 
 one year's income of the highest of the four classes on the cen* 
 sus ; to the latter one hundred drachmas. The magnitude of 
 these rewards strikes us the more when we compare them with 
 the fines on rape and evil speaking. We cannot be surprised
 
 238 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 that the philosopher Xenophanes noticed, with some degree 
 of severity, the extravagant estimate of this species of excel- 
 lence, current among the Grecian cities. At the same time, 
 we must remember both that these Pan-Hellenic games pre- 
 sented the chief visible evidence of peace and sympathy among 
 the numerous communities of Greece, and that in the time of 
 Solon, factitious reward was still needful to encourage them. 
 In respect to land and agriculture Solon proclaimed a public 
 reward of five drachmas for every wolf brought in, and one 
 drachma for every wolf's cub ; the extent of wild land has at 
 all times been considerable in Attica. He also provided rules 
 respecting the use of wells between neighbors, and respecting 
 the planting in conterminous olive grounds. Whether any of 
 these regulations continued in operation during the better- 
 known period of Athenian history cannot be safely affirmed. 
 
 In respect to theft, we find it stated that Solon repealed 
 the punishment of death which Draco had annexed to that 
 crime, and enacted, as a penalty, compensation to an amount 
 double the value of the property stolen. The simplicity of 
 this law perhaps affords ground for presuming that it really 
 does belong to Solon. But the law which prevailed during the 
 time of the orators respecting theft must have been introduced 
 at some later period, since it enters into distinctions and men- 
 tions both places and forms of procedure, which we cannot 
 reasonably refer to the forty-sixth Olympiad. The public din- 
 ners at the Prytaneum, of which the archons and a select few 
 partook in common, were also either first established, or per- 
 haps only more strictly regulated, by Solon. He ordered bar- 
 ley cakes for their ordinary meals, and wheaten loaves for fes- 
 tival days, prescribing how often each person should dine at 
 the table. The honor of dining at the table of the Prytaneum 
 was maintained throughout as a valuable reward at the dispo- 
 sal of the government. 
 
 Among the various laws of Solon, there are few which have 
 attracted more notice than that which pronounces the man 
 who in a sedition stood aloof, and took part with neither side, 
 to be dishonored and disfranchised. Strictly speaking, this 
 seems more in the nature of an emphatic moral denunciation, 
 or a religious curse, than a legal sanction capable of being for-
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 239 
 
 mally applied in an individual case and after judicial trial, 
 though the sentence of atimy, under the more elaborated Attic 
 procedure, was both definite in its penal consequences and also 
 judicially delivered. We may, however, follow the course of 
 ideas under which Solon was induced to write this sentence 
 on his tables, and we may trace the influence of similar ideas 
 in later Attic institutions. It is obvious that his denunciation 
 is confined to that special case in which a sedition has already 
 broken out : we must suppose that Cylon has seized the Acrop- 
 olis, or that Pisistratus, Megacles, and Lycurgus are in arms 
 at the head of their partisans. Assuming these leaders to be 
 wealthy and powerful men, which would in all probability be 
 the fact, the constituted authority such as Solon saw before 
 him in Attica, even after his own organic amendments was 
 not strong enough to maintain the peace ; it became, in fact, 
 itself one of the contending parties. Under such given cir- 
 cumstances, the sooner every citizen publicly declared his ad- 
 herence to some of them, the earlier this suspension of legal 
 authority was likely to terminate. Nothing was so mischiev- 
 ous as the indifference of the mass, or their disposition to let 
 the combatants fight out the matter among themselves, and 
 then to submit to the victor. Nothing was more likely to en- 
 courage aggression on the part of an ambitious malcontent, 
 than the conviction that if he could once overpower the small 
 amount of physical force which surrounded the archons, and 
 exhibit -himself in armed possession of the Prytaneum or the 
 Acropolis, he might immediately count upon passive submis- 
 sion on the part of all the freemen without. Under the state 
 of feeling which Solon inculcates, the insurgent leader would 
 have to calculate that every man who was not actively in his 
 favor would be actively against him, and this would render his 
 enterprise much more dangerous. Indeed, he could then never 
 hope to succeed, except on the double supposition of extraor- 
 dinary popularity in his own person and widespread detesta 
 tion of the existing government. He would thus be placed 
 under the influence of powerful deterring motives ; so that am- 
 bition would be less likely to seduce him into a course which 
 threatened nothing but ruin, unless under such encourage- 
 ments from the preexisting public opinion as to make his sue-
 
 240 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 cess a result desirable for the community. Among the small 
 political societies of Greece especially in the age of Solon, 
 when the number of despots in other parts of Greece seems to 
 have been at its maximum every government, whatever might 
 be its form, was sufficiently weak to make its overthrow a mat- 
 ter of comparative facility Unless upon the supposition of 
 a band of foreign mercenaries which would render the gov- 
 ernment a system of naked force, and which the Athenian 
 lawgiver would of course never contemplate there was no 
 other stay for it except a positive and pronounced feeling of 
 attachment on the part of the mass of citizens. Indifference 
 on their part would render them a prey to every daring man 
 of wealth who chose to become a conspirator. That they 
 should be ready to come forward, not only with voice but with 
 arms and that they should be known beforehand to be so 
 was essential to the maintenance of every good Grecian gov- 
 ernment. It was salutary in preventing mere personal at- 
 tempts at revolution ; and pacific in its tendency, even where 
 the revolution had actually broken out, because in the greater 
 number of cases the proportion of partisans would probably be 
 very unequal, and the inferior party would be compelled to re- 
 nounce their hopes. 
 
 It will be observed that, in this enactment of Solon, the 
 existing government is ranked merely as one of the contend- 
 ing parties. The virtuous citizen is enjoined, not to come for- 
 ward in its support, but to come forward at all events, either 
 for it or against it. Positive and early action is all which is 
 prescribed to him as matter of duty. In the age of Solon 
 there was no political idea or system yet current which could 
 be assumed as an unquestionable datum no conspicuous 
 standard to which the citizens could be pledged under all cir- 
 cumstances to attach themselves. The option lay only be- 
 tween a mitigated oligarchy in possession, and a despot in pos- 
 sibility ; a contest wherein the affections of the people could 
 rarely be counted upon in favor of the established government. 
 But this neutrality in respect to the constitution was at an end 
 after the revolution of Clisthenes, when the idea of the sov- 
 ereign people and the democratical institutions became both 
 familiar and precious to every individual citizen. We shall
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 241 
 
 hereafter find the Athenians binding themselves by the most 
 sincere and solemn oaths to uphold their democracy against all 
 attempts to subvert it; we shall discover in them a sentiment 
 not less positive and uncompromising in its direction, than en- 
 ergetic in its inspirations. But while we notice this very im- 
 portant change in their character, we shall at the same time 
 perceive that the wise precautionary recommendation of Solon, 
 to obviate sedition by an early declaration of the impartial pub- 
 lic between two contending leaders, was not lost upon them. 
 Such, in point of fact, was the purpose of that salutary and 
 protective institution which is called the Ostracism. When two 
 party leaders, in the early stages of the Athenian democracy, 
 each powerful in adherents and influence, had become passion- 
 ately embarked in bitter and prolonged opposition to each other, 
 such opposition was likely to conduct one or other to violent 
 measures. Over and above the hopes of party triumph, each 
 might well fear that, if he himself continued within the bounds 
 of legality, he might fall a victim to aggressive proceedings on 
 the part of his antagonists. To ward off this formidable dan- 
 ger, a public vote was called for, to determine which of the two 
 should go into temporary banishment, retaining his property 
 and unvisited by any disgrace. A number of citizens, not less 
 than six thousand, voting secretly, and therefore independently, 
 were required to take part, pronouncing upon one or other 
 of these eminent rivals a sentence of exile for ten years. The 
 one who remained became, of course, more powerful, yet less 
 in a situation to be driven into anti-constitutional courses 
 than he was before. Tragedy and comedy were now begin- 
 ning to be grafted on the lyric and choric song. First, one 
 actor was provided to relieve the chorus; next, two actors 
 were introduced to sustain fictitious characters and carry on 
 a dialogue in such manner that the songs of the chorus and 
 the interlocution of the actors formed a continuous piece. 
 Solon, after having heard Thespis acting (as all the early 
 composers did, both tragic and comic) in his own comedy, 
 asked him afterward if he was not ashamed to pronounce 
 such falsehoods before so large an audience. And when 
 Thespis answered that there was no harm in saying and 
 doing such things merely for amusement, Solon indignantly 
 
 H. E., VOL. II6.
 
 242 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 exclaimed, striking the ground with his stick, "If once we 
 come to praise and esteem such amusement as this, we shall 
 quickly find the effects of it in our daily transactions." For the 
 authenticity of this anecdote it would be rash to vouch, but 
 we may at least treat it as the protest of some early philoso- 
 pher against the deceptions of the drama : and it is interesting 
 as marking the incipient struggles of that literature in which 
 Athens afterward attained such unrivaled excellence. 
 
 It would appear that all the laws of Solon were proclaimed, 
 inscribed, and accepted without either discussion or resist- 
 ance. He is said to have described them, not as the best laws 
 which he could himself have imagined, but as the best which 
 he could have induced the people to accept. He gave them 
 validity for the space of ten years, during which period both 
 the senate collectively and the archons individually swore to 
 observe them with fidelity; under penalty, in case of non- 
 observance, of a golden statue as large as life to be erected at 
 Delphi. But though the acceptance of the laws was accom- 
 plished without difficulty, it was not found so easy either for 
 the people to understand and obey, or for the f ramer to explain 
 them. Every day persons came to Solon either with praise, or 
 criticism, or suggestions of various improvements, or ques- 
 tions as to the construction of particular enactments ; until at 
 last he became tired of this endless process of reply and vindi- 
 cation, which was seldom successful either in removing obscur- 
 ity or in satisfying complainants. Foreseeing that if he re- 
 mained he would be compelled to make changes, he obtained 
 leave of absence from his countrymen for ten years, trusting 
 that before the expiration of that period they would have be- 
 come accustomed to his laws. He quitted his native city in 
 the full certainty that his laws would remain unrepealed until 
 his return ; for (says Herodotus) " the Athenians could not re- 
 peal them, since they were bound by solemn oaths to observe 
 them for ten years." The unqualified manner in which the 
 historian here speaks of an oath, as if it created a sort of physi- 
 cal necessity and shut out all possibility of a contrary result, 
 deserves notice as illustrating Grecian sentiment. 
 
 On departing from Athens, Solon first visited Egypt, 
 where he communicated largely with Psenophis of Heliopolis
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 243 
 
 and Sonchis of Sais, Egyptian priests who had much to tell re- 
 specting their ancient history, and from whom he learned mat- 
 ters, real or pretended, far transcending in alleged antiquity 
 the oldest Grecian genealogies especially the history of the 
 vast submerged island of Atlantis, and the war which the an- 
 cestors of the Athenians had successfully carried on against 
 it, nine thousand years before. Solon is said to have com- 
 menced an epic poem upon this subject, but he did not live to 
 finish it, and nothing of it now remains. From Egypt he 
 went to Cyprus, where he visited the small town of JEpia., said 
 to have been originally founded by Demophon, son of Theseus, 
 and ruled at this period by the prince Philocyprus each town 
 in Cyprus having its own petty prince. It was situated near 
 the river Clarius in a position precipitous and secure, but in- 
 convenient and ill-supplied. Solon persuaded Philocyprus to 
 quit the old site and establish a new town down in the fertile 
 plain beneath. He himself stayed and became cecist of the 
 new establishment, making all the regulations requisite for its 
 safe and prosperous march, which was indeed so decisively 
 manifested that many new settlers flocked into the new plan- 
 tation, called by Philocyprus Soli, in honor of Solon. To our 
 deep regret, we are not permitted to know what these regula- 
 tions were ; but the general fact is attested by the poems of 
 Solon himself, and the lines in which he bade farewell to Philo- 
 cyprus on quitting the island are yet before us. On the dispo- 
 sitions of this prince his poem bestowed unqualified commen- 
 dation. 
 
 Besides his visit to Egypt and Cyprus, a story was also 
 current of his having conversed with the Lydian king Croesus 
 at Sardis. The communication said to have taken place be- 
 tween them has been woven by Herodotus into a sort of moral 
 tale which forms one of the most beautiful episodes in -his 
 whole history. Though this tale has been told and retold as 
 if it were genuine history, yet as it now stands it is irrecon- 
 cilable with chronology although very possibly Solon may at 
 some time or other have visited Sardis, and seen Crcesus as 
 hereditary prince. 
 
 But even if no chronological objections existed, the moral 
 purpose of the tale is so prominent, and pervades it so system-
 
 244 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 atically from beginning to end, that these internal grounds 
 are of themselves sufficiently strong to impeach its credibility 
 as a matter of fact, unless such doubts happen to be out- 
 weighed which in this case they are not by good contem- 
 porary testimony. The narrative of Solon and Croesus can be 
 taken for nothing else but an illustrative fiction, borrowed by 
 Herodotus from some philosopher, and clothed in his own pe- 
 culiar beauty of expression, which on this occasion is more de- 
 cidedly poetical than is habitual with him. I cannot transcribe, 
 and I hardly dare to abridge it. The vainglorious Crcesus, 
 at the summit of his conquests and his riches, endeavors to 
 win from his visitor Solon an opinion that he is the happiest 
 of mankind. The latter, after having twice preferred to him 
 modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds 
 him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too preca- 
 rious to serve as an evidence of happiness ; that the gods are 
 jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happi- 
 ness a mere prelude to extreme disaster ; and that no man's 
 life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played 
 out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. 
 Crcesus treats this opinion as absurd, but " a great judgment 
 from God fell upon him, after Solon was departed probably 
 (observes Herodotus) because he fancied himself the happiest 
 of all men." First he lost his favorite son Atys, a brave and 
 intelligent youth (his only other son being dumb). For the 
 Mysians of Olympus being ruined by a destructive and formid- 
 able wild boar, which they were unable to subdue, applied for 
 aid to Crcesus, who sent to the spot a chosen hunting force, 
 and permitted though with great reluctance, in consequence 
 of an alarming dream that his favorite son should accompany 
 them. The young prince was unintentionally slain by the 
 Phrygian exile Adrastus, whom Croesus had sheltered and pro- 
 tected. Hardly had the latter recovered from the anguish of this 
 misfortune, when the rapid growth of Cyrus and the Persian 
 power induced him to go to war with them, against the advice 
 of his wisest counsellors. After a struggle of about three years 
 he was completely defeated, his capital Sardis taken by storm, 
 and himself made prisoner. Cyrus ordered a large pile to be 
 prepared, and placed upon it Crcesus in fetters, together with
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 245 
 
 fourteen young Lydians, in the intention of burning them alive 
 either as a religious offering, or in fulfilment of avow, "or 
 perhaps (says Herodotus) to see whether some of the gods 
 would not interfere to rescue a man so preemiently pious as 
 the king of Lydia." In this sad extremity, Croesus bethought 
 him of the warning which he had before despised, and thrice 
 pronounced, with a deep groan, the name of Solon. Cyrus 
 desired the interpreters to inquire whom he was invoking, and 
 learnt in reply the anecdote of the Athenian lawgiver, together 
 with the solemn memento which he had offered to Croesus dur- 
 ing more prosperous days, attesting the frail tenure of all hu- 
 man greatness. The remark sunk deep into the Persian mon- 
 arch as a token of what might happen to himself : he repented 
 of his purpose, and directed that the pile, which had already 
 been kindled, should be immediately extinguished. But the 
 orders came too late. In spite of the most zealous efforts of 
 the bystanders, the flame was found unquenchable, and Crce- 
 sus would still have been burned, had he not implored with 
 prayers and tears the succor of Apollo, to whose Delphian and 
 Theban temples he had given such munificent presents. His 
 prayers were heard, the fair sky was immediately overcast and 
 a profuse rain descended, sufficient to extinguish the flames. 
 The life of Croesus was thus saved, and he became afterward 
 the confidential friend and adviser of his 'conqueror. 
 
 Such is the brief outline of a narrative which Herodotus 
 has given with full development and with impressive effect. 
 It would have served as a show-lecture to the youth of Athens 
 not less admirably than the well-known fable of the Choice of 
 Heracles, which the philosopher Prodicus, a junior contempo- 
 rary of Herodotus, delivered with so much popularity. It il- 
 lustrates forcibly the religious and ethical ideas of antiquity ; 
 the deep sense of the jealousy of the gods, who would not en- 
 dure pride in any one except themselves ; the impossibility, for 
 any man, of realizing to himself more than a very moderate 
 share of happiness ; the danger from a reactionary Nemesis, if 
 at any time he had overpassed such limit ; and the necessity of 
 calculations taking in the whole of life, as a basis for rational 
 comparison of different individuals. And it embodies, as a 
 practical consequence from these feelings, the often-repeated
 
 246 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 protest of moralists against vehement impulses and unre- 
 strained aspirations. The more valuable this narrative appears, 
 in its illustrative character, the less can we presume to treat it 
 as a history. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that we have no information re- 
 specting events in Attica immediately after the Solonian 
 laws and constitution, which were promulgated in B.C. 594, so 
 as to understand better the practical effect of these changes. 
 What we next hear respecting Solon in Attica refers to a pe- 
 riod immediately preceding the first usurpation of Pisistratus 
 in B.C. 560, and after the return of Solon from his long ab- 
 sence. We are here again introduced to the same oligarchical 
 dissensions as are reported to have prevailed before the Solo- 
 nian legislation : the Pediis, or opulent proprietors of the plain 
 round Athens, under Lycurgus ; the Parali of the south of At- 
 tica, under Megacles ; and the Diacrii or mountaineers of the 
 eastern cantons, the poorest of the three classes, under Pisis- 
 tratus, are in a state of violent intestine dispute. The account 
 of Plutarch represents Solon as returning to Athens during the 
 height of this sedition. He was treated with respect by all 
 parties, but his recommendations were no longer obeyed, and 
 he was disqualified by age from acting with effect in public. 
 He employed his best efforts to mitigate party animosities, 
 and applied himself particularly to restrain the ambition of 
 Pisistratus, whose ulterior projects he quickly detected. 
 
 The future greatness of Pisistratus is said to have been first 
 portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth, 
 to his father Hippocrates at the Olympic games. It was real- 
 ized, partly by his bravery and conduct, which had been dis- 
 played in the capture of Nisaea from the Megarians partly 
 by his popularity of speech and manners, his championship of 
 the poor, and his ostentatious disavowal of all selfish preten- 
 sions partly by an artful mixture of stratagem and force. So- 
 lon, after having addressed fruitless remonstrances to Pisis- 
 tratus himself, publicly denounced his designs in verses ad- 
 dressed to the people. The deception, whereby Pisistratus 
 finally accomplished his design, is memorable in Grecian tradi- 
 tion. He appeared one day in the agora of Athens in his char- 
 iot with a pair of mules : he had intentionally wounded both his
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 247 
 
 person and the mules, and in this condition he threw himself 
 upon the compassion and defence of the people, pretending 
 that his political enemies had violently attacked him. He 
 implored the people to grant him a guard, and at the moment 
 when their sympathies were freshly aroused both in his favor 
 and against his supposed assassins, Aristo proposed formally 
 to the ecclesia (the pro-bouleutic senate, being composed of 
 friends of Pisistratus, had previously authorized the proposi- 
 tion) that a company of fifty club-men should be assigned as a 
 permanent body-guard for the defence of Pisistratus. To 
 this motion Solon opposed a strenuous resistance, but found 
 himself overborne, and even treated as if he had lost his senses. 
 The poor were earnest in favor of it, while the rich were afraid 
 to express their dissent ; and he could only comfort himself 
 after the fatal vote had been passed, by exclaiming that he was 
 wiser than the former and more determined than the latter. 
 Such was one of the first known instances in which this mem- 
 orable stratagem was played off against the liberty of a Grecian 
 community. 
 
 The unbounded popular favor which had procured the pass- 
 ing of this grant was still further manifested by the absence 
 of all precautions to prevent the limits of the grant from being 
 exceeded. The number of the body-guard was not long con- 
 fined to fifty, and probably their clubs were soon exchanged 
 for sharper weapons. Pisistratus thus found himself strong 
 enough to throw off the mask and seize the Acropolis. His 
 leading opponents, Megacles and the Alcinseonids, immediately 
 fled the city, and it was left to the venerable age and undaunted 
 patriotism of Solon to stand forward almost alone in a vain 
 attempt to resist the usurpation. He publicly presented him- 
 self in the market-place, employing encouragement, remon- 
 strance and reproach, in order to rouse the spirit of the people. 
 To prevent this despotism from coming (he told them) would 
 have been easy ; to shake it off now was more difficult, yet at 
 the same time more glorious. But he spoke in vain, for all who 
 were not actually favorable to Pisistratus listened only to their 
 fears, and remained passive ; nor did any one join Solon, when, 
 as a last appeal, he put on his armor and planted himself in 
 military posture before the door of his house. " I have done 

 
 248 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 
 
 my duty (he exclaimed at length); I have sustained to the best 
 of my power my country and the laws"; and he then re- 
 nounced all further hope of opposition though resisting the 
 instances of his friends that he should flee, and returning for 
 answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, 
 " On my old age." Nor did he even think it necessary to re- 
 press the inspirations of his Muse. Some verses yet remain, 
 composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand of the 
 new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which he 
 tells his countrymen " If ye have endured sorrow from your 
 own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. 
 Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of 
 these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched 
 slavery." 
 
 It is gratifying to learn that Pisistratus, whose conduct 
 throughout his despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon 
 untouched. How long this distinguished man survived the 
 practical subversion of his own constitution, we cannot certainly 
 determine ; but according to the most probable statement he 
 died during the very next year, at the advanced age of eighty. 
 
 We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means 
 of following more in detail his noble and exemplary character. 
 He represents the best tendencies of his age, combined with 
 much that is personally excellent : the improved ethical sensi- 
 bility ; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and observation, not 
 less potent in old age than in youth ; the conception of regular- 
 ized popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and 
 spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to found 
 a new character in the Athenian people ; a genuine and reflect- 
 ing sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to 
 rescue them from the oppressions of the rich, but also to 
 create in them habits of self-relying industry ; lastly, during his 
 temporary possession of a power altogether arbitrary, not 
 merely an absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion 
 in seizing the mean between conflicting exigencies. In read- 
 ing his poems we must always recollect that what now appears 
 commonplace was once new, so that to his comparatively un- 
 lettered age the social pictures which he draws were still fresh, 
 and his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The
 
 SOLON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION 249 
 
 poems composed on moral subjects generally inculcate a spirit 
 of gentleness toward others and moderation in personal objects. 
 They represent the gods as irresistible, retributive, favoring 
 the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes very tardily. 
 But his compositions on special and present occasions are 
 usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit ; denouncing the 
 oppressions of the rich at one time, and the timid submission 
 to Pisistratus at another and expressing in emphatic lan- 
 guage his own proud consciousness of having stood forward as 
 champion of the mass of the people. Of his early poems 
 hardly anything is preserved. The few lines remaining seem 
 to manifest a jovial temperament which we may well conceive 
 to have been overlaid by such political difficulties as he had to 
 encounter difficulties arising successively out of the Mega- 
 rian war, the Cylonian sacrilege, the public despondency 
 healed by Epimenides, and the task of arbiter between a rapa- 
 cious oligarchy and a suffering people. In one of his elegies 
 addressed to Mimnermus, he marked out the sixtieth year as 
 the longest desirable period of life, in preference to the eighti- 
 eth year, which that poet had expressed a wish to attain. But 
 his own life, as far as we can judge, seems to have reached 
 the longer of the two periods ; and not the least honorable part 
 of it (the resistance to Pisistratus) occurs immediately before 
 his death. 
 
 There prevailed a story that his ashes were collected and 
 scattered around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as 
 absurd though he tells us at the same time that it was be- 
 lieved both by Aristotle and by many other considerable men. 
 It is at least as ancient as the poet Cratinus, who alluded ,to it 
 in one of his comedies, and I do not feel inclined to reject it. 
 The inscription on the statue of Solon at Athens described him 
 as a Salaminian ; he had been the great means of acquiring the 
 island for his country, and it seems highly probable that among 
 the new Athenian citizens, who went to settle there, he may 
 have received a lot of land and become enrolled among the 
 Salaminian demots. The dispersion of his ashes connecting 
 him with the island as its cecist, may be construed, if not as 
 the expression of a public vote, at least as a piece of affection- 
 ate vanity on the part of his surviving friends.
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 B.C. 538 
 
 GEORGE GROTE 
 
 On the destruction of Nineveh three great Powers still stood on the 
 stage of history, being bound together by the strong ties of a mutually 
 supporting alliance. These were Media, Lydia, and Babylon. The 
 capital of Lydia was Sardis. According to Herodotus, the first king of 
 Lydia was Manes. In the semi-mythic period of Lydian history rose 
 the great dynasty of the Heraclidae, which reigned for 505 years, num- 
 bering twenty-two kings B.C. 1229 to B.C. 745. The Lydians are said 
 by Herodotus to have colonized Tyrrhenia, in the Italic peninsula, and 
 to have extended their conquests into Syria, where they founded Ascalon 
 in the territory later known as Palestine. 
 
 In the reign of Gyges, B.C. 724, they began to attack the Greek cities 
 of Asia Minor: Miletus, Smyrna, and Priene. The glory of the Lydian 
 Empire culminated in the reign of Croesus, the fifth and last historic king, 
 B.C. 568. The well-known story of Solon's warning to Croesus was full 
 of ominous import with regard to the ultimate downfall of the Lydian 
 Empire : " For thyself, O Croesus," said the Greek sage in answer to the 
 question, Who is the happiest man ? " I see that thou art wonderfully 
 rich, and art the lord of many nations; but in respect to that whereon 
 thou questionest me, I have no answer to give until I hear that thou hast 
 closed thy life happily." 
 
 The Median Empire occupied a territory indefinitely extending over 
 a region south of the Caspian, between the Kurdish Mountains and the 
 modern Khorassan. The Median monarchy, according to Herodotus, 
 commenced B.C. 708. The Medes, which were racially akin to the Per- 
 sians, had been for fifty years subject to the Assyrian monarchy when 
 they revolted, setting up an independent empire. Putting aside the dates 
 given by the Greek historians, we shall perhaps be correct in considering 
 that the great Median kingdom was established by Cyaxares, B.C. 633; 
 and that in B.C. 610 a great struggle of six years between Media and 
 Lydia was amicably ended, under the terror occasioned by an eclipse, by 
 the establishment of a treaty and alliance between the contending pow- 
 ers. With the death of Cyaxares, B.C. 597, the glory of the great Me- 
 dian Empire passed away, for under his son, Astyages, the country was 
 conquered by Cyrus. 
 
 The rise of the Babylonian Empire seems to have originated B.C. 2234, 
 when the Cushite inhabitants of southern Babylonia raised a native 
 
 250
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 251 
 
 dynasty to the throne, liberated themselves from the yoke of the Zoroas- 
 trian Medes, and instituted an empire with several large capitals, where 
 they built mighty temples and introduced the worship of the heavenly 
 bodies in contradistinction to the elemental worship of the Magian 
 Medes. The record of Babylonian kings is full of obscurity, even in the 
 light of recent archaeological discoveries. We can trace, however, a 
 gradual expansion of Babylonian dominion, even to the borders of Egypt. 
 Nabo Polassar, B.C. 625 to B.C. 604, was a great warrior, and at Car- 
 chemish defeated even the almost invincible Egyptians, B.C. 604. 
 
 His successor, Nebuchadnezzar, B.C. 604, immediately set about the 
 fortification of his capital. A space of more than 130 square miles was 
 enclosed within walls 80 feet in breadth and 300 or 400 in height, if we 
 may believe the record. Meanwhile, with the assistance of Cyaxares, 
 King of Media, he captured Tyre, in Phoenicia, and Jerusalem, in Syria; 
 but fifteen years after Croesus had been taken prisoner and the Persian 
 Empire extended to the shores of the ^Lgean, the Empire of Babylon 
 fell before the conquering armies of Cyrus, the Persian. 
 
 HTHE Ionic and ALolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been 
 conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus : 
 "Down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been 
 free." Their conqueror, Crcesus, who ascended the throne in 
 560 B.C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity 
 and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless 
 treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole 
 of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east ; on the 
 other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his 
 brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary 
 which we cannot define, but comprising, in a south-eastern 
 direction, Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the 
 Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of Mount 
 Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey). 
 Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and 
 the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldaeans, under 
 their king Labynetus : a territory populous and fertile, partly 
 by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes 
 us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it after- 
 ward in its decline but which was then in its most nourishing 
 condition. The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus reached 
 to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories 
 both Judaea and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned the native king 
 Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his throne by a
 
 252 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 large body of Grecian mercenaries and himself favorably dis- 
 posed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Laby- 
 netus and with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of alliance; and 
 as Astyages was his brother-in-law, the four kings might well 
 be deemed out of the reach of calamity. Yet within the space 
 of thirty years, or a little more, the whole of their territories 
 had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an 
 adventurer as yet not known even by name. 
 
 The rise and fall of oriental dynasties have been in all times 
 distinguished by the same general features. A brave and 
 adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, 
 warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion ; while his successors, 
 abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also 
 to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of 
 time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had 
 enabled their own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great 
 founder of the Persian empire, first the subject and afterward 
 the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to their 
 general description, as far, at least, as we can pretend to know 
 his history. For in truth even the conquests of Cyrus, after 
 he became ruler of Media, are very imperfectly known, while 
 the facts which preceded his rise up to that sovereignty can- 
 not be said to be known at all : we have to choose between dif- 
 ferent accounts at variance with each other, and of which the 
 most complete and detailed is stamped with all the character 
 of romance. The Cyropaedia of Xenophon is memorable and 
 interesting, considered with reference to the Greek mind, and 
 as a philosophical novel. That it should have been quoted so 
 largely as authority on matters of history, is only one proof 
 among many how easily authors have been satisfied as to 
 the essentials of historical evidence. The narrative given by 
 Herodotus of the relations between Cyrus and Astyages, 
 agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the fact that it 
 makes Cyrus son of Cambyses and Mandane and grandson 
 of Astyages, goes even beyond the story of Romulus and 
 Remus in respect to tragical incident and contrast. Astyages, 
 alarmed by a dream, condemns the newborn infant of his 
 daughter Mandane to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom the 
 order is given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen,
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 253 
 
 who exposes it in the mountains, where it is miraculously 
 suckled by a bitch. Thus preserved, and afterward brought 
 up as the herdsman's child, Cyrus manifests great superiority, 
 both physical and mental ; is chosen king in play by the boys 
 of the village, and in this capacity severely chastises the son 
 of one of the courtiers ; for which offense he is carried before 
 Astyages, who recognizes him for his grandson, but is assured 
 by the Magi that the dream is out and that he has no further 
 danger to apprehend from the boy and therefore permits 
 him to live. With Harpagus, however, Astyages is extremely 
 incensed, for not having executed his orders: he causes the 
 son of Harpagus to be slain, and served up to be eaten by his 
 unconscious father at a regal banquet. The father, apprised 
 afterward of the fact, dissembles his feelings, but meditates a 
 deadly vengeance against Astyages for this Thyestean meal. 
 He persuades Cyrus, who has been sent back to his father 
 and mother in Persia, to head a revolt of the Persians against 
 the Medes; whilst Astyages to fill up the Grecian concep- 
 tion of madness as a precursor to ruin sends an army against 
 the revolters, commanded by Harpagus himself. Of course 
 the army is defeated Astyages, after a vain resistance, is 
 dethroned Cyrus becomes king in his place and Harpagus 
 repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest 
 insults. 
 
 Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given 
 at some length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the 
 reader sufficiently romantic; though the historian intimates 
 that he had heard three other narratives different from it, and 
 that all were more full of marvels, as well as in wider circula- 
 tion, than his own, which he had borrowed from some unusu- 
 ally sober-minded Persian informants. In what points the 
 other three stories departed from it we do not hear. 
 
 To the historian of Halicarnassus we have to oppose Cte- 
 sias the physician of the neighboring town of Cnidus who 
 contradicted Herodotus, not without strong terms of. censure, 
 on many points, and especially upon that which is the very foun- 
 dation of the early narrative respecting Cyrus ; for he affirmed 
 that Cyrus was no way related to Astyages. However indig- 
 nant we may be with Ctesias for the disparaging epithets
 
 254 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 which he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is tc 
 us inestimable we must nevertheless admit that, as surgeon 
 in actual attendance on king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and healer 
 of the wound inflicted on that prince at Cunaxa by his brother 
 Cyrus the younger, he had better opportunities even than 
 Herodotus of conversing with sober-minded Persians, and 
 that the discrepancies between the two statements are to be 
 taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally 
 accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled 
 to choose one out of four. So rare and late a plant is histor- 
 ical authenticity. 
 
 That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the 
 space which he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of 
 longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the 
 Indus, are facts quite indisputable ; but of the steps by which 
 this was achieved, we know very little. The native Persians, 
 whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an aggre- 
 gate of seven agricultural, and four nomadic tribes all of them 
 rude, hardy, and brave dwelling in a mountainous region, 
 clothed in skins, ignorant of wine, or fruit, or any of the com- 
 monest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of pur- 
 chase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dig- 
 nity, probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among 
 one another. First in estimation among them stood the Pasar- 
 gadae ; and the first phratry or clan among the Pasargadae were 
 the Achaemenidae, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether 
 his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a 
 matter of fact, or a politic fiction, we cannot well determine. 
 But Xenophon, in noticing the spacious deserted cities, Larissa 
 and Mespila, which he saw in his march with the ten thou- 
 sand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us to 
 understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was 
 reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted 
 struggle. However this may be, the preponderance of the 
 Persians was at last complete : though the Medes always con- 
 tinued to be the second nation in the empire, after the Per- 
 sians, properly so called ; and by early Greek writers the great 
 enemy in the East is often called " the Mede " as well as " the 
 Persian." The Median Ekbatana too remained as one of the
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 255 
 
 capital cities, and the usual summer residence, of the kings of 
 Persia; Susa on the Choaspes, on the Kissian plain farther 
 southward, and east of the Tigris, being their winter abode. 
 
 The vast space of country comprised between the Indus 
 on the east, the Oxus and Caspian Sea to the north, the Per- 
 sian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, and the line of Mount 
 Zagros to the west, appears to have been occupied in these 
 times by a great variety of different tribes and people, yet all 
 or most of them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and 
 speaking dialects of the Zend language. It was known 
 amongst its inhabitants by the common name of Iran or Aria: 
 it is, in its central parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally 
 destitute of wood, and scantily supplied with water; much of 
 it indeed is a salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible of culture. 
 Parts of it are eminently fertile, where water can be procured 
 and irrigation applied. Scattered masses of tolerably dense 
 population thus grew up ; but continuity of cultivation is not 
 practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large propor- 
 tion of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of wan- 
 dering or nomadic tribes with their tents and cattle. The rich 
 pastures, and the freshness of the summer climate, in the 
 region of mountain and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by 
 modern travellers, just as they attracted the Great King in 
 ancient times during the hot months. The more southerly 
 province called Persis proper (Faristan) consists also in part 
 of mountain land interspersed with valley and plain, abund- 
 antly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually down 
 to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry : the care 
 bestowed both by Medes and Persians on the breeding of their 
 horses was remarkable. There were doubtless material dif- 
 ferences between different parts of the population of this vast 
 plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along with their common 
 language and religion, they had also something of a common 
 character, which contrasted with the Indian population east of 
 the Indus, the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Mas- 
 sagetae and other Nomads of the Caspian and the Sea of Aral 
 less brutish, restless and blood-thirsty than the latter more 
 fierce, contemptuous and extortionate, and less capable of sus- 
 tained industry, than the two former. There can be little
 
 356 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 doubt, at the time of which we are now speaking, when the 
 wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their maximum, that 
 Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been since 
 European observers have been able to survey it especially the 
 north-eastern portion, Bactria and Sogdiana so that the inva- 
 sions of the Nomads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have 
 been so destructive at various intervals since the Mohamme- 
 dan conquest, were before that period successfully kept back. 
 
 The general analogy among the population of Iran proba- 
 bly enabled the Persian conqueror with comparative ease to 
 extend his empire to the east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, 
 and to become the full heir of the Median kings. If we may 
 believe Ctesias, even the distant province of Bactria had been 
 before subject to those kings. At first it resisted Cyrus, but 
 finding that he had become son-in-law of Astyages, as well as 
 master of his person, it speedily acknowledged his authority. 
 
 According to the representation of Herodotus, the war 
 between Cyrus and Croesus of Lydia began shortly after the 
 capture of Astyages, and before the conquest of Bactria. 
 Croesus was the assailant, wishing to avenge his brother-in- 
 law, to arrest the growth of the Persian conqueror, and to 
 increase his own dominions. His more prudent counsellors in 
 vain represented to him that he had little to gain, and much 
 to lose, by war with a nation alike hardy and poor. He is rep- 
 resented as just at that time recovering from the affliction aris- 
 ing out of the death of his son. 
 
 To ask advice of the oracle, before he took any final decision, 
 was a step which no pious king would omit. But in the pres- 
 ent perilous question, Croesus did more he took a precaution 
 so extreme, that if his piety had not been placed beyond all 
 doubt by his extraordinary munificence to the temples, he 
 might have drawn upon himself the suspicion of a guilty scep- 
 ticism. Before he would send to ask advice respecting the 
 project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of the chief 
 surrounding oracles Delphi, Dodona, Branchidae near Mile- 
 tus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophonius at Labadeia, and 
 Ammon in Libya. His envoys started from Sardis on the 
 same day, and were all directed on the hundredth day after- 
 ward to ask at the respective oracles how Croesus was at that
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 257 
 
 precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the 
 manner in which it was met by four out of the six oracles con- 
 sulted we have no information, and it rather appears that their 
 answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his 
 credit undiminished, while Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient 
 than Apollo at Branchidae, solved the question with such unerr- 
 ing precision, as to afford a strong additional argument against 
 persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination. No 
 sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian 
 priestess, on the day named, " What is Croesus now doing ? " 
 than she exclaimed in the accustomed hexameter verse, "I 
 know the number of grains of sand, and the measures of the 
 sea : I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks 
 not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled 
 in a copper with lamb's flesh copper above and copper below." 
 Croesus was awe-struck on receiving this reply. It described 
 with the utmost detail that which he had been really doing, so 
 that he accounted the Delphian oracle and that of Amphiaraus 
 the only trustworthy oracles on earth following up these feel- 
 ings with a holocaust of the most munificent character, in 
 order to win the favor of the Delphian god. Three thousand 
 cattle were offered up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile were 
 placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics, together 
 with couches and censers of gold and silver ; besides which he 
 sent to Delphi itself the richest presents in gold and silver- 
 ingots, statues, bowls, jugs, etc., the size and weight of which 
 we read with astonishment ; the more so as Herodotus himself 
 saw them a century afterwards at Delphi. Nor was Croesus 
 altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been 
 creditable, though less triumphant than that of the Pythian 
 priestess. He sent to Amphiaraus a spear and shield of pure 
 gold, which were afterward seen at Thebes by Herodotus : this 
 large donative may help the reader to conceive the immensity 
 of those which he sent to Delphi. 
 
 The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to 
 ask at the same time, whether Croesus should undertake an 
 expedition against the Persians and if so, whether he should 
 solicit any allies to assist him. In regard to the second ques- 
 tion, the answer both of Apollo and of Amphiaraus was deci. 
 
 E., VOL. I. 17
 
 258 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 sive, recommending him to invite the alliance of the most 
 powerful Greeks. In regard to the first and most momentous 
 question, their answer was as remarkable for circumspection 
 as it had been before for detective sagacity : they told Croesus 
 that if he invaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty 
 monarchy. The blindness of Croesus interpreted this declara- 
 tion into an unqualified promise of success: he sent further 
 presents to the oracle, and again inquired whether his king- 
 dom would be durable. " When a mule shall become king oi 
 the Medes (replied the priestess) then must thou run away 
 be not ashamed." 
 
 More assured than ever by such an answer, Croesus sent 
 to Sparta, under the kings Anaxandrides and Aristo, to tender 
 presents and solicit their alliance. His propositions were 
 favorably entertained the more so, as he had before gratui- 
 tously furnished some gold to the Lacedaemonians for a statue 
 to Apollo. The alliance now formed was altogether general 
 no express effort being as yet demanded from them, though it 
 soon came to be. But the incident is to be noted, as marking 
 the first plunge of the leading Grecian state into Asiatic poli- 
 tics ; and that too without any of the generous Hellenic sym- 
 pathy which afterward induced Athens to send her citizens 
 across the JEgean. At this time Croesus was the master and 
 tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, whose contingents seem 
 to have formed part of his army for the expedition now con- 
 templated-; an army consisting principally, not of native Lydi- 
 ans, but of foreigners. 
 
 The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between 
 the Median and Lydian empires : and Croesus, marching across 
 that river into the territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of 
 Cappadocia, took the city of Pteria, with many of its sur- 
 rounding dependencies, inflicting damage and destruction upon 
 these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time in 
 bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than 
 that of Croesus ; trying at the same time, though unsuccess- 
 fully, to prevail on the lonians to revolt from him. A bloody 
 battle took place between the two armies, but with indecisive 
 result : after which Croesus, seeing that he could not hope to 
 accomplish more with his forces as they stood, thought it wise
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 259 
 
 to return to his capital, and collect a larger army for the next 
 campaign. Immediately on reaching Sardis he despatched 
 envoys to Labynetus king of Babylon; to Amasis, king of 
 Egypt ; to the Lacedaemonians, and to other allies ; calling 
 upon all of them to send auxiliaries to Sardis during the 
 course of the fifth month. In the mean time he dismissed all 
 the foreign troops who had followed him into Cappadocia. 
 
 Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have 
 been prosecuted with success. And on the part of the Lace- 
 daemonians, at least, there was no tardiness; for their ships 
 were ready and their troops almost on board, when the unex- 
 pected news reached them that Crcesus was already ruined. 
 Cyrus had foresen and forestalled the defensive plan of his 
 enemy. Pushing on with his army to Sardis without delay, he 
 obliged the Lydian prince to give battle with his own unas- 
 sisted subjects. The open and spacious plain before that town 
 was highly favorable to Lydian cavalry, which at that time 
 (Herodotus tells us) was superior to the Persian. But Cyrus, 
 employing a strategem whereby this cavalry was rendered 
 unavailable, placed in front of his line the baggage camels, 
 which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or 
 to behold. The horsemen of Crcesus were thus obliged to dis- 
 mount; nevertheless they fought bravely on foot, and were 
 not driven into the town till after a sanguinary combat. 
 
 Though confined within the walls of his capital, Crcesus 
 had still good reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival 
 of his allies, to whom he sent pressing envoys of acceleration. 
 For Sardis was considered impregnable and one assault had 
 already been repulsed, and the Persians would have been 
 reduced to the slow process of blockade. But on the four- 
 teenth day of the siege, accident did for the besiegers that 
 which they could not have accomplished either by skill or 
 force. Sardis was situated on an outlying peak of the north- 
 ern side of Tmolus; it was well fortified everywhere except 
 toward the mountain ; and on that side the rock was so pre- 
 cipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications were thought 
 unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault to be pos- 
 sible in that quarter. But Hyrceades, a Persian soldier, having 
 accidentally seen one of the garrison descending this precipi-
 
 2<5o CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 tous rock to pick up his helmet which had rolled down, watched 
 his opportunity, tried to climb up, and found it not imprac- 
 ticable ; others followed his example, the stronghold was thus 
 seized first, and the whole city speedily taken by storm. 
 
 Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Croesus, 
 who was accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were 
 made for a solemn and terrible spectacle ; the captive king was 
 destined to be burned in chains, together with fourteen Lydian 
 youths, on a vast pile of wood. We are even told that the 
 pile was already kindled and the victim beyond the reach of 
 human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to preserve 
 him. As to the general fact of supernatural interposition, in 
 one way or another, Herodotus and Ctesias both agree, though 
 they described differently the particular miracles wrought. It 
 is certain that Crcesus, after some time, was released and well 
 treated by his conqueror, and lived to become the confidential 
 adviser of the latter as well as of his son Cambyses : Ctesias 
 also acquaints us that a considerable town and territory near 
 Ekbatana, called Barene, was assigned to him, according to a 
 practice which we shall find not infrequent with the Persian 
 kings. 
 
 The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations 
 between Persians and Lydians, whereby Crcesus is said by 
 Herodotus to have first earned this favorable treatment, are 
 hardly worth repeating; but the indignant remonstrance sent 
 by Crcesus to the Delphian god is too characteristic to be 
 passed over. He obtained permission from Cyrus to lay upon 
 the holy pavement of the Delphian temple the chains with 
 which he had at first been bound. The Lydian envoys were 
 instructed, after exhibiting to the god these humiliating memo- 
 rials, to ask whether it was his custom to deceive his benefac- 
 tors, and whether he was not ashamed to have encouraged the 
 king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous ? The god, conde- 
 scending to justify himself by the lips of the priestess, replied: 
 " Not even a god can escape his destiny. Crcesus has suffered 
 for the sin of his fifth ancestor (Gyges), who, conspiring with 
 a woman, slew his master and wrongfully seized the sceptre. 
 Apollo employed all his influence with the Mcerae (Fates) to 
 obtain that this sin might be expiated by the children of Croe-
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 261 
 
 sus, and not by Croesus himself; but the Mcerae would grant 
 nothing more than a postponement of the judgment for three 
 years. Let Croesus know that Apollo has thus procured for him 
 a reign three years longer than his original destiny, after having 
 tried in vain to rescue him altogether. Moreover he sent that 
 rain which at the critical moment extinguished the burning 
 pile. Nor has Croesus any right to complain of the prophecy 
 by which he was encouraged to enter on the war; for when 
 the god told him that he would subvert a great empire, it was 
 his duty to have again inquired which empire the god meant ; 
 and if he neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask for 
 information, he has himself to blame for the result. Besides, 
 Croesus neglected the warning given to him about the acquisi- 
 tion of the Median kingdom by a mule : Cyrus was that mule 
 son of a Median mother of royal breed, by a Persian father 
 at once of different race and of lower position." 
 
 This triumphant justification extorted even from Croesus 
 himself a full confession that the sin lay with him, and not with 
 the god. It certainly illustrates in a remarkable manner the 
 theological ideas of the time. It shows us how much, in the 
 mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his 
 own, unrecorded as they were by any contemporary author- 
 ity, tended to cast themselves into a sort of religious drama ; 
 the threads of the historical web being in part put together, in 
 part orignally spun, for the purpose of setting forth the relig- 
 ious sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian 
 priestess predicts to Gyges that the crime which he had com- 
 mitted in assassinating his master would be expiated by his 
 fifth descendant, though, as Herodotus tells us, no one took 
 any notice of this prophecy until it was at last fulfilled : we 
 see thus the history of the first Mermnad king is made up 
 after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the 
 main facts of the history of Croesus profoundly striking to the 
 Greek mind, a king at the summit of wealth and power pious 
 in the extreme and munificent toward the gods the first 
 destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia then precipitated, at 
 once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the 
 first parent helped much toward the solution of this perplexing 
 problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made
 
 26? CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affect- 
 ing story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished 
 with an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself 
 the happiest of mankind the gods not suffering any one to 
 be arrogant except themselves ; and the warning of Solon is 
 made to recur to Crcesus after he has become the prisoner of 
 Cyrus, in the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein of 
 thought belongs the story, just recounted, of the relations of 
 Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided, 
 satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and 
 why he was ruined but nothing less than the overruling and 
 omnipotent Moerae could be invoked to explain so stupendous 
 a result. It is rarely that these supreme goddesses or hyper- 
 goddesses, since the gods themselves must submit to them 
 are brought into such distinct light and action. Usually they 
 are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen 
 stumbling block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility ; and 
 it is difficult clearly to determine (as in the case of some com- 
 plicated political constitutions) where the Greeks conceived 
 sovereign power to reside, in respect to the government of the 
 world. But here the sovereignly of the Mcerae, and the sub- 
 ordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth. The 
 gods are still extremely powerful, because the Moerae comply 
 with their requests up to a certain point, not thinking it proper 
 to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is carried no 
 farther than they themselves choose ; nor would they, even in 
 deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment 
 for the sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant 
 a sentence, moreover, which Apollo himself had formerly 
 prophesied shortly after the sin was committed, so that, if the 
 Moerae had listened to his intercession on behalf of Crcesus, 
 his own prophetic credit would have been endangered. Their 
 unalterable resolution has predetermined the ruin of Crcesus, 
 and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the circum- 
 stance that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to 
 alter it, or to grant more than a three years' respite. The 
 religious element must here be viewed as giving the form, 
 the historical element as giving the matter only, and not the 
 whole matter, of the story. These two elements will be found
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 263 
 
 conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of 
 Herodotus, though as we descend to later times, we shall find 
 the latter element in constantly increasing proportion. His 
 conception of history is extremely different from that of Thucy- 
 dides, who lays down to himself the true scheme and purpose 
 of the historian, common to him with the philosopher to 
 recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid toward pre- 
 vision of the future. 
 
 In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost 
 work of Ctesias, no mention appears of the important conquest 
 of Babylon. His narrative, indeed, as far as the abstract 
 enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Hero- 
 dotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different. 
 
 " I shall mention (says Herodotus) these conquests which 
 gave Cyrus most trouble, and are most memorable : after he 
 had subdued all the rest of the continent, he attacked the 
 Assyrians." Those who recollect the description of Babylon 
 and its surrounding territory, will not be surprised to learn that 
 the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor much trouble. 
 Their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been taken 
 at all or indeed how a hostile army could have even reached 
 it. Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen Nitocris 
 (mother of that very Labynetus who was king when Cyrus 
 attacked the place) apprehensive of invasion from the Medes 
 after their capture of Nineveh, had executed many laborious 
 works near the Euphrates for the purpose of obstructing their 
 approach. Moreover there existed what was called the wall of 
 Media (probably built by her, but certainly built prior to the 
 Persian conquest), one hundred feet high and twenty feet 
 thick, across the entire space of seventy-five miles which joined 
 the Tigris with one of the canals of the Euphrates : while the 
 canals themselves, as we may see by the march of the ten 
 thousand Greeks after the battle of Cunaxa, presented means 
 of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army such as that 
 of the Persians. On the east, the territory of Babylonia was 
 defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded lower than the 
 ancient Nineveh or the modern Mosul. In addition to these 
 ramparts, natural as well as artificial, to protect the territory- 
 populous, cultivated, productive, and offering every motive to
 
 264 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 its inhabitants to resist even the entrance of an enemy we are 
 told that the Babylonians were so thoroughly prepared for the 
 inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated within their walls a 
 store of provisions for many years. Strange as it may seem, 
 we must suppose that the king of Babylon, after all the cost 
 and labor spent in providing defences for the territory, volun- 
 tarily neglected to avail himself of them, suffered the invader 
 to tread down the fertile Babylonia without resistance, and 
 merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when he arrived 
 under the walls of the city if the statement of Herodotus is 
 correct. And we may illustrate this unaccountable omission 
 by that which we know to have happened in the march of the 
 younger Cyrus to Cunuxa against his brother Artaxerxes 
 Mnemon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in 
 preparation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch (thirty 
 feet wide and eight feet deep) from the wall of Media to the 
 river Euphrates, a distance of twelve parasangs or forty-five 
 English miles, leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close 
 alongside of the river. Yet when the invading army arrived 
 at this important pass, they found not a man there to defend 
 it, and all of them marched without resistance through the 
 narrow inlet. Cyrus the younger, who had up to that moment 
 felt assured that his brother would fight, now supposed that 
 he had given up the idea of defending Babylon: instead of 
 which, two days afterward, Artaxerxes attacked him on an open 
 plain of ground where there was no advantage of position on 
 either side ; though the invaders were taken rather unawares 
 in consequence of their extreme confidence arising from recent 
 unopposed entrance within the artificial ditch. This anecdote 
 is the more valuable as an illustration, because all its circum- 
 stances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye-witness. 
 And both the two incidents here brought into comparison dem- 
 onstrate the recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity of cal- 
 culation belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day as well as 
 the great command of hands possessed by these kings, and their 
 prodigal waste of human labor. Vast walls and deep ditches 
 are an inestimable aid to a brave and well-commanded garrison ; 
 but they cannot be made entirely to supply the want of bravery 
 and intelligence.
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 265 
 
 In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon 
 may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by 
 Cyrus is certain. On first setting out for this conquest, he 
 was about to cross the river Gyndes (one of the affluents from 
 the east which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and 
 along which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount 
 Zagros from Babylon to Ekbatana) when one of the sacred 
 white horses, which accompanied him, entered the river in 
 pure wantonness and tried to cross it by himself. The Gyndes 
 resented this insult and the horse was drowned : upon which 
 Cyrus swore in his wrath that he would so break the strength 
 of the river as that women in future should pass it without 
 wetting their knees. Accordingly he employed his entire army, 
 during the whole summer season, in digging three hundred and 
 sixty artificial channels to disseminate the unit of the stream. 
 Such, according to Herodotus, was the incident which post- 
 poned for one year the fall of the great Babylon. But in the 
 next spring Cyrus and his army were before the walls, after 
 having defeated and driven in the population who came out to 
 fight. These walls were artificial mountains (three hundred 
 feet high, seventy-five feet thick, and forming a square of fifteen 
 miles to each side), within which the besieged defied attack, 
 and even blockade, having previously stored up several years' 
 provision. Through the midst of the town, however, flowed the 
 Euphrates. That river which had been so laboriously trained 
 to serve for protection, trade and sustenance to the Babylo- 
 nians, was now made the avenue of their ruin. Having left a 
 detachment of his army at the two points where the Euphrates 
 enters and quits the city, Cyrus retired with the remainder to 
 the higher part of its course, where an ancient Babylonian 
 queen had prepared one of the great lateral reservoirs for carry- 
 ing off in case of need the superfluity of its water. Near this 
 point Cyrus caused another reservoir and another canal of com- 
 munication to be dug, by means of which he drew off the water 
 of the Euphrates to such a degree it became not above the 
 height of a man's thigh. The period chosen was that of a 
 great Babylonian festival, when the whole population were 
 engaged in amusement and revelry. The Persian troops left 
 near the town, watching their opportunity, entered from both
 
 266 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 sides along the bed of the river, and took it by surprise with 
 scarcely any resistance. At no other time, except during a 
 festival, could they have done this (says Herodotus) had the 
 river been ever so low, for both banks throughout the whole 
 length of the town were provided with quays, with continuous 
 walls, and with gates at the end of every street which led down 
 to the river at right angles so that if the population had not 
 been disqualified by the influences of the moment, they would 
 have caught the assailants in the bed of the river "as in a trap," 
 and overwhelmed them from the walls alongside. Within a 
 square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not surprised to hear 
 that both the extremities were already in the power of the 
 besiegers before the central population heard of it, and while 
 they were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity. 
 
 Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circum- 
 stances which placed Bablyon the greatest city of Western 
 Asia in the power of the Persians. To what extent the infor- 
 mation communicated to him was incorrect or exaggerated, we 
 cannot now decide. The way in which the city was treated 
 would lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot have cost 
 the conqueror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes 
 into the list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with their 
 whole territory become tributary to the Persians, forming the 
 richest satrapy in the empire ; but we do not hear that the peo- 
 ple were otherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls 
 and gates were left untouched. This was very different from 
 the way in which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems 
 to have been ruined and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, 
 though reoccupied on a reduced scale under the Parthian 
 empire ; and very different also from the way in which Babylon 
 itself was treated twenty years afterward by Darius, when 
 reconquered after a revolt. 
 
 The importance of Babylon, marking as it does one of the 
 peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world 
 in a state of full development, gives an interest even to the half- 
 authenticated stories respecting its capture. The other exploits 
 ascribed to Cyrus his invasion of India, across the desert of 
 Arachosia and his attack upon the Massagetae, Nomads ruled 
 by Queen Tomyris and greatly resembling the Scythians, across
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 267 
 
 the mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxes are too 
 little known to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he is said to 
 have perished, his army being defeated in a bloody battle. He 
 was buried at Pasargadae, in his native province of Persis proper, 
 where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking 
 up of the empire, while his memory was held in profound ven- 
 eration among the Persians. Of his real exploits we know lit- 
 tle or nothing, but in what we read respecting him there seems, 
 though amid constant fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon 
 has selected his life as the subject of a moral romance which 
 for a long time was cited as authentic history, and which even 
 now serves as an authority, express or implied, for disputable 
 and even incorrect conclusions. His extraordinary activity and 
 conquests admit of no doubt. He left the Persian empire 
 extending from Sogdiana and the rivers Jaxartes and Indus 
 eastward, to the Hellespont and the Syrian coast westward, and 
 his successors made no permanent addition to it except that of 
 Egypt. Phenicia and Judaea were dependencies of Babylon, 
 at the time when he conquered it, with their princes and 
 grandees in Babylonian captivity. As they seem to have 
 yielded to him, and became his tributaries without difficulty ; 
 so the restoration of their captives was conceded to them. It 
 was from Cyrus that the habits of the Persian kings took com- 
 mencement, to dwell at Susa in the winter, and Ekbatana dur- 
 ing the summer ; the primitive territory of Persis, with its two 
 towns of Persepolis and Pasargadae, being reserved for the 
 burial-place of the kings and the religious sanctuary of the 
 empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was made, we 
 are not informed. It lay eastward of the Tigris, between 
 Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, as 
 far as we can discern, were of Assyrian and not of Aryan race. 
 The river Choaspes near Susa was supposed to furnish the 
 only water fit for the palate of the great king, and it is said to 
 have been carried about with him wherever he went. 
 
 While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the 
 distinct types of civilization in Western Asia not by elevating 
 the worse, but by degrading the better upon the native Per- 
 sians themselves they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, 
 provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike
 
 268 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 
 
 propensities. Not only did the territory of Persis proper pay 
 no tribute to Susa or Ekbatana being the only district so 
 exempted between the Jaxartes and the Mediterranean but 
 the vast tributes received from the remaining empire were dis- 
 tributed to a great degree among its inhabitants. Empire to 
 them meant for the great men, lucrative satrapies or pachalics, 
 with powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of 
 the great king, and standing armies which they employed at 
 their own discretion sometimes against each other for the 
 common soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant 
 plunder, abundant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, 
 either in the suite of one of the satraps, or in the large perma- 
 nent troops which moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the 
 Great King. And if the entire population of Persis proper did 
 not migrate from their abodes to occupy some of those more 
 inviting spots which the immensity of the imperial dominion 
 furnished a dominion extending (to use the language of Cyrus 
 the younger before the battle of Cunaxa) from the region of 
 insupportable heat to that of insupportable cold this was only 
 because the early kings discouraged such a movement, in order 
 that the nation might maintain its military hardihood and be in 
 a situation to furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers. The 
 self-esteem and arrogance of the Persians were no less remark- 
 able than their avidity for sensual enjoyment. They were fond 
 of wine to excess ; their wives and their concubines were both 
 numerous ; and they adopted eagerly from foreign nations new 
 fashions of luxury as well as of ornament. Even to novelties 
 in religion, they were not strongly averse. For though dis- 
 ciples of Zoroaster, with Magi as their priests and as indispen- 
 sable companions of their sacrifices, worshipping sun, moon, 
 earth, fire, etc., and recognizing neither image, temple, nor 
 altar yet they had adopted the voluptuous worship of the god- 
 dess Mylitta from the Assyrians and Arabians. A numerous 
 male offspring was the Persian's boast. His warlike charater 
 and consciousness of force were displayed in the education of 
 these youths, who were taught, from five years old to twenty, 
 only three things to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak 
 the truth. To owe money, or even to buy and sell, was 
 accounted among the Persians disgraceful a sentiment which
 
 CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT 269 
 
 they defended by saying that both the one and the other 
 imposed the necessity of telling falsehood. To exact tribute 
 from subjects, to receive pay or presents from the king, and to 
 give away without forethought whatever was not immediately 
 wanted, was their mode of dealing with money. Industrial 
 pursuits were left to the conquered, who were fortunate if by 
 paying a fixed contribution and sending a military contingent 
 when required, they could purchase undisturbed immunity for 
 their remaining concerns. They could not thus purchase safety 
 for the family hearth, since we find instances of noble Grecian 
 maidens torn from their parents for the harem of the satrap. 
 
 To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political 
 society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a 
 conqueror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excite- 
 ment and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had 
 found them slaves, and made them masters : he was the first 
 and greatest of national benefactors, as well as the moot for- 
 ward of leaders in the field : they followed him from one con- 
 quest to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their love 
 of empire growing with the empire itself. And this impulse of 
 aggrandizement continued unabated during the reigns of his 
 three next successors Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes until 
 it was at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of 
 Plataea and Salamis ; after which the Persians became content 
 with defending themselves at home and playing a secondary 
 game.
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE SAGE 
 
 B.C. 550 
 
 R. K, DOUGLAS 
 
 Confucius is the Latinized name of Kung Futusze, or " Master Kung," 
 whose work in China did much to educate the people in social and civic 
 virtues. He began as a political reformer at a time when the empire 
 was cut up into a number of petty and discordant principalities. As a 
 practical statesman and administrator, he urged the necessity of reform 
 upon the princes whom one after another he served. His advice was 
 invariably disregarded, and as he said " no intelligent ruler arose in his 
 time." His great maxims of submission to the emperor or supreme head 
 of the state he based on the analogous duty of filial obedience in a house- 
 hold, and his very spirit of piety prevented him from taking independent 
 measures for redressing the evils and oppressions of his distracted 
 country. 
 
 His moral teachings are not based on any specific religious foun- 
 dation, but they have become the settled code of Chinese life, of which 
 submissiveness to authority, industry, frugality, and fair dealing as pre- 
 scribed by Confucian ethics are general characteristics. The political 
 doctrines of this great reformer were eventually adopted, and his teach- 
 ing and example brought about a peaceful and gradual, but complete 
 revolution, in the Chinese Empire, whose consolidation into a simple 
 kingdom was the practical result of this sage's influence. 
 
 A T the time of which we write the Chinese were still clinging 
 to the banks of the Yellow River, along which they had 
 first entered the country, and formed, within the limits of 
 China proper, a few states on either shore lying between the 
 33d and 38th parallels of latitude, and the io6th and ngth of 
 longitude. The royal state of Chow occupied part of the mod- 
 ern province of Honan. To the north of this was the powerful 
 state of Tsin, embracing the modern province of Shanse and 
 part of Chili ; to the south was the barbarous state of Ts'oo, 
 which stretched as far as the Yang-tsze-kiang ; to the east, 
 reaching to the coast, were a number of smaller states, among 
 which those of Ts'e, Loo, Wei, Sung, and Ching were the chief 
 
 270
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 271 
 
 and to the west of the Yellow River was the state of Ts'in, 
 which was destined eventually to gain the mastery over the 
 contending principalities." 
 
 On the establishment of the Chow dynasty, King Woo had 
 apportioned these fiefships among members of his family, his 
 adherents, and the descendants of some of the ancient virtuous 
 kings. Each prince was empowered to administer hir, govern- 
 ment as he pleased so long as he followed the general lines 
 indicated by history ; and in the event of any act of aggression 
 on the part of one state against another, the matter was to be 
 reported to the king of the sovereign state, who was bound to 
 punish the offender. It is plain that in such a system the ele- 
 ments of disorder must lie near the surface ; and no sooner was 
 the authority of the central state lessened by the want of ability 
 shown by the successors of kings Woo, Ching, and K'ang, than 
 constant strife broke out between the several chiefs. The hand 
 of every man was against his neighbor, and the smaller states 
 suffered the usual fate, under like circumstances, of being 
 encroached upon and absorbed, notwithstanding their appeals 
 for help to their common sovereign. The House of Chow hav- 
 ing been thus found wanting, the device was resorted to of 
 appointing one of the most powerful princes as a presiding 
 chief, who should exercise royal functions, leaving the king 
 only the title and paraphernalia of sovereignly. In fact, the 
 China of this period was governed and administered very 
 much as Japan was up till about twenty years ago. For 
 Mikado, Shogun, and ruling Daimios, read king, presiding 
 chief, and princes, and the parallel is as nearly as possible 
 complete. The result of the system, however, in the two coun- 
 tries was different, for apart from the support received by the 
 Mikado from the belief in his heavenly origin, the insular posi- 
 tion of Japan prevented the possibility of the advent of ele- 
 ments of disorder from without, whereas the principalities of 
 China were surrounded by semi-barbarous states, the chiefs of 
 which were engaged in constant warfare with them. 
 
 Confucius' deep spirit of loyalty to the House of Chow for- 
 bade his following in the Book of History the careers of the 
 sovereigns who reigned between the death of Muh in B.C. 946 
 and the accession of P'ing in 770. One after another these
 
 272 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 kings rose, reigned, and died, leaving each to his successor an 
 ever-increasing heritage of woe. During the reign of Seuen 
 (827-781) a gleam of light seems to have shot through the per- 
 vading darkness. Though falling far short of the excellencies 
 of the founders of the dynasty, he yet strove to follow, though 
 at a long interval, the examples they had set him ; and accord- 
 ing to the Chinese belief, as an acknowledgment from Heaven 
 of his efforts in the direction of virtue, it was given him to sit 
 upon the throne for nearly half a century. 
 
 His successor, Yew, "the Dark," appears to even less 
 advantage. No redeeming acts relieve the general disorder of 
 his reign, and at the instigation of a favorite concubine he is 
 said to have committed acts which place him on a level with 
 Kee and Show. Earthquakes, storms, and astrological por- 
 tents appeared as in the dark days at the close of the Hea and 
 Shang dynasties. His capital was surrounded by the barba- 
 rian allies of the Prince of Shin, the father of his wife, whom 
 he had dismissed at the request of his favorite, and in an 
 attempt to escape he fell a victim to their weapons. 
 
 With this event the Western Chow dynasty was brought 
 to a close. 
 
 Here, also, the Book of History comes to an end, and the 
 Spring and Autumn Annals by Confucius takes up the tale of 
 iniquity and disorder which overspread the land. No more 
 dreadful record of a nation's struggles can be imagined than 
 that contained in Confucius's history. The country was torn 
 by discord and desolated by wars. Husbandry was neglected, 
 the peace of households was destroyed, and plunder and rapine 
 were the watchwords of the time. 
 
 Such was the state of China at the time of the birth of Con- 
 fucius (B.C. 551). Of the parents of the Sage we know but 
 little, except that his father, Shuh-leang Heih, was a military 
 officer, eminent for his commanding stature, his great bravery, 
 and immense strength, and that his mother's name was Yen 
 Ching-tsai. The marriage of this couple took place when Heih 
 was seventy years old, and the prospect, therefore, of his hav- 
 ing an heir having been but slight, unusual rejoicings com- 
 memorated the birth of the son, who was destined to achieve 
 such everlasting fame.
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 273 
 
 Report says that the child was born in a cave on Mount 
 Ne, whither Ching-tsai went in obedience to a vision to be con- 
 fined. But this is but one of the many legends with which 
 Chinese historians love to surround the birth of Confucius. 
 With the same desire to glorify the Sage, and in perfect good 
 faith, they narrate how the event was heralded by strange por- 
 tents and miraculous appearances, how genii announced to 
 Ching-tsai the honor that was in store for her, and how fairies 
 attended at his nativity. 
 
 Of the early years of Confucius we have but scanty record. 
 It would seem that from his childhood he showed ritualistic 
 tendencies, and we are told that as a boy he delighted to play 
 at the arrangement of vessels and postures of ceremony. As 
 he advanced in years he became an earnest student of his- 
 tory, and looked back with love and reverence to the time 
 when the great and good Yaou and Shun reigned in 
 
 " A golden age, fruitful of golden deeds." 
 
 At the age of fifteen " he bent his mind to learning," and 
 when he was nineteen years old he married a lady from the 
 state of Sung. As has befallen many other great men, Confu- 
 cius' married life was not a happy one, and he finally divorced 
 his wife, not, however, before she had borne him a son. 
 
 Soon after his marriage, at the instigation of poverty, Con- 
 fucius accepted the office of keeper of the stores of grain, and 
 in the following year he was promoted to be guardian of the 
 public fields and lands. It was while holding this latter office 
 that his son was born, and so well known and highly esteemed 
 had he already become that the reigning duke, on hearing of 
 the event, sent him a present of a carp, from which circum- 
 stance the infant derived his name, Le ("a carp "). The name 
 of this son seldom occurs in the life of his illustrious father, 
 and the few references we have to him are enough to show 
 that a small share of paternal affection fell to his lot. " Have 
 you heard any lessons from your father different from what we 
 have all heard ? " asked an inquisitive disciple of him. " No," 
 replied Le, " he was standing alone once when I was passing 
 through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me, 
 * Have you read the Odes ? ' On my replying, ' Not yet,' he 
 
 E.. VOL. I. 18
 
 274 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 added, * If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to con 
 verse with.' Another day, in the same place and the same 
 way, he said to me, ' Have you read the rules of Propriety ? ' 
 On my replying, * Not yet,' he added, ' If you do not learn the 
 rules of Propriety, your character cannot be established.' " " I 
 asked one thing," said the enthusiastic disciple, "and I have 
 learned three things. I have learned about the Odes ; I have 
 learned about the rules of Propriety ; and I have learned that 
 the superior man maintains a distant reserve toward his son." 
 
 At the age of twenty-two we find Confucius released from 
 the toils of office, and devoting his time to the more congenial 
 task of imparting instruction to a band of admiring and earnest 
 students. With idle or stupid scholars he would have nothing 
 to do. " I do not open the truth," he said, " to one who is not 
 eager after knowledge, nor do I help any one who is not anx- 
 ious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner 
 of a subject, and the listener cannot from it learn the other 
 three, I do not repeat my lesson." 
 
 When twenty-eight years old Confucius studied archery, 
 and in the following years took lessons in music from the cele- 
 brated master, Seang. At thirty he tells us "he stood firm," 
 and about this time his fame mightily increased, many noble 
 youths enrolled themselves among his disciples; and on his 
 expressing a desire to visit the imperial court of Chow to confer 
 on the subject of ancient ceremonies with Laou Tan, the 
 founder of the Taouist sect, the reigning duke placed a carriage 
 and horses at his disposal for the journey. 
 
 The extreme veneration which Confucius entertained for 
 the founders of the Chow dynasty made the visit to Lo, the 
 capital, one of intense interest to him. With eager delight he 
 wandered through the temple and audience-chambers, the place 
 of sacrifices and the palace, and having completed his inspec- 
 tion of the position and shape of the various sacrificial and 
 ceremonial vessels, he turned to his disciples and said, " Now 
 I understand the wisdom of the duke of Chow, and how his 
 house attained to imperial sway." But the principal object ot 
 his visit to Chow was to confer with Laou-tsze ; and of the 
 interview between these two very dissimilar men we have vari- 
 ous accounts. The Confucian writers as a rule merely mention
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 275 
 
 the fact of their having met, but the admirers of Laou-tsze 
 affirm that Confucius was very roughly handled by his more 
 ascetic contemporary, who looked down from his somewhat 
 higher standpoint with contempt on the great apostle of 
 antiquity. It was only natural that Laou-tsze, who preached 
 that stillness and self-emptiness were the highest attainable 
 objects, should be ready to assail a man whose whole being 
 was wrapt up in ceremonial observances and conscious well- 
 doing. The very measured tones and considered movements 
 of Confucius, coupled with a certain admixture of that pride 
 which apes humility, must have been very irritating to the 
 metaphysically-minded treasurer. And it was eminently char- 
 acterisic of Confucius, that notwithstanding the great provoca- 
 tion given him on this occasion, he abstained from any rejoin- 
 der. We nowhere read of his engaging in a dispute. When 
 an opponent arose, it was in keeping with the doctrine of Con- 
 fucius to retire before him. " A sage," he said, " will not enter 
 a tottering state nor dwell in a disorganized one. When right 
 principles of government prevail he shows himself, but when 
 they are prostrated he remains concealed." And carrying out 
 the same principle in private life, he invariably refused to 
 wrangle. 
 
 It was possibly in connection with this incident that Con- 
 fucius drew the attention of his disciples to the metal statue of 
 a man with a triple clasp upon his mouth, which stood in the 
 ancestral temple at Lo. On the back of the statue were 
 inscribed these words : " The ancients were guarded in their 
 speech, and like them we should avoid loquacity. Many words 
 invite many defeats. Avoid also engaging in many busi- 
 nesses, for many businesses create many difficulties." 
 
 " Observe this, my children," said he, pointing to the in- 
 scription. " These words are true, and commend themselves 
 to our reason." 
 
 Having gained all the information he desired in Chow/ he 
 returned to Loo, where pupils flocked to him until, we are told, 
 he was surrounded by an admiring company of three thousand 
 disciples His stay in Loo was, however, of short duration, 
 for the three principal clans of the state, those of Ke, Shuh, 
 and Mang, after frequent contests between themselves, en-
 
 2 ;6 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 gaged in a war with the reigning duke, and overthrew his 
 armies. Upon this the duke took refuge in the state of T'se, 
 whither Confucius followed him. As he passed along the road 
 he saw a woman weeping at a tomb, and having compassion 
 on her, he sent his disciple Tsze-loo to ask her the cause of her 
 grief. " You weep as if you had experienced sorrow upon sor- 
 row," said Tsze-loo. " I have," said the woman, "my father-in- 
 law was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also ; and now 
 my son has met the same fate." " Why, then, do you not 
 remove from the place ? " asked Confucius. " Because here 
 there is no oppressive government," replied the woman. On 
 hearing this answer, Confucius remarked to his disciples, " My 
 children remember this, oppressive government is fiercer than 
 a tiger." 
 
 Possibly Confucius was attracted to T'se by a knowledge 
 that the music of the emperor Shun was still preserved at the 
 court. At all events, we are told that having heard a strain of 
 the much-desired music on his way to the capital, he hurried 
 on, and was so ra\ished with the airs he heard that for three 
 months he never tasted flesh. " I did not think," said he, 
 " that music could reach such a pitch of excellence." 
 
 Hearing of the arrival of the Sage, the duke of T'se King, 
 by name sent for him, and after some conversation, being 
 minded to act the part of a patron to so distinguished a visitor, 
 offered to make him a present of the city of Lin-k'ew with its 
 revenues. But this Confucius declined, remarking to his dis- 
 ciples, " A superior man will not receive rewards except for 
 services done. I have given advice to the duke King, but he 
 has not followed it as yet, and now he would endow me with 
 this place. Very far is he from understanding me." He still, 
 however, discussed politics with the duke, and taught him that 
 " There is good government when the prince is prince, and the 
 minister is minister ; when the father is father, and the son is 
 son." "Good," said the duke; "if, indeed, the prince be not 
 prince, the minister not minister, and the son not son, although 
 I have my revenue, can I enjoy it ? " 
 
 Though Duke King was by no means a satisfactory pupil, 
 many of his instincts were good, and he once again expressed 
 a desire to pension Confucius, that he might keep him at hand ;
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 277 
 
 but Gan Ying, the Prime Minister, dissuaded him from his 
 purpose. "These scholars," said the minister, "are impracti- 
 cable, and cannot be imitated. They are haughty and con 
 ceited of their own views, so that they will not rest satisfied in 
 inferior positions. They set a high value on all funeral cere- 
 monies, give way to their grief, and will waste their property 
 on great funerals, so that they would only be injurious to the 
 common manners. This Rung Footsze has a thousand peculi- 
 arities. It would take ages to exhaust all he knows about the 
 ceremonies of going up and going down. This is not the time 
 to examine into his rules of propriety. If you wish to employ 
 him to change the customs of T'se, you will not be making the 
 people your primary consideration." This reasoning had full 
 weight with the duke, who the next time he was urged to fol- 
 low the advice of Confucius, cut short the discussion by the 
 remark, " I am too old to adopt his doctrines." 
 
 Under these circumstances Confucius once more returned 
 to Loo, only however to find that the condition of the state was 
 still unchanged; disorder was rife; and the reins of govern- 
 ment were in the hands of the head of the strongest party for 
 the time being. This was no time for Confucius to take office, 
 and he devoted the leisure thus forced upon him to the com- 
 pilation of the " Book of Odes " and the " Book of History." 
 
 But in process of time order was once more restored, and 
 he then felt himself free to accept the post of magistrate of the 
 town of Chung-too, which was offered him by the duke King. 
 
 He now had an opportunity of putting his principles of gov- 
 ernment to the test, and the result partly justified his expecta- 
 tions. He framed rules for the support of the living, and for 
 the observation of rites for the dead ; he arranged appropriate 
 food for the old and the young; and he provided for the proper 
 separation of men and women. And the results were, we are 
 told, that, as in the time of King Alfred, a thing dropped on 
 the road was not picked up; there was no fraudulent carving 
 of vessels ; coffins were made of the ordained thickness ; graves 
 were unmarked by mounds raised over them; and no two 
 prices were charged in the markets. The duke, surprised at 
 what he saw, asked the sage whether his rule of government 
 could be applied to the whole state. " Certainly," replied Con-
 
 2 ;8 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 fucius, " and not only to the state of Loo, but to the whole 
 empire." Forthwith, therefore, the duke made him Assistant- 
 Superintendent of Works, and shortly afterwards appointed 
 him Minister of Crime. Here, again, his success was com- 
 plete. From the day of his appointment crime is said to have 
 disappeared, and the penal laws remained a dead letter. 
 
 Courage was recognized by Confucius as being one of the 
 great virtues, and about this period we have related two in- 
 stances in which he showed that he possessed both moral and 
 physical courage to a high degree. The chief of the Ke fam- 
 ily, being virtual possessor of the state, when the body of the 
 exiled Duke Chaou was brought from T'se for interment, 
 directed that it should be buried apart from the graves of his 
 ancestors. On Confucius becoming aware of his decision, he 
 ordered a trench to be dug round the burying-ground which 
 should enclose the new tomb. " Thus to censure a prince and 
 signalize his faults is not according to etiquette," said he to 
 Ke. " I have caused the grave to be included in the cemetery, 
 and I have done so to hide your disloyalty." And his action 
 was allowed to pass unchallenged. 
 
 The other instance referred to was on the occasion, a few 
 years later, of an interview between the dukes of Loo and T'se, 
 at which Confucius was present as master of ceremonies. At 
 his instigation an altar was raised at the place of meeting, 
 which was mounted by three steps, and on this the dukes 
 ascended, and having pledged one another proceeded to dis- 
 cuss a treaty of alliance. But treachery was intended on the 
 part of the duke of T'se, and at a given signal a band of sav- 
 ages advanced with beat of drum to carry off the duke of Loo. 
 Some such stratagem had been considered probable by Con- 
 fucius, and the instant the danger became imminent he rushed 
 to the altar and led away the duke. After much disorder, in 
 which Confucius took a firm and prominent part, a treaty was 
 concluded, and even some land on the south of the river Wan, 
 which had been taken by T'se, was by the exertions of the 
 Sage restored to Loo. On this recovered territory the people 
 of Loo, in memory of the circumstance, built a city and called 
 it, "The City of Confession." 
 
 But to return to Confucius as the Minister of Crime.
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 279 
 
 Though eminently successful, the results obtained under his 
 system were not quite such as his followers have represented 
 them to have been. No doubt crime diminished under his 
 rule, but it was by no means abolished. In fact, his biogra- 
 phers mention a case which must have been peculiarly shock- 
 ing to him. A father brought an accusation against his son, 
 in the expectation, probably, of gaining his suit with ease be- 
 fore a judge who laid such stress on the virtues of filial piety. 
 But to his surprise, and that of the on-lookers, Confucius cast 
 both father and son into prison, and to the remonstrances of 
 the head of the Ke clan answered, "Am I to punish for a 
 breach of filial piety one who has never been taught to be 
 filially minded ? Is not he who neglects to teach his son his 
 duties, equally guilty with the son who fails in them ? Crime is 
 not inherent in human nature, and therefore the father in the 
 family, and the government in the state, are responsible for the 
 crimes committed against filial piety and the public laws. If a 
 king is careless about publishing laws, and then peremptorily 
 punishes in accordance with the strict letter of them, he acts 
 the part of a swindler; if he collect the taxes arbitrarily with- 
 out giving warning, he is guilty of oppression ; and if he puts 
 the people to death without having instructed them, he com- 
 mits a cruelty." 
 
 On all these points Confucius frequently insisted, and 
 strove both by precept and example to impart the spirit they 
 reflected on all around him. In the presence of his prince we 
 are told that his manner, though self-possessed, displayed 
 respectful uneasiness. When he entered the palace, or when 
 he passed the vacant throne, his countenance changed, his legs 
 bent under him, and he spoke as though he had scarcely breath 
 to utter a word. When it fell to his lot to carry the royal 
 sceptre, he stooped his body as though he were not able to 
 bear its weight. If the prince came to visit him when he was 
 ill, he had himself placed with his head to the east, and lay 
 dressed in his court clothes with his girdle across them. When 
 the prince sent him a present of cooked meat, he carefully 
 adjusted his mat and just tasted the dishes; if the meat were 
 uncooked, he offered it to the spirits of his ancestors, and any 
 animal which was thus sent him he kept alive.
 
 2 8o RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 At the village festivals he never preceded, but always fol- 
 lowed after the elders. To all about him he assumed an 
 appearance of simplicity and sincerity. To the court officials 
 of the lower grade he spoke freely, and to superior officers his 
 manner was bland but precise. Even at the wild gatherings 
 which accompanied the annual ceremony of driving away pes- 
 tilential influences, he paid honor to the original meaning of 
 the rite, by standing in court robes on the eastern steps of his 
 house, and received the riotous exorcists as though they were 
 favored guests. When sent for by the prince to assist in 
 receiving a royal visitor, his countenance appeared to change. 
 He inclined himself to the officers among whom he stood, and 
 when sent to meet the visitor at the gate, " he hastened for- 
 ward with his arms spread out like the wings of a bird." Rec- 
 ognizing in the wind and the storm the voice of Heaven, he 
 changed countenance at the sound of a sudden clap of thunder 
 or a violent gust of wind. 
 
 The principles which underlie all these details relieve them 
 from the sense of affected formality which they would other- 
 wise suggest. Like the sages of old, Confucius had an over- 
 weening faith in the effect of example. " What do you say," 
 asked the chief of the Ke clan on one occasion, " to killing the 
 unprincipled for the good of the principled ? " " Sir," replied 
 Confucius, " in carrying on your government why should you 
 employ capital punishment at all ? Let your evinced desires be 
 for what is good and the people will be good." And then 
 quoting the words of King Ching, he added, "The relation 
 between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind 
 and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows 
 across it." Thus in every act of his life, whether at home or 
 abroad, whether at table or in bed, whether at study or in 
 moments of relaxation, he did all with the avowed object of 
 being seen of men and of influencing them by his conduct. 
 And to a certain extent he gained his end. He succeeded in 
 demolishing a number of fortified cities which had formed the 
 hotbeds of sedition and tumult ; and thus added greatly to the 
 power of the reigning duke. He inspired the men with a spirit 
 of loyalty and good faith, and taught the women to be chaste 
 and docile. On the report of the tranquillity prevailing in Loo,
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 281 
 
 strangers flocked into the state, and thus was fulfilled the old 
 criterion of good government which was afterward repeated by 
 Confucius, "the people were happy, and strangers were at- 
 tracted from afar." 
 
 But even Confucius found it impossible to carry all his 
 theories into practice, and his experience as Minister of Crime 
 taught him that something more than mere example was nee- 
 essary to lead the people into the paths of virtue. Before he 
 had been many months in office, he signed the death-warrant 
 of a well-known citizen named Shaou for disturbing the public 
 peace. This departure from the principle he had so lately laid 
 down astonished his followers, and Tsze-kung the Simon 
 Peter as he has been called among his disciples took him to 
 task for executing so notable a man. But Confucius held to 
 it that the step was necessary. " There are five great evils in 
 the world," said he : "a man with a rebellious heart who becomes 
 dangerous; a man who joins to vicious deeds a fierce temper; 
 a man whose words are knowingly false ; a man who treasures 
 in his memory noxious deeds and disseminates them ; a man 
 who follows evil and fertilizes it. All these evil qualities were 
 combined in Shaou. His house was a rendezvous for the dis- 
 affected ; his words were specious enough to dazzle any one ; 
 and his opposition was violent enough to overthrow any inde- 
 pendent man." 
 
 But notwithstanding such departures from the lines he had 
 laid down for himself, the people gloried in his rule and sang 
 at their work songs in which he was described as their savior 
 from oppression and wrong. 
 
 Confucius was an enthusiast, and his want of success in his 
 attempt completely to reform the age in which he lived never 
 seemed to suggest a doubt to his mind of the complete wis- 
 dom of his creed. According to his theory, his official admin- 
 istration should have effected the reform not only of his sover- 
 eign and the people, but of those of the neighboring states. 
 But what was the practical result ? The contentment which 
 reigned among the people of Loo, instead of instigating the 
 duke of T'se to institute a similar system, only served to rouse 
 his jealousy. "With Confucius at the head of its govern- 
 ment," said he, " Loo will become supreme among the states,
 
 282 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 and T'se, which is nearest to it, will be swallowed up. Let us 
 propitiate it by a surrender of territory." But a more provi- 
 dent statesman suggested that they should first try to bring 
 about the disgrace of the Sage. 
 
 With this object he sent eighty beautiful girls, well skilled 
 in the arts of music and dancing, and a hundred and twenty 
 of the finest horses which could be procured, as a present to 
 the duke King. The result fully realized the anticipation of 
 the minister. The girls were taken into the duke's harem, the 
 horses were removed to the ducal stables, and Confucius was 
 left to meditate on the folly of men who preferred listening 
 to the songs of the maidens of T'se to the wisdom of Yaou 
 and Shun. Day after day passed and the duke showed no 
 signs of returning to his proper mind. The affairs of state 
 were neglected, and for three days the duke refused to receive 
 his ministers in audience. 
 
 " Master," said Tsze-loo, " it is time you went." But Con- 
 fucius, who had more at stake than his disciple, was disinclined 
 to give up the experiment on which his heart was set. Be- 
 sides, the time was approaching when the great sacrifice to 
 Heaven at the solstice, about which he had had so many conver- 
 sations with the duke, should be offered up, and he hoped that 
 the recollection of his weighty words would recall the duke to 
 a sense of his duties. But his gay rivals in the affections of 
 the duke still held their sway, and the recurrence of the great 
 festival failed to awaken his conscience even for the moment. 
 Reluctantly therefore Confucius resigned his post and left the 
 capital. 
 
 But though thus disappointed of the hopes he entertained 
 of the duke of Loo, Confucius was by no means disposed to 
 resign his role as the reformer of the age. " If any one among 
 the princes would employ me," said he, " I would effect some- 
 thing considerable in the course of twelve months, and in three 
 years the government would be perfected." But the tenden- 
 cies of the times were unfavorable to the Sage. The strug- 
 gle for supremacy which had been going on for centuries be- 
 tween the princes of the various states was then at its height, 
 and though there might be a question whether it would finally 
 result in the victory of Tsin, or of Ts'oo, or of Ts'in. there
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 283 
 
 could be no doubt that the sceptre had already passed from 
 the hands of the ruler of Chow. To men therefore who were 
 fighting over the possessions of a state which had ceased to 
 live, the idea of employing a minister whose principal object 
 would have been to breathe life into the dead bones of Chow, 
 was ridiculous. This soon became apparent to his disciples, 
 who being even more concerned than their master at his loss 
 of office, and not taking so exalted a view as he did of what he 
 considered to be a heaven-sent mission, were inclined to urge 
 him to make concessions in harmony with the times. " Your 
 principles," said Tsze-kung to him, "are excellent, but they 
 are unacceptable in the empire, would it not be well therefore 
 to bate them a little ? " " A good husbandman," replied the 
 Sage, " can sow, but he cannot secure a harvest. An artisan 
 may excel in handicraft, but he cannot provide a market for 
 his goods. And in the same way a superior man can cultivate 
 his principles, but he cannot make them acceptable." 
 
 But Confucius was at least determined that no efforts on 
 his part should be wanting to discover the opening for which 
 he longed, and on leaving Loo he betook himself to the state 
 of Wei. On arriving at the capital, the reigning duke received 
 him with distinction, but showed no desire to employ him. 
 Probably expecting, however, to gain some advantage from the 
 counsels of the Sage in the art of governing, he determined to 
 attach him to his court by the grant of an annual stipend of 
 sixty thousand measures of grain that having been the 
 value of the post he had just resigned in Loo. Had the ex- 
 periences of his public life come up to the sanguine hopes he 
 had entertained at its beginning, Confucius would probably 
 have declined this offer as he did that of the Duke of T'se 
 some years before, but poverty unconsciously impelled him to 
 act up to the advice of Tsze-kung and to bate his principles of 
 conduct somewhat. His stay, however, in Wei was of short 
 duration. The officials at the court, jealous probably oi the 
 influence they feared he might gain over the duke, intrigued 
 against him, and Confucius thought it best to bow before the 
 coming storm. After living on the duke's hospitality for 
 ten months, he left the capital, intending to visit the state of 
 Ch'in.
 
 284 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 It chanced, however, that the way thither led him through 
 the town of Kwang, which had suffered much from the filibus- 
 tering expeditions of a notorious disturber of the public peace, 
 named Yang-Hoo. To this man of ill-fame Confucius bore a 
 striking resemblance, so much so that the townspeople, fancy- 
 ing that they now had their old enemy in their power, sur- 
 rounded the house in which he lodged for five days, intending 
 to attack him. The situation was certainly disquieting, and 
 the disciples were much alarmed. But Confucius's belief in 
 the heaven-sent nature of his mission raised him above fear. 
 "After the death of King Wan," said he, "was not the cause 
 of truth lodged in me ? If Heaven had wished to let this sa- 
 cred cause perish, I should not have been put into such a rela- 
 tion to it. Heaven will not let the cause of truth perish, and 
 what therefore can the people of Kwang do to me ? " Saying 
 which he tuned his lyre, and sang probably some of those 
 songs from his recently compiled Book of Odes which breathed 
 the wisdom of the ancient emperors. 
 
 From some unexplained cause, but more probably from the 
 people of Kwang discovering their mistake than from any 
 effect produced by Confucius' ditties, the attacking force sud- 
 denly withdrew, leaving the Sage free to go wherever he listed. 
 This misadventure was sufficient to deter him from wandering 
 farther a-field, and, after a short stay at Poo, he returned to 
 Wei. Again the duke welcomed him to the capital, though it 
 does not appear that he renewed his stipend, and even his con- 
 sort Nan-tsze forgot for a while her intrigues and debaucheries 
 at the news of his arrival. With a complimentary message 
 she begged an interview with the Sage, which he at first re- 
 fused ; but on her urging her request, he was fain obliged to 
 yield the point. On being introduced into her presence, he 
 found her concealed behind a screen, in strict accordance with 
 the prescribed etiquette, and after the usual formalities they 
 entered freely into conversation. 
 
 Tsze-loo was much disturbed at this want of discretion, as 
 he considered it, on the part of Confucius, and the vehemence 
 of his master's answer showed that there was a doubt in his 
 own mind whether he had not overstepped the limits of sage- 
 like propriety. " Wherein I have done improperly," said he,
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 285 
 
 "may Heaven reject me! may Heaven reject me!" This 
 incident did not, however, prevent him from maintaining 
 friendly relations with the court, and it was not until the duke 
 by a public act sho\v^J his inability to understand the dignity 
 of the role which Confucius desired to assume, that he lost all 
 hope of finding employment in the state of his former patron. 
 On this occasion the duke drove through the streets of his 
 capital seated in a carriage with Nan-tsze, and desired Confu- 
 cius to follow in a carriage behind. As the procession passed 
 through the market-place, the people perceiving more clearly 
 than the duke the incongruity of the proceeding, laughed and 
 jeered at the idea of making virtue follow in the wake of lust. 
 This completed the shame which Confucius felt at being in so 
 false a position. 
 
 "I have not seen one," said he, "who loves virtue as he 
 loves beauty." To stay any longer under the protection of a 
 court which could inflict such an indignity upon him was more 
 than he could do, and he therefore once again struck south- 
 ward toward Ch'in. 
 
 After his retirement from office it is probable that Confu- 
 cius devoted himself afresh to imparting to his followers those 
 doctrines and opinions which we shall consider later on. Even 
 on the road to Ch'in we are told that he practised ceremonies 
 with his disciples beneath the shadow of a tree by the wayside 
 in Sung. In the spirit of Laou-tsze, Hwuy T'uy, an officer in 
 the neighborhood, was angered at his reported " proud air and 
 many desires, his insinuating habit and wild will," and at- 
 tempted to prevent him entering the state. In this endeavor, 
 however, he was unsuccessful, as were some more determined 
 opponents, who two years later attacked him at Poo, when he 
 was on his way to Wei. On this occasion he was seized, and 
 though it is said that his followers struggled manfully with his 
 captors, their efforts did not save him from having to give an 
 oath that he would not continue his journey to Wei. But in 
 spite of his oath, and in spite of the public slight which had 
 previously been put upon him by the duke of Wei, an irresist- 
 ible attraction drew him toward that state, and he had no 
 sooner escaped from the clutches of his captors than he con- 
 tinued his journey.
 
 286 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 This deliberate forfeiture of his word in one who had com- 
 manded them to " hold faithfulness and sincerity as first princi- 
 ples," surprised his disciples; and Tsze-kung, who was gen- 
 erally the spokesman on such occasions, asked him whether it 
 was right to violate the oath he had taken. But Confucius, 
 who had learned expediency in adversity, replied, " It was an 
 oath extracted by force. The spirits do not hear such." 
 
 But to return to Confucius flying from his enemies in Sung. 
 Finding his way barred by the action of Hwan T'uy, he pro- 
 ceeded westward and arrived at Ch'ing, the capital of the state 
 of the same name. Thither it would appear his disciples had 
 preceded him, and he arrived unattended at the eastern gate 
 of the city. But his appearance was so striking that his fol- 
 lowers were soon made aware of his presence. " There is a 
 man," said a townsman to Tsze-kung, " standing at the east 
 gate with a forehead like Yaou, a neck like Kaou Yaou, his 
 shoulders on a level with those of Tsze-ch'an, but wanting be- 
 low the waist three inches of the height of Yu, and altogether 
 having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog." Recognizing 
 his master in this description, Tsze-kung hastened to meet him, 
 and repeated to him the words of his informant. Confucius 
 was much amused, and said : " The personal appearance is a 
 small matter ; but to say I was like a stray dog capital ! capi- 
 tal!" 
 
 The ruling powers in Ch'ing, however, showed no disposi- 
 tion to employ even a man possessing such marked character- 
 istics, and before long he removed to Ch'in, where he remained 
 a year. From Ch'in he once more turned his face toward Wei, 
 and it was while he was on this journey that he was detained 
 at Poo, as mentioned above. Between Confucius and the duke 
 of Wei there evidently existed a personal liking, if not friend- 
 ship. The duke was always glad to see him and ready to con- 
 verse with him; but Confucms's unbounded admiration for 
 those whose bones, as Laou-tsze said, were mouldered to dust, 
 and especially for the founders of the Chow dynasty, made it 
 impossible for the duke to place him in any position of impor- 
 tance. At the same time Confucius seems always to have 
 hoped that he would be able to gain the duke over to his views ; 
 and thus it came about that the Sage was constantly attracted
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 287 
 
 to the court of Duke Ling, and as often compelled to exile him- 
 self from it. 
 
 On this particular occasion, as at all other times, the duke 
 received him gladly, but their conversations, which had princi- 
 pally turned on the act of peaceful government, were now di- 
 rected to warlike affairs. The duke was contemplating an at- 
 tack on Poo, the inhabitants of which, under the leadership of 
 Hwan T'uy, who had arrested Confucius, had rebelled against 
 him. At first Confucius was quite disposed to support the 
 duke in his intended hostilities; but a representation from the 
 duke that the probable support of other states would make 
 the expedition one of considerable danger, converted Confu- 
 cius to the opinion evidently entertained by the duke, that it 
 would be best to leave Hwan T'uy in possession of his ill-gotten 
 territory. Confucius's latest advice was then to this effect, 
 and the duke acted upon it. 
 
 The duke was now becoming an old man, and with advanc- 
 ing age came a disposition to leave the task of governing to 
 others, and to weary of Confucius' high-flown lectures. He 
 ceased " to use " Confucius, as the Chinese historians say, and 
 the Sage was therefore indignant, and ready to accept any offer 
 which might come from any quarter. While in this humor he 
 received an invitation from Pih Hih, an officer of the state of 
 Tsin who was holding the town of Chung-mow against his 
 chief, to visit him, and he was inclined to go. It is impossible 
 to study this portion of Confucius' career without feeling that 
 a great change had come over his conduct. There was no 
 longer that lofty love of truth and of virtue which had distin- 
 guished the commencement of his official life. Adversity, in- 
 stead of stiffening his back, had made him pliable. He who 
 had formerly refused to receive money he had not earned, was 
 now willing to take pay in return for no other services than the 
 presentation of courtier-like advice on occasions when Duke 
 Ling desired to have his opinion in support of his own ; and in 
 defiance of his oft-repeated denunciation of rebels, he was now 
 ready to go over to the court of a rebel chief, in the hope pos- 
 sibly of being able through his means " to establish," as he said 
 on another occasion, " an Eastern Chow." 
 
 Again Tsze-loo interfered, and expostulated with him on
 
 288 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 his inconsistency. " Master," said he, " I have heard you say 
 that when a man is guilty of personal wrong-doing, a superior 
 man will not associate with him. If you accept the invitation 
 of this Pih Hih, who is in open rebellion against his chief, what 
 will people say ? " But Confucius, with a dexterity which had 
 now become common with him, replied : " It is true I have 
 said so. But is it not also true that if a thing be really hard, 
 it may be ground without being made thin ; and if it be really 
 white, it may be steeped in a black fluid without becoming 
 black ? Am I a bitter gourd ? Am I to be hung up out of 
 the way of being eaten ? " But nevertheless Tsze-loo's remon- 
 strances prevailed, and he did not go. 
 
 His relations with the duke did not improve, and so dissatis- 
 fied was he with his patron that he retired from the court. As 
 at this time Confucius was not in the receipt of any official 
 income, it is probable that he again provided for his wants by 
 imparting to his disciples some of the treasures out of the rich 
 stores of learning which he had collected by means of diligent 
 study and of a wide experience. Every word and action of Con- 
 fucius were full of such meaning to his admiring followers that 
 they have enabled us to trace him into the retirement of pri- 
 vate life. In his dress, we are told, he was careful to wear only 
 the " correct " colors, viz., azure, yellow, carnation, white and 
 black, and he scrupulously avoided red as being the color usu- 
 ally affected by women and girls. At the table he was moder- 
 ate in his appetite but particular as to the nature of his food 
 and the manner in which it was set before him. Nothing 
 would induce him to touch any meat that was " high " or rice 
 that was musty, nor would he eat anything that was not prop- 
 erly cut up or accompanied with the proper sauce. He al- 
 lowed himself only a certain quantity of meat and rice, and 
 though no such limit was fixed to the amount of wine with 
 which he accompanied his frugal fare, we are assured that he 
 never allowed himself to be confused by it. When out driving, 
 he never turned his head quite round, and in his actions as well 
 as in his words he avoided all appearance of haste. 
 
 Such details are interesting in the case of a man like Con- 
 fucius, who has exercised so powerful an influence over so large 
 a proportion of the world's inhabitants, and whose instructions,
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 289 
 
 far from being confined to the courts of kings, found their 
 loudest utterances in intimate communings with his disciples, 
 and in the example he set by the exact performance of his 
 daily duties. 
 
 The only accomplishment which Confucius possessed was 
 a love of music, and this he studied less as an accomplishment 
 than as a necessary part of education. " It is by the odes that 
 the mind is aroused," said he. " It is by the rules of propriety 
 that the character is established. And it is music which com- 
 pletes the edifice." 
 
 But having tasted the sweets of official life, Confucius was 
 not inclined to resign all hope of future employment, and the 
 duke of Wei still remaining deaf to his advice, he determined 
 to visit the state of Tsin, in the hope of finding in Chaou Keen- 
 tsze, one of the three chieftains who virtually governed that 
 state, a more hopeful pupil. With this intention he started 
 westward, but had got no farther than the Yellow River when 
 the news reached him of the execution of Tuh Ming and Tuh 
 Shun-hwa, two men of note in Tsin. The disorder which this 
 indicated put a stop to his journey ; for had not he himself said 
 " that a superior man will not enter a tottering state." His 
 disappointment and grief were great, and looking at the yellow 
 waters as they flowed at his feet, he sighed and muttered to 
 himself : " Oh how beautiful were they ; this river is not more 
 majestic than they were ! and I was not there to avert their 
 fate ! " 
 
 So saying he returned to Wei, only to find the duke as lit- 
 tle inclined to listen to his lectures, as he was deeply engaged 
 in warlike preparations. When Confucius presented himself 
 at court, the duke refused to talk on any other subject but mili- 
 tary tactics, and forgetting, possibly on purpose, that Confu- 
 cius was essentially a man of peace, pressed him for informa- 
 tion on the art of manoeuvring an army. " If you should wish 
 to know how to arrange sacrificial vessels," said the Sage,." I 
 will answer you, but about warfare I know nothing." 
 
 Confucius was now sixty years old, and the condition of the 
 states composing the empire was even more unfavorable for 
 the reception of his doctrines than ever. But though depressed 
 by fortune, he never lost that steady confidence in himself 
 
 H. E., VOL. I. 19
 
 290 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 and his mission, which was a leading characteristic of his 
 career, and when he found the duke of Wei deaf to his advice, 
 he removed to Ch'in, in the hope of there finding a ruler who 
 would appreciate his wisdom. 
 
 In the following year he left Ch'in with his disciples for 
 Ts'ae, a small dependency of the state of Ts'oo. In these 
 days the empire was subjected to constant changes. One day 
 a new state carved out of an old one would appear, and again 
 it would disappear, or increase in size, as the fortunes of war 
 might determine. Thus while Confucius was in Ts'ae, a part 
 of Ts'oo declared itself independent, under the name of Ye, 
 and the ruler usurped the title of duke. In earlier days such 
 rebellion would have called forth a rebuke from Confucius ; but 
 it was otherwise now, and, instead of denouncing the usurper 
 as a rebel, he sought him as a patron. The duke did not know 
 how to receive his visitor, and asked Tsze-loo about him. But 
 Tsze-loo, possibly because he considered the duke to be no bet- 
 ter than Pih Hih, returned him no answer. For this reticence 
 Confucius found fault with him, and said, " Why did you not 
 say to him, ' He is simply a man who, in his eager pursuit of 
 knowledge, forgets his food ; who, in the joy of its attainments, 
 forgets his sorrows ; and who does not perceive that old age is 
 coming on ? ' " 
 
 But whatever may have been the opinion of Tsze-loo, Con- 
 fucius was quite ready to be on friendly terms with the duke, 
 who seems to have had no keener relish for Confucius' ethics 
 than the other rulers to whom he had offered his services. 
 We are only told of one conversation which took place be- 
 tween the duke and the Sage, and on that occasion the duke 
 questioned him on the subject of government. Confucius' re- 
 ply was eminently characteristic of the man. Most of his defi- 
 nitions of good government would have sounded unpleasantly 
 in the ears of a man who had just thrown off his master's yoke 
 and headed a successful rebellion, so he cast about for one 
 which might offer some excuse for the new duke by attributing 
 the fact of his disloyalty to the bad government of his late 
 ruler. Quoting the words of an earlier sage, he replied, " Good 
 government obtains when those who are near are made happy, 
 and those who are far off are attracted."
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 291 
 
 Returning from Ye to Ts'ae, he came to a river which, 
 being unoricgui, left him n resource but to ford it. Seeing 
 two men whom he recognized ar political recluses ploughing 
 in a neighboring field, he sent the ever-present Tsze-loo to in- 
 quire of them where best he could effect a crossing. " Who 
 is that holding the reins in the carriage yonder ? " asked the 
 first addressed, in answer to Tsze-loo's inquiry. " Kung Kew," 
 replied the disciple, " Kung Kcw, of Loo ? " asked the plough- 
 man. "Yes," was the rep^. fi fft knows the ford," was the 
 enigmatic answer of the man as he turned to his work ; but 
 whether this reply was suggested by the general belief that 
 Confucius was omniscient, or by way of a parable to signify 
 that Confucius possessed the knowledge by which the river of 
 disorder, which was barring the progress of liberty and free- 
 dom, might be crossed, we are only left to conjecture. Nor 
 from the second recluse could Tsze-loo gain any practical infor- 
 mation. " Who are you, sir ? " was the somewhat peremptory 
 question which his inquiry met with. Upon his answering that 
 he was a disciple of Confucius, the man, who might have gath- 
 ered his estimate of Confucius from the mouth of Laou-tsze, 
 replied: "Disorder, like a swelling flood, spreads over the 
 whole empire, and who is he who will change it for you? 
 Rather than follow one who merely withdraws from this court 
 to that court, had you not better follow those who (like our- 
 selves) withdraw from the world altogether ? " These words 
 Tsze-loo, as was his wont, repeated to Confucius, who thus jus- 
 tified his career : " It is impossible to associate with birds and 
 beasts as if they were the same as ourselves. If I associate 
 not with people, with mankind, with whom shall I associate ? 
 If right principles prevailed throughout the empire, there would 
 be no necessity for me to change its state." 
 
 Altogether Confucius remained three years in Ts'ae, three 
 years of strife and war, during which his counsels were com- 
 pletely neglected. Toward their close, the state of Woo made 
 an attack on Ch'in, which found support from the powerful 
 state of Ts'oo on the south. While thus helping his ally, the 
 Duke of Ts'oo heard that Confucius was in Ts'ae, and deter- 
 mined to invite him to his court. With this object he sent 
 messengers bearing presents to the Sage, and charged them
 
 292 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 with a message begging him to come to Ts'oo. Confucius 
 readily accepted the invitation, and prepared to start. But the 
 news of the transaction alarmed the ministers of Ts'ae and 
 Ch'in. " Ts'oo," said they, " is already a powerful state, and 
 Confucius is a man of wisdom. Experience has proved that 
 those who have despised him have invariably suffered for it, 
 and, should he succeed in guiding the affairs of Ts'oo, we 
 should certainly be ruined. At all hazards we must stop his 
 going." When, therefore, Confucius had started on his jour- 
 ney, these men despatched a force which hemmed him in in a 
 wild bit of desert country. Here, we are told, they kept him 
 a prisoner for seven days, during which time he suffered severe 
 privations, and, as was always the case in moments of diffi- 
 culty, the disciples loudly bewailed their lot and that of their 
 master. 
 
 " Has the superior man," said Tsze-loo, " indeed, to endure 
 in this way ? " "The superior man may indeed have to suffer 
 want," replied Confucius, " but it is only the mean man who, 
 when he is in straits, gives way to unbridled license." In this 
 emergency he had recourse to a solace which had soothed him 
 on many occasions when fortune frowned : he played on his 
 lute and sang. 
 
 At length he succeeded in sending word to the duke of 
 Ts'oo of the position he was in. At once the duke sent am- 
 bassadors to liberate him, and he himself went out of his capi- 
 tal to meet him. But though he welcomed him cordially, and 
 seems to have availed himself of his advice on occasions, he did 
 not appoint him to any office, and the intention he at one time 
 entertained of granting him a slice of territory was thwarted 
 by his ministers, from motives of expediency. " Has your maj- 
 esty," said this officer, " any servant who could discharge the 
 duties of ambassador like Tsze-kung ? or any so well qualified 
 for a premier as Yen Hwuy ? or any one to compare as a gen- 
 eral with Tsze-loo ? Did not kings Wan and Woo, from their 
 small states of Fung and Kaou, rise to the sovereignty of the 
 empire? And if Kung Kew once acquired territory, with 
 such disciples to be his ministers, it will not be to the prosper- 
 ity of Ts'oo." 
 
 This remonstrance not only had the immediate effect which
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 293 
 
 was intended, but appears to have influenced the manner of 
 the duke^ toward the Sage, for in the interval between this and 
 the duke's death, in the autumn of the same year, we hear of 
 no counsel being either asked or given. In the successor to 
 the throne Confucius evidently despaired of finding a patron, 
 and he once again returned to Wei. 
 
 Confucius was now sixty-three, and on arriving at Wei he 
 found a grandson of his former friend, the duke Ling, holding 
 the throne against his own father, who had been driven into 
 exile for attempting the life of his mother, the notorious Nan- 
 tsze. This chief, who called himself the duke Chuh, being 
 conscious how much his cause would be strengthened by the 
 support of Confucius, sent Tsze-loo to him, saying, "The 
 Prince of Wei has been waiting to secure your services in the 
 administration of the state, and wishes to know what you con- 
 sider is the first thing to be done." " It is first of all neces- 
 sary," replied Confucius, "to rectify names." "Indeed," said 
 Tzse-loo, "you are wide of the mark. Why need there be such 
 rectification ? " " How uncultivated you are, Yew," answered 
 Confucius ; " a superior man shows a cautious reserve in re- 
 gard to what he does not know. If names be not correct, lan- 
 guage is not in accordance with the truth of things. If lan- 
 guage be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs 
 cannot be carried on successfully. When affairs cannot be car- 
 ried on successfully, proprieties and music will not flourish. 
 When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will 
 not properly be awarded. When punishments are not prop- 
 erly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or 
 foot. Therefore the superior man considers it necessary that 
 names should be used appropriately, and that his directions 
 should be carried out appropriately. A superior man requires 
 that his words should be correct." 
 
 The position of things in Wei was naturally such as Confu- 
 cius could not sanction, and, as the duke showed no disposition 
 to amend his ways, the Sage left his court, and lived the re- 
 mainder of the five or six years, during which he sojourned in 
 the state, in close retirement. 
 
 He had now been absent from his native state of Loo for 
 fourteen years, and the time had come when he was to return
 
 294 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 to it. But, by the irony of fate, the accomplishment of his 
 long-felt desire was due, not to his reputation for political or 
 ethical wisdom, but to his knowledge of military tactics, which 
 he heartily despised. It happened that at this time Yen Yew, 
 a disciple of the Sage, being in the service of Ke K'ang, con- 
 ducted a compaign against T'se with much success. On his 
 triumphal return, Ke K'ang asked him how he had acquired 
 his military skill. "From Confucius," replied the general. 
 " And what kind of man is he ? " asked Ke K'ang. " Were 
 you to employ him," answered Yen Yew, "your fame would 
 spread abroad ; your people might face demons and gods, and 
 would have nothing to fear or to ask of them. And if you ac- 
 cepted his principles, were you to collect a thousand altars of 
 the spirits of the land it would profit you nothing." Attracted 
 by such a prospect, Ke K'ang proposed to invite the Sage to 
 his court. " If you do," said Yen Yew, " mind you do not allow 
 mean men to come between you and him." 
 
 But before Ke K'ang' s invitation reached Confucius an in- 
 cident occurred which made the arrival of the messengers from 
 Loo still more welcome to him. K'ung Wan, an officer of 
 Wei, came to consult him as to the best means of attacking 
 the force of another officer with whom he was engaged in a 
 feud. Confucius, disgusted at being consulted on such a sub- 
 ject, professed ignorance, and prepared to leave the state, say- 
 ing as he went away: "The bird chooses its tree; the tree 
 does not choose the bird." At this juncture Ke K'ang's en- 
 voys arrived, and without hesitation he accepted the invitation 
 they brought. On arriving at Loo, he presented himself at 
 court, and in reply to a question of the duke Gae on the sub- 
 ject of government, threw out a strong hint that the duke 
 might do well to offer him an appointment. " Government," 
 he said, "consists in the right choice of ministers." To the 
 same question put by Ke K'ang he replied, " Employ the up- 
 right and put aside the crooked, and thus will the crooked be 
 made upright." 
 
 At this time Ke K'ang was perplexed how to deal with the 
 prevailing brigandage. "If you, sir, were not avaricious, 
 though you might offer rewards to induce people to steal, 
 they would not." This answer sufficiently indicates the esti-
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 295 
 
 mate formed by Confucius of Ke K'ang and therefore of the 
 duke Gae, for so entirely were the two of one mind that the 
 acts of Ke K'ang appear to have been invariably indorsed 
 by the duke. It was plainly impossible that Confucius could 
 serve under such a regime, and instead, therefore, of seeking 
 employment, he retired to his study and devoted himself to the 
 completion of his literary undertaking. 
 
 He was now sixty-nine years of age, and if a man is to be 
 considered successful only when he succeeds in realizing the 
 dream of his life, he must be deemed to have been unfortunate. 
 Endowed by nature with a large share of reverence, a cold 
 rather than a fervid disposition, and a studious mind, and 
 reared in the traditions of the ancient kings, whose virtuous 
 achievements obtained an undue prominence by the oblitera- 
 tion of all their faults and failures, he believed himself capable 
 of effecting far more than it was possible for him or any other 
 man to accomplish. In the earlier part of his career, he had in 
 Loo an opportunity given him for carrying his theories of gov- 
 ernment into practice, and we have seen how they failed to do 
 more than produce a temporary improvement in the condition 
 of the people under his immediate rule. But he had a lofty 
 and steady confidence in himself and in the principles which 
 he professed, which prevented his accepting the only legitimate 
 inference which could be drawn from his want of success. 
 The lessons of his own experience were entirely lost upon him, 
 and he went down to his grave at the age of seventy-two firmly 
 convinced as of yore that if he were placed in a position of 
 authority " in three years the government would be perfected." 
 
 Finding it impossible to associate himself with the rulers 
 of Loo, he appears to have resigned himself to exclusion from 
 office. His wanderings were over: 
 
 " And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue, 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew," 
 
 he had lately been possessed with an absorbing desire to 
 return once more to Loo. This had at last been brought about, 
 and he made up his mind to spend the remainder of his days in 
 his native state. He had now leisure to finish editing the 
 Shoo King, or Book of History, to which he wrote a preface ; 
 he also " carefully digested the rites and ceremonies determined
 
 296 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 by the wisdom of the more ancient sages and kings ; collected 
 and arranged the ancient poetry ; and undertook the reform of 
 music." He made a diligent study of the Book of Changes, and 
 added a commentary to it, which is sufficient to show that the 
 original meaning of the work was as much a mystery to him 
 as it has been to others. His idea of what would probably be 
 the value of the kernel encased in this unusually hard shell, if 
 it were once rightly understood, is illustrated by his remark, 
 " that if some years could be added to his life, he would give 
 fifty of them to the study of the Book of Changes and that then 
 he expected to be without great faults." 
 
 In the year B.C. 482 his son Le died, and in the following 
 year he lost by death his faithful disciple Yen Hwuy. When 
 the news of this last misfortune reached him, he exclaimed, 
 " Alas ! Heaven is destroying me ! " A year later a servant of 
 Ke K'ang caught a strange one-horned animal while on a 
 hunting excursion, and as no one present could tell what ani- 
 mal it was, Confucius was sent for. At once he declared it to 
 be a K'e-lin, and legend says that its identity with the one 
 which appeared before his birth was proved by its having the 
 piece of ribbon on its horn which Ching-tsae tied to the weird 
 animal which presented itself to her in a dream on Mount Ne. 
 This second apparition could only have one meaning, and Con- 
 fucius was profoundly affected at the portent. " For whom 
 have you come ? " he cried, " for whom have you come ? " and 
 then, bursting into tears, he added, " The course of my doc- 
 trine is run, and I am unknown." 
 
 " How do you mean that you are unknown ? " asked Tsze- 
 kung. " I don't complain of Providence," answered the Sage, 
 "nor find fault with men that learning is neglected and success 
 is worshipped. Heaven knows me. Never does a superior man 
 pass away without leaving a name behind him. But my prin- 
 ciples make no progress, and I, how shall I be viewed in future 
 ages ? " 
 
 At this time, notwithstanding his declining strength and 
 his many employments, he wrote the Chun ts'ew, or Spting 
 and Autumn Annals, in which he followed the history of his 
 native state of Loo, from the time of the duke Yin to the 
 fourteenth year of the duke Gae, that is, to the time when the
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 297 
 
 appearance of the K'e-lin warned him to consider his life at 
 an end. 
 
 This is the only work of which Confucius was the author, 
 and of this every word is his own. His biographers say that 
 " what was written, he wrote, and what was erased, was erased 
 by him." Not an expression was either inserted or altered by 
 any one but himself. When he had completed the work, he 
 handed the manuscript to his disciples, saying, " By the Spring 
 and Autumn Annals I shall be known, and by the Spring and 
 Autumn Annals I shall be condemned." This only furnishes 
 another of the many instances in which authors have entirely 
 misjudged the value of their own works. 
 
 In the estimation of his countrymen even, whose reverence 
 for his every word would incline them to accept his opinion on 
 this as on every subject, the Spring and Autumn Annals holds 
 a very secondary place, his utterances recorded in the Lun yu, 
 or Confucian Analects, being esteemed of far higher value, as 
 they undoubtedly are. And indeed the two works he com- 
 piled, the Shoo king and the She king, hold a very much 
 higher place in the public regard than the book on which he 
 so prided himself. To foreigners, whose judgments are un- 
 hampered by his recorded opinion, his character as an original 
 historian sinks into insignificance, and he is known only as a 
 philosopher and statesman. 
 
 Once again only do we hear of Confucius presenting him- 
 self at the court of the duke after this. And this was on the 
 occasion of the murder of the duke of T'se by one of his offi- 
 cers. We must suppose that the crime was one of a gross 
 nature, for it raised Confucius' fiercest anger, and he who never 
 wearied of singing the praises of those virtuous men who over- . 
 threw the thrones of licentious and tyrannous kings,' would 
 have had no room for blame if the murdered duke had been 
 like unto Kee or Show. But the outrage was one which Con- 
 fucius felt should be avenged, and he therefore bathed and ^pre- 
 sented himself at court. 
 
 " Sir," said he, addressing the duke, " Ch'in Hang has slain 
 his sovereign ; I beg that you will undertake to punish him." 
 But the duke was indisposed to move in the matter, and 
 pleaded the comparative strength of T'se. Confucius, how-
 
 298 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 
 
 ever, was not to be so silenced. " One-half of the people of 
 T'se," said he, "are not consenting to the deed. If you add 
 to the people of Loo one-half of the people of T'se, you will be 
 sure to overcome." This numerical argument no more affected 
 the duke than the statement of the fact, and wearying with 
 Confucius' importunity, he told him to lay the matter before 
 the chiefs of the three principal families of the state. Before 
 this court of appeal, whither he went with reluctance, his cause 
 fared no better, and the murder remained unavenged. 
 
 At a period when every prince held his throne by the 
 strength of his right arm, revolutions lost half their crime, and 
 must have been looked upon rather as trials of strength than 
 as disloyal villanies. The frequency of their occurrence, also, 
 made them less the subjects of surprise and horror. At the 
 time of which we write, the states in the neighborhood of Loo 
 appear to have been in a very disturbed condition. Immedi- 
 ately following on the murder of the duke of T'se, news was 
 brought to Confucius that a revolution had broken out in Wei. 
 This was an occurrence which particularly interested him, for 
 when he returned from Wei to Loo he left Tsze-loo and Tsze- 
 kaou, two of his disciples, engaged in the official service of the 
 state. "Tsze-kaou will return," was Confucius' remark, when 
 he was told of the outbreak, " but Tsze-loo will die." The pre- 
 diction was verified. For when Tsze-kaou saw that matters 
 were desperate he made his escape ; but Tsze-loo remained to 
 defend his chief, and fell fighting in the cause of his master. 
 Though Confucius had looked forward to the event as prob- 
 able, he was none the less grieved when he heard that it had 
 come about, and he mourned for his friend, whom he was so 
 soon to follow to the grave. 
 
 One morning, in the spring of the year B.C. 478, he walked 
 in front of his door, mumbling as he went : 
 
 "The great mountain must crumble; 
 The strong beam must break ; 
 And the wise man withers away like a plant." 
 
 These words came as a presage of evil to the faithful Tsze- 
 kung. "If the great mountain crumble," said he, "to what 
 shall I look up ? If the strong beam break, and the wise man 
 wither away, on whom shall I lean ? The master, I fear, is
 
 RISE OF CONFUCIUS 299 
 
 going to be ill." So saying, he hastened after Confucius into 
 the house. " What makes you so late ? " said Confucius, when 
 the disciple presented himself before him ; and then he added, 
 " According to the statutes of Hea, the corpse was dressed and 
 coffined at the top of the eastern steps, treating the dead as if 
 he were still the host. Under the Yin, the ceremony was per- 
 formed between the two pillars, as if the dead were both host 
 and guest. The rule of Chow is to perform it at the top of 
 the western steps, treating the dead as if he were a guest. I 
 am a man of Yin, and last night I dreamed that I was sitting, 
 with offerings before me, between the two pillars. No intelli- 
 gent monarch arises ; there is not one in the empire who will 
 make me his master. My time is come to die." It is emi- 
 nently characteristic of Confucius that in his last recorded 
 speech and dream, his thoughts should so have dwelt on the 
 ceremonies of bygone ages. But the dream had its fulfilment. 
 That same day he took to his bed, and after a week's illness he 
 expired. 
 
 On the banks of the river Sze, to the north of the capital 
 city of Loo, his disciples buried him, and for three years they 
 mourned at his grave. Even such marked respect as this fell 
 short of the homage which Tsze-kung, his most faithful dis- 
 ciple, felt was due to him, and for three additional years that 
 loving follower testified by his grief his reverence for his mas- 
 ter. " I have all my life had the heaven above my head," said 
 he, "but I do not know its height; and the earth under my 
 feet, but I know not its thickness. In serving Confucius, I 
 am like a thirsty man, who goes with his pitcher to the river 
 and there drinks his fill, without knowing the river's depth."
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 INSTITUTION OF TRIBUNES 
 
 B.C. 510-494 
 
 HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL 
 
 The republic of Rome was the outcome of a sudden revolution caused 
 by the crimes of the House of Tarquin, an Etruscan family who had 
 reached the highest power at Rome. The indignation raised by the rape 
 of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, and the suicide of the outraged lady 
 at Collatia, moved her father, in conjunction with Lucius Junius Brutus 
 and Publius Valerius, to start a rebellion. The people were assembled 
 by curias, or wards, and voted that Tarquinius Superbus should be 
 stripped of the kingly power, and that he and all his family should be 
 banished from Rome. 
 
 This was accordingly done ; and, instead of kings, consuls were ap- 
 pointed to wield the supreme power. These consuls were elected annu- 
 ally at the comitia centuriata, and they had sovereign power granted 
 them by a vote of the comitia curiata. The first consuls chosen were 
 Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. 
 
 What is known as the Secession to the Sacred Hill took place when 
 the plebeians of Rome, in the early days of the Republic, indignant at the 
 oppression and cruelty of the patricians, left the city en masse and 
 gathered with hostile manifestations at a hill, Mons Sacer, some dis- 
 tance from Rome. It was here Menenius Agrippa conciliated them by 
 reciting the famous fable of "The Belly and the Members." After this 
 the people were induced to come to terms with the patricians and to 
 return to the city. 
 
 The people had, however, gained a great advantage by their bold 
 defiance of the consular and patrician class, who had practically been 
 supeme in the state, had been oppressive money-lenders, and had con- 
 trolled the decisions of the law courts. It was not in vain that the people 
 now demanded that as the two consuls were practically elected to further 
 the interests of the upper class, so they, the plebeians, should have the 
 election of two tribunes to protect them from wrong and oppression. 
 These new officers were duly appointed, and eventually their number 
 was increased to ten. Their power was almost absolute, but it never 
 seems to have been abused, and this fact is a proof of the native modera- 
 tion of the ancient Romans. There have been many constitutional Strug- 
 
 300
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 301 
 
 gles in the history of modern times, butnothing like the plebeian tribunate 
 ever appeared, and it is a question if the institution could have 
 existed for a month, in any country of modern times, with the salutary 
 influences which it exercised in early Rome. 
 
 had made himself king by the aid of the patri- 
 cians, and chiefly by means of the third or Lucerian 
 tribe, to which his family belonged The burgesses of the 
 Gentes were indignant at the curtailment of their privileges by 
 the popular reforms of Servius, and were glad to lend them- 
 selves to any overthrow of his power. But Tarquin soon kicked 
 away the ladder by which he had risen. He abrogated, it is 
 true, the hated Assembly of the Centuries; but neither did he 
 pay any heed to the Curiate Assembly, nor did he allow any 
 new members to be chosen into the senate in place of those 
 who were removed by death or other causes ; so that even 
 those who had helped him to the throne repented them of their 
 deed. The name of Superbus, or the Proud, testifies to the 
 general feeeling against the despotic rule of the second Tar- 
 quin. 
 
 It was by foreign alliances that he calculated on supporting 
 his despotism at home. The Etruscans of Tarquinii, and all 
 its associate cities, were his friends ; and among the Latins also 
 he sought to raise a power which might counterbalance the 
 senate and people of Rome. 
 
 The wisdom of Tarquinius Priscus and Servius had united 
 all the Latin name to Rome, so that Rome had become the 
 sovereign city of Latium. The last Tarquin drew those ties 
 still closer. He gave his daughter in marriage to Octavius 
 Mamilius, chief of Tusculum, and favored the Latins in all 
 things. But at a general assembly of the Latins at the Feren- 
 tine Grove, beneath the Alban Mount, where they had been 
 accustomed to meet of olden time to settle their national 
 affairs, Turnus Herdonius of Aricia rose and spoke against 
 him. Then Tarquinius accused him of high treason, and 
 brought false witnesses against him ; and so powerful with the 
 Latins was the king that they condemned their countryman 
 to be drowned in the Ferentine water, and obeyed Tarquinius 
 in all things. 
 
 With them he made war upon the Volscians and took the
 
 302 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 city of Suessa, wherein was a great booty. This booty he ap- 
 plied to the execution of great works in the city, in emulation 
 of his father and King Servius. The elder Tarquin had built 
 up the side of the Tarpeian rock and levelled the summit, to 
 be the foundation of a temple of Jupiter, but he had not com- 
 pleted the work. Tarquinius Superbus now removed all the 
 temples and shrines of the old Sabine gods which had been 
 there since the time of Titus Tatius ; but the goddess of 
 Youth and the god Terminus kept their place, whereby was 
 signified that the Roman people should enjoy undecaying 
 vigor, and that the boundaries of their empire should never be 
 drawn in. And on the Tarpeian height he built a magnificent 
 temple, to be dedicated jointly to the great gods of the Latins 
 and Etruscans, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and this part of 
 the Saturnian Hill was ever after called the Capitol or the 
 Chief Place, while the upper part was called the Arx or Citadel. 
 
 He brought architects from Etruria to plan the temple, but 
 he forced the Roman people to work for him without hire. 
 
 One day a strange woman appeared before the king and 
 offered him nine books to buy ; and when he refused them she 
 went away and burned three of the nine books and brought 
 back the remaining six and offered to sell them at the same 
 price that she had asked for the nine; and when he laughed at 
 her and again refused, she went as before and burned three 
 more books, and came back and asked still the same price for 
 the three that were left. Then the king was struck by her 
 pertinacity, and he consulted his augurs what this might be ; 
 and they bade him by all means buy the three, and said he had 
 done wrong not to buy the nine, for these were the books of 
 the Sibyl and contained great secrets. So the books were 
 kept underground in the Capitol in a stone chest, and two men 
 (duumviri) were appointed to take charge of them, and consult 
 them when the state was in danger. 
 
 The only Latin town that defied Tarquin's power was 
 Gabii ; and Sextus, the king's youngest son, promised to win 
 this place also for his father. So he fled from Rome and 
 presented himself at Gabii ; and there he made complaints of 
 his father's tyranny and prayed for protection. The Gabians 
 believed him, and took him into their city, and they trusted
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 303 
 
 him, so that in time he was made commander of their army 
 Now his father suffered him to conquer in many small battles 
 and the Gabians trusted him more and more. Then he sent 
 privately to his father, and asked what he should do to make the 
 Gabians submit. Then King Tarquin gave no answer to the 
 messenger, but, as he walked up and down his garden, he kept 
 cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies with his staff. At 
 last the messenger was tired, and went back to Sextus and told 
 him what had passed. But Sextus understood what his father 
 meant, and he began to accuse falsely all the chief men, and 
 some of them he put to death and some he banished. So at 
 last the city of Gabii was left defenceless, and Sextus delivered 
 it up to his father. 
 
 While Tarquin was building his temple on the Capitol, a 
 strange portent offered itself; for a snake came forth and de- 
 voured the sacrifices on the altar. The king, not content with 
 the interpretation of his Etruscan soothsayers, sent persons to 
 consult the famous oracle of the Greeks at Delphi, and the per- 
 sons he sent were his own sons Titus and Aruns, and his sister's 
 son, L. Junius, a young man who, to avoid his uncle's jealousy, 
 feigned to be without common sense, wherefore he was called 
 Jrutus or the Dullard. The answer given by the oracle was 
 that the chief power of Rome should belong to him of the three 
 who should first kiss his mother; and the two sons of King 
 Tarquin agreed to draw lots which of them should do this as 
 soon as they returned home. But Brutus perceived that the 
 oracle had another sense; so as soon as they landed in Italy he 
 fell down on the ground as if he had stumbled, and kissed the 
 earth, for she (he thought) was the true mother of all mortal 
 things. 
 
 When the sons of Tarquin returned with their cousin, L. 
 Junius Brutus, they found the king at war with the Rutulians 
 of Ardea. Being unable to take the place by storm, he was 
 forced to blockade it; and while the Roman army was en- 
 camped before the town the young men used to amuse them- 
 selves at night with wine and wassail. One night there was a 
 feast, at which Sextus, the king's third son, was present, as 
 also Collatinus, the son of Egerius, the king's uncle, who had 
 teen made governor of Collatia. So they soon began to ciis
 
 304 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 pute about the worthiness of their wives; and when each main- 
 tained that his own wife was worthiest, " Come, gentlemen," 
 said Collatinus, " let us take horse and see what our wives are 
 doing; they expect us not, and so we shall know the truth." 
 All agreed, and they galloped to Rome, and there they found 
 the wives of all the others feasting and revelling: but when 
 they came to Collatia they found Lucretia, the wife of Collati- 
 nus, not making merry like the rest, but sitting in the midst 
 of her handmaids carding wool and spinning; so they all 
 allowed that Lucretia was the worthiest. 
 
 Now Lucretia was the daughter of a noble Roman, Spurius 
 Lucretius, who was at this time prefect of the city ; for it was 
 the custom, when the kings went out to war, that they left a 
 chief man at home to administer all things in the king's name, 
 and he was called prefect of the city. 
 
 But it chanced that Sextus, the king's son, when he saw 
 the fair Lucretia, was smitten with lustful passion ; and a few 
 days after he came again to Collatia, and Lucretia entertained 
 him hospitably as her husband's cousin and friend. But at 
 midnight he arose and came with stealthy steps to her bedside : 
 and holding a sword in his right hand, and laying his left hand 
 upon her breast, he bade her yield to his wicked desires ; for if 
 not, he would slay her and lay one of her slaves beside her, and 
 would declare that he had taken them in adultery. So for 
 shame she consented to that which no fear would have wrung 
 from her : and Sextus, having wrought this deed of shame, re- 
 turned to the camp. 
 
 Then Lucretia sent to Rome for her father, and to the 
 camp at Ardea for her husband. They came in haste. Lucre- 
 tius brought with him P. Valerius, and Collatinus brought L. 
 Junius Brutus, his cousin. And they came in and asked if all 
 was well. Then she told them what was done : " but," she said, 
 " my body only has suffered the shame, for my will consented 
 not to the deed. Therefore," she cried, " avenge me on the 
 wretch Sextus. As for me, though my heart has not sinned, I 
 can live no longer. No one shall say that Lucretia set an ex- 
 ample of living in unchastity." So she drew forth a knife and 
 stabbed herself to the heart. 
 
 When they saw that, her father and her husband cried
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 305 
 
 aloud; but Brutus drew the knife from the wound, and holding 
 it up, spoke thus : " By this pure blood I swear before the gods 
 that I will pursue L. Tarquinius the Proud and all his bloody 
 house with fire, sword, or in whatsoever way I may, and that 
 neither they nor any other shall hereafter be king in Rome." 
 Then he gave the knife to Collatinus and Lucretius and Vale- 
 rius, and they all swore likewise, much marvelling to hear such 
 words from L. Junius the Dullard. And they took up the body 
 of Lucretia, and carried it into the Forum, and called on the 
 men of Collatia to rise against the tyrant. So they set a guard 
 at the gates of the town, to prevent any news of the matter 
 being carried to King Tarquin : and they themselves, followed 
 by the youth of Collatia, went to Rome. Here Brutus, who 
 was chief captain of the knights, called the people together, 
 and he told them what had been done, and called on them by 
 the deed of shame wrought against Lucretius and Collatinus 
 by all that they had suffered from the tyrants by the 
 abominable murder of good King Servius to assist them in 
 taking vengeance on the Tarquins. So it was hastily agreed 
 to banish Tarquinius and his family. The youth declared 
 themselves ready to follow Brutus against the king's army, and 
 the seniors put themselves under the rule of Lucretius, the 
 prefect of the city. In this tumult, the wicked Tullia fled from 
 her house, pursued by the curses of all men, who prayed that 
 the avengers of her father's blood might be upon her. 
 
 When the king heard what had passed, he set off in all 
 haste for the city. Brutus also set off for the camp at Ardea; 
 and he turned aside that he might not meet his uncle the king. 
 So he came to the camp at Ardea, and the king came to Rome. 
 And all the Romans at Ardea welcomed Brutus, and joined 
 their arms to his, and thrust out all the king's sons from the 
 camp. But the people of Rome shut the gates against the 
 king, so that he could not enter. And King Tarquin, with 
 his sons Titus and Aruns, went into exile and lived at Caere in 
 Etruria. But Sextus fled to Gabii, where he had before held 
 rule, and the people of Gabii slew him in memory of his former 
 cruelty. 
 
 So L. Tarquinius Superbus was expelled from Rome, after 
 he had been king five-and-twenty years. And in memory of 
 
 E., VOL. I. 20
 
 306 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 this event was instituted a festival called the " Regifugium" 01 
 " Fugalia," which was celebrated every year on the 24th day of 
 February. 
 
 To gratify the plebeians, the patricians consented to re- 
 store, in some measure at least, the popular institutions of 
 King Servius ; and it was resolved to follow his supposed in- 
 tention with regard to the supreme government that is, to 
 have two magistrates elected every year, who were to have the 
 same power as the king during the time of their rule. These 
 were in after days known by the name of Consuls ; but in an- 
 cient times they were called " Praetors" or Judges. They were 
 elected at the great Assembly of Centuries ; and they had sov- 
 ereign power conferred upon them by the assembly of the 
 Curies. They wore a robe edged with violet color, sat in their 
 chairs of state called curule chairs, and were attended by 
 twelve lictors each. Thess lictors carried fasces, or bundles of 
 rods, out of which arose an axe, in token of the power of life 
 and death possessed by the consuls as successors of the kings. 
 But only one of them at a time had a right to this power ; and, 
 in token thereof, his colleague's fasces had no axes in them. 
 Each retained this mark of sovereign power (Imperium) for a 
 month at a time. 
 
 The first consuls were L. Junius Brutus and L. Tarquinius 
 Collatinus. 
 
 The new consuls filled up the senate to the proper number of 
 three hundred ; and the new senators were called "Conscripti," 
 while the old members retained their old name of " Patres." So 
 after this the whole senate was addressed by speakers as " Pa- 
 tres, Conscripti." But in later times it was forgotten that these 
 names belonged to different sorts of persons, and the whole 
 senate was addressed as by one name, " Patres Conscripti." 
 
 The name of king was hateful. But certain sacrifices had 
 always been performed by the king in person ; and therefore, 
 to keep up form, a person was still chosen, with the title of 
 "Rex Sacrorum" or "Rex Sacrificulus," to perform these 
 offerings. But even he was placed under the authority of the 
 chief pontifex. 
 
 After his expulsion, King Tarquin sent messengers to 
 Rome to ask that his property should be given up to him, and
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 307 
 
 the senate decreed that his prayer should be granted. But the 
 king's ambassadors, while they were in Rome, stirred up 
 the minds of the young men and others who had been favored 
 by Tarquin, so that a plot was made to bring him back. 
 Among those who plotted were Titus and Tiberius, the sons of 
 the Consul Brutus ; and they gave letters to the messengers 
 of the king. But it chanced that a certain slave hid himself in 
 the place where they met, and overheard them plotting; and 
 he came and told the thing to the consuls, who seized the mes- 
 sengers of the king with the letters upon their persons, authen- 
 ticated by the seals of the young men. The culprits were im- 
 mediately arrested ; but the ambassadors were let go, because 
 their persons were regarded as sacred. And the goods of 
 King Tarquin were given up for plunder to the people. 
 
 Then the traitors were brought up before the consuls, and 
 the sight was such as to move all beholders to pity ; for among 
 them were the sons of L. Junius Brutus himself, the first con- 
 sul, the liberator of the Roman people. And now all men saw 
 how Brutus loved his country ; for he bade the lictors put all 
 the traitors to death, and his own sons first ; and men could 
 mark in his face the struggle between his duty as a chief mag- 
 istrate of Rome and his feelings as a father. And while they 
 praised and admired him, they pitied him yet more. 
 
 Then a decree of the senate was made that no one of the 
 blood of the Tarquins should remain in Rome. And since 
 Collatinus, the consul, was by descent a Tarquin, even he was 
 obliged to give up his office and return to Collatia. In his 
 room, P. Valerius was chosen consul by the people., 
 
 This was the first attempt to restore Tarquin the Proud. 
 
 When Tarquin saw that the plot at home had failed, he 
 prevailed on the people of Tarquinii and Veii to make war with 
 him against the Romans. But the consuls came out against 
 them ; Valerius commanding the main army, and Brutus the 
 cavalry. And it chanced that Aruns, the king's son, led the 
 cavalry of the enemy. When he saw Brutus he spurred his 
 horse against him, and Brutus declined not the combat. So 
 they rode straight at each other with levelled spears; and so 
 fierce was the shock, that they pierced each other through 
 from breast to back, and both fell dead
 
 308 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 Then, also, the armies fought, but the battle was neither 
 won nor lost. But in the night a voice was heard by the Etrus- 
 cans, saying that the Romans were the conquerors. So the 
 enemy fled by night; and when the Romans arose in the 
 morning, there was no man to oppose them. Then they took 
 up the body of Brutus, and departed home, and buried him in 
 public with great pomp, and the matrons of Rome mourned 
 him for a whole year, because he had avenged the injury of 
 Lucretia. 
 
 And thus the second attempt to restore King Tarquin was 
 frustrated. 
 
 After the death of Brutus, Publius Valerius ruled the peo- 
 ple fora while by himself, and he began to build himself a 
 house upon the ridge called Velia, which looks down upon the 
 Forum. So the people thought that he was going to make 
 himself king; but when he heard this, he called an assembly of 
 the people, and appeared before them with his fasces lowered, 
 and with no axes in them, whence the custom remained ever 
 after, that no consular lictors wore axes within the city, and no 
 consul had power of life and death except when he was in com- 
 mand of his legions abroad. And he pulled down the begin- 
 ning of his house upon the Velia, and built it below that hill. 
 Also he passed laws that every Roman citizen might appeal to 
 the people against the judgment of the chief magistrates. 
 Wherefore he was greatly honored among the people, and was 
 called "Poplicola," or "Friend of the People." 
 
 After this Valerius called together the great Assembly of 
 the Centuries, and they chose Sp. Lucretius, father of Lucre- 
 tius, to succeed Brutus. But he was an old man, and in not 
 many days he died. So M. Horatius was chosen in his stead. 
 
 The temple on the Capitol which King Tarquin began had 
 never yet been consecrated. Then Valerius and Horatius drew 
 lots which should be the consecrator, and the lot fell on Hora- 
 tius. But the friends of Valerius murmured, and they wished 
 to prevent Horatius from having the honor; so when he was 
 now saying the prayer of consecration, with his hand upon the 
 doorpost of the temple, there came a messenger, who told him 
 that his son was just dead, and that one mourning for a son 
 could not rightly consecrate the temple. But Horatius kept
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 309 
 
 his hand upon the doorpost, and told them to see to the burial 
 of his son, and finished the rites of consecration. Thus did he 
 honor the gods even above his own son. 
 
 In the next year Valerius was again made consul, with T. 
 Lucretius; and Tarquinius, despairing now of aid from his 
 friends at Veii and Tarquinii, went to Lars Porsenna of Clu- 
 sium, a city on the river Clanis, which falls into the Tiber. 
 Porsenna was at this time acknowledged as chief of the twelve 
 Etruscan cities ; and he assembled a powerful army and came 
 to Rome. He came so quickly that he reached the Tiber and 
 was near the Sublician Bridge before there was time to de- 
 stroy it ; and if he had crossed it the city would have been lost. 
 Then a noble Roman, called Horatius Codes, of the Lucerian 
 tribe, with two friends Sp. Lartius, a Ramnian, and T. Her- 
 minius, a Titian posted themselves at the far end of the 
 bridge, and defended the passage against all the Etruscan 
 host, while the Romans were cutting it off behind them. 
 When it was all but destroyed, his two friends retreated across 
 the bridge, and Horatius was left alone to bear the whole at- 
 tack of the enemy. Well he kept his ground, standing un- 
 moved amid the darts which were showered upon his shield, 
 till the last beams of the bridge fell crashing into the river. 
 Then he prayed, saying, " Father Tiber, receive me and bear 
 me up, I pray thee." So he plunged in, and reached the other 
 side safely ; and the Romans honored him greatly : they put 
 up his statue in the Comitium, and gave him as much land as 
 he could plough round in a day, and every man at Rome sub- 
 scribed the cost of one day's food to reward him 
 
 Then Porsenna, disappointed in his attempt to surprise the 
 city, occupied the Hill Janiculum, and besieged the city, so 
 that the people were greatly distressed by hunger. But C. 
 Mucius, a noble youth, resolved to deliver his country by the 
 death of the king. So he armed himself with a dagger, and 
 went to the place where the king was used to sit in judgment. 
 It chanced that the soldiers were receiving their pay from the 
 king's secretary, who sat at his right hand splendidly ap- 
 parelled; and as this man seemed to be chief in authority, 
 Mucius thought that this must be the king; so he stabbed him 
 to the heart. Then the guards seized him and dragged him
 
 3io ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 before the king, who was greatly enraged, and ordered them to 
 burn him alive if he would not confess the whole affair. Then 
 Mucius stood before the king and said : " See how little thy 
 tortures can avail to make a brave man tell the secrets com- 
 mitted to him " ; and so saying, he thrust his right hand into 
 the fire of the altar, and held it in the flame with unmoved 
 countenance. Then the king marvelled at his courage, and 
 ordered him to be spared, and sent away in safety : " for," said 
 he, " thou art a brave man, and hast done more harm to thyself 
 than to me." Then Mucius replied : " Thy generosity, O king, 
 prevails more with me than thy threats. Know that three 
 hundred Roman youths have sworn thy death : my lot came 
 first. But all the rest remain, prepared to do and suffer like 
 myself." So he was let go, and returned home, and was called 
 " Scaevola," or "The Left-handed," because his right hand had 
 been burnt off 
 
 King Porsenna was greatly moved by the danger he had 
 escaped, and perceiving the obstinate determination of the Ro- 
 mans, he offered to make peace. The Romans gladly gave 
 ear to his words, for they were hard pressed, and they con- 
 sented to give back all the land which they had won from the 
 Etruscans beyond the Tiber. And they gave hostages to the 
 king in pledge that they would obey him as they had promised, 
 ten youths and ten maidens. But one of the maidens, named 
 Clcelia, had a man's heart, and she persuaded all her fellows to 
 escape from the king's camp and swim across the Tiber. At 
 first King Porsenna was wroth ; but then he was much amazed, 
 even more than at the deeds of Horatius and Mucius. So 
 when the Romans sent back Clcelia and her fellow-maidens 
 for they would not break faith with the king he bade her re- 
 turn home again, ana told her she might take whom she pleased 
 of the youths who were hostages ; and she chose those who 
 were yet boys, and restored them to their parents. 
 
 So the Roman people gave certain lands to young Mucius, 
 and they set up an equestrian statue to the bold Clcelia at the 
 top of the Sacred Way. And King Porsenna returned home ; 
 and thus the third and most formidable attempt to bring back 
 Tarquin failed. 
 
 When Tarquin now found that he had no hopes of further
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 311 
 
 assistance from Porsenna and his Etruscan friends, he went 
 and dwelt at Tusculum, where Mamilius Octavius, his son-in- 
 law, was still chief. Then the thirty Latin cities combined to 
 gether and made this Octavius their dictator, and bound them- 
 selves to restore their old friend and ally, King Tarquin, to the 
 sovereignty of Rome, 
 
 P. Valerius, who was called "Poplicola," was now dead, and 
 the Romans looked about for some chief worthy to lead them 
 against the army of the Latins. Poplicola had been made con- 
 sul four times, and his compeers acknowledged him as their 
 chief, and all men submitted to him as to a king. But now the 
 two consuls were jealous of each other; nor had they power of 
 life and death within the city, for Valerius (as we saw) had 
 taken away the axes from the fasces. Now this was one of the 
 reasons why Brutus and the rest made two consuls instead of 
 one king : for they said that neither one would allow the other 
 to become tyrant ; and since they only held office for one year 
 at a time, they might be called on to give account of their gov- 
 ernment when their year was at an end. 
 
 Yet though this was a safeguard of liberty in times of peace, 
 it was hurtful in time of war, for the consuls chosen by the 
 people in their great assemblies were not always skilful gen- 
 erals ; or if they were so, they were obliged to lay down their 
 command at the year's end. 
 
 So the senate determined, in cases of great danger, to call 
 upon one of the consuls to appoint a single chief, who should be 
 called " dictator," or master of the people. He had sovereign 
 power (Imperiuni) both in the city and out of the city, and the 
 fasces were always carried before him with the axes in them, 
 as they had been before the king. He could only be appointed 
 for six months, but at the end of the time he had to give no 
 account So that he was free to act according to his own judg- 
 ment, having no colleague to interfere with him at the present, 
 and no accusations to fear at a future time. The dictator was 
 general-in-chief, and he appointed a chief officer to command 
 the knights under him, who was called " master of the horse." 
 And now it appeared to be a fit time to appoint such a chief, 
 to take the command of the army against the Latins. So the 
 first dictator was T. Lartius, and he made Spurius Cassius his
 
 312 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 master of the horse. This was in the year B.C. 499, eight years 
 after the expulsion of Tarquin, 
 
 But the Latins did not declare war for two years after. 
 Then the senate again ordered the consul to name a master of 
 the people, or dictator; and he named Aul. Postumius, who 
 appointed T. ^Ebutius(one of the consuls of that year) to be 
 his master of the horse. So they led out the Roman army 
 against the Latins, and they met at the Lake Regillus, in the 
 land of the Tusculans. King Tarquin and all his family were in 
 the host of the Latins ; and that day it was to be determined 
 whether Rome should be again subject to the tyrant and 
 whether or not she was to be chief of the Latin cities. 
 
 King Tarquin himself, old as he was, rode in front of the 
 Latins in full armor ; and when he descried the Roman dictator 
 marshalling his men, he rode at him ; but Postumius wounded 
 him in the side, and he was rescued by the Latins. Then also 
 ^Ebutius, the master of the horse, and Oct. Mamilius, the dic- 
 tator of the Latins, charged one another, and ^Ebutius was 
 pierced through the arm, and Mamilius wounded in the breast. 
 But the Latin chief, nothing daunted, returned to battle, fol- 
 lowed by Titus, the king's son, with his band of exiles. These, 
 charged the Romans furiously, so that they gave way; but 
 when M. Valerius, brother of the great Poplicola, saw this, L 
 spurred his horse against Titus, and rode at him with spear n 
 rest ; and when Titus turned away and fled, Valerius rode furl 
 ously after him into the midst of the Latin host, and a certain 
 Latin smote him in the side as he was riding past, so that he 
 fell dead, and his horse galloped on without a rider. So the 
 band of exiles pressed still more fiercely upon the Romans, 
 and they began to flee. 
 
 Then Postumius the dictator lifted up his voice and vowed a 
 temple to Cantor and Pollux, the great twin heroes of the 
 Greeks, if they would aid him ; and behold there appeared on 
 his right two horsemen, taller and fairer than the sons of 
 men, and their horses were as white as snow. And they led 
 the dictator and his guard against the exiles and the Latins, 
 and the Romans prevailed against them; and T. Herminius 
 the Titian, the friend of Horatius Codes, ran Mamilius, the dic- 
 tator of the Latins, through the body, so that he died; but
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 313 
 
 when he was stripping the arms from his foe, another ran him 
 through, and he was carried back to the camp, and he also died. 
 Then also Titus, the king's son, was slain, and the Latins fled, 
 and the Romans pursued them with great slaughter, and took 
 their camp and all that was in it. Now Postumius had prom- 
 ised great rewards to those who first broke into the camp of 
 the Latins, and the first who broke in were the two horsemen 
 on white horses ; but after the battle they were nowhere to be 
 seen or found, nor was there any sign of them left, save on the 
 hard rock there was the mark of a horse's hoof, which men 
 said was made by the horse of one of those horsemen. 
 
 But at this very time two youths on white horses rode into 
 the Forum at Rome. They were covered with dust and sweat 
 and blood, like men who had fought long and hard, and their 
 horses also were bathed in sweat and foam : and they alighted 
 near the Temple of Vesta, and washed themselves in a spring 
 that gushes out hard by, and told all the people in the Forum 
 how the battle by the Lake Regillus had been fought and won. 
 Then they mounted their horses and rode away, and were seen 
 no more. 
 
 But Postumius, when he heard it, knew that these were 
 Castor and Pollux, the great twin brethren of the Greeks, and 
 that it was they who fought so well for Rome at the Lake 
 Regillus. So he built them a temple, according to his vow, 
 over the place where they had alighted in the Forum. And 
 their effigies were displayed on Roman coins to the latest ages 
 of the city. 
 
 This was the fourth and last attempt to restore King Tar- 
 quin. After the great defeat of Lake R.egillus, the Latin cities 
 made peace with Rome, and agreed to refuse harborage to the 
 old king. He had lost all his sons, and, accompanied by a few 
 faithful friends, who shared his exile, he sought a last asylum 
 at the Greek city of Cumse in the Bay of Naples, at the court 
 of the tyrant Aristodemus. Here he died in the course of a 
 year, fourteen years after his expulsion. 
 
 We shall now record, not only the slow steps by which the 
 Romans recovered dominion over their neighbors, but also the 
 long-continued struggle by which the plebeians raised them- 
 selves to a level with the patricians, who had again become the
 
 3U ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 dominant caste at Rome. Mixed up with legendary tales as 
 the history still is, enough is nevertheless preserved to excite 
 the admiration of all who love to look upon a brave people 
 pursuing a worthy object with patient but earnest resolution, 
 never flinching, yet seldom injuring their good cause by reck 
 le;>s violence. To an Englishman this history ought to be 
 especially dear, for more than any other in the annals of the 
 world does it resemble the long-enduring constancy and sturdy 
 determination, the temperate will and noble self-control, with 
 which the Commons of his own country secured their rights. 
 It was by a struggle of this nature, pursued through a century 
 and a half, that the character of the Roman people was molded 
 into that form of strength and energy, which threw back Han- 
 nibal to the coasts of Africa, and in half a century more made 
 them masters of the Mediterranean shore 
 
 There can be no doubt that the wars that followed the ex- 
 pulsion of the Tarquins, with the loss of territory that accom- 
 panied them, must have reduced all orders of men at Rome to 
 great distress, But those who most suffered were the plebe- 
 ians. The plebeians at that time consisted entirely of landhold- 
 ers, great and small, and husbandmen, for in those times the 
 practice of trades and mechanical arts was considered unworthy 
 of a freeborn man Some of the plebeian familes were as 
 wealthy as any among the patricians; but the mass of them 
 were petty yeoman, who lived on the produce of their small 
 farm, and were solely dependent for a living on their own limbs, 
 their own thrift and industry Most of them lived in the vil- 
 lages and small towns, which in those times were thickly sprin- 
 kled over the slopes of the Campagna. 
 
 The patricians, on the other hand, resided chiefly within the 
 city. If slaves were few as yet, they had the labor of their 
 clients available to till their farms ; and through their clients 
 also they were enabled to derive a profit from the practice of 
 trading and crafts, which personally neither they nor the ple- 
 beians would stoop to pursue. Besides these sources of profit, 
 they had at this time the exclusive use of the public land, a 
 subject on which we shall have to speak more at length here- 
 after. At present, it will be sufficient to say, that the public 
 land now spoken of had been the crown land or regal domain,
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 315 
 
 which on the expulsion of the kings had been forfeited to the 
 state The patricians being in possession of all actual power, 
 engrossed possession of it, and seem to have paid a very small 
 quit-rent to the treasury for this great advantage. 
 
 Besides this, the necessity of service in the army, or militia 
 as it might more justly be called acted very differently on 
 the rich landholder and the small yeoman. The latter, being 
 called out with sword and spear for the summer's campaign, as 
 his turn came round, was obliged to leave his farm uncared for, 
 and his crop could only be reaped by the kind aid of neighbors ; 
 whereas the rich proprietor, by his clients or his hired laborers, 
 could render the required military service without robbing his 
 land of his own labor. Moreover, the territory of Rome was so 
 narrow, and the enemy's borders so close at hand, that any night 
 the stout yeoman might find himself reduced to beggary, by 
 seeing his crops destroyed, his cattle driven away, and his 
 homestead burnt in a sudden foray. The patricians and rich 
 plebeians were, it is true, exposed to the same contingencies. 
 But wealth will always provide some defence ; and it is reason- 
 able to think that the larger proprietors provided places of 
 refuge, into which they could drive their cattle and secure 
 much of their property, such as the peel-towers common in our 
 own border counties. Thus the patricians and their clients 
 might escape the storm which destroyed the isolated yeoman. 
 
 To this must be added that the public land seems to have 
 been mostly in pasturage, and therefore the property of the 
 patricians must have chiefly consisted in cattle, which was more 
 easily saved from depredation than the crops of the plebeian. 
 Lastly, the profit derived from the trades and business of their 
 clients, being secured by the walls of the city, gave to the pa- 
 tricians the command of all the capital that could exist in a 
 state of society so simple and crude, and afforded at once 
 a means of repairing their own losses, and also of obtaining a 
 dominion over the poor yeoman. 
 
 For some time after the expulsion of the Tarquins it was 
 necessary for the patricians to treat the plebeians with liber- 
 ality. The institutions of " the Commons' King," King Ser- 
 vius, suspended by Tarquin, were, partially at least, restored : 
 it is said even that one of the first consuls was a plebeian, and
 
 316 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 that he chose several of the leading plebeians into the senate. 
 But after the death of Porsenna, and when the fear of the Tar- 
 quins ceased, all these flattering signs disappeared. The con- 
 suls seem still to have been elected by the Centuriate Assembly, 
 but the Curiate Assembly retained in their own hands the right 
 of conferring the Imperium, which amounted to a positive veto 
 on the election by the larger body. All the names of the early 
 consuls, except in the first year of the Republic, are patrician. 
 But if by chance a consul displayed popular tendencies, it was 
 in the power of the senate and patricians to suspend his power 
 by the appointment of a dictator. Thus, practically, the patri- 
 cian burgesses again became the Populus, or body politic of 
 Rome. 
 
 It must not here be forgotten that this dominant body was 
 an exclusive caste ; that is, it consisted of a limited number of 
 noble families, who allowed none of their members to marry with 
 persons born out of the pale of their own order. The child of 
 a patrician and a plebeian, or of a patrician and a client, was 
 not considered as born in lawful wedlock ; and however proud 
 the blood which it derived from one parent, the child sank to 
 the condition of the parent of lower rank. This was expressed 
 in Roman language by saying, that there was no " Right of Con- 
 nubium " between patricians and any inferior classes of men. 
 Nothing can be more impolitic than such restrictions; nothing 
 more hurtful even to those who count it their privilege. In all 
 exclusive or oligarchical/^/^, families become extinct, and the 
 breed decays both in bodily strength and mental vigor. Hap- 
 pily for Rome, the patricians were unable long to maintain 
 themselves as a separate caste. 
 
 Yet the plebeians might long have submitted to this state of 
 social and political inferiority, had not their personal distress 
 and the severe laws of Rome driven them to seek relief by 
 claiming to be recognized as members of the body politic. 
 
 The severe laws of which we speak were those of debtor and 
 creditor. If a Roman borrowed money, he was expected to 
 enter into a contract with his creditor to pay the debt by a cer- 
 tain day ; and if on that day he was unable to discharge his 
 obligation, he was summoned before the patrician judge, who 
 was authorized by the law to assign the defaulter as a bonds-
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 317 
 
 man to his creditor that is, the debtor was obliged to pay by 
 his ^own labor the debt which he was unable to pay in money. 
 Or if a man incurred a debt without such formal contract, the 
 rule was still more imperious, for in that case the law itself 
 fixed the day of payment; and if after a lapse of thirty days 
 from that date the debt was not discharged, the creditor was 
 empowered to arrest the person of his debtor, to load him with 
 chains, and feed him on bread and water for another thirty days ; 
 and then, if the money still remained unpaid, he might put him 
 to death, or sell him as a slave to the highest bidder; or, if 
 there were several creditors, they might hew his body in pieces 
 and divide it. And in this last case the law provided with 
 scrupulous providence against the evasion by which the Mer- 
 chant of Venice escaped the cruelty of the Jew; for the Roman 
 law said that " whether a man cut more or less [than his due], 
 he should incur no penalty." These atrocious provisions, how- 
 ever, defeated their own object, for there was no more un- 
 profitable way in which the body of a debtor could be disposed 
 of. 
 
 Such being the law of debtor and creditor, it remains to say 
 that the creditors were chiefly of the patrician caste, and the 
 debtors almost exclusively of the poorer sort among the ple- 
 beians. The patricians were the creditors, because from their 
 occupancy of the public land, and from their engrossing the 
 profits to be derived from trade and crafts, they alone had 
 spare capital to lend. The plebeian yeomen were the debtors, 
 because their independent position made them, at that time, 
 helpless. Vassals, clients, serfs, or by whatever name depend- 
 ents are called, do not suffer from the ravages of a predatory 
 war like free landholders, because the loss falls on their lords 
 or patrons. But when the independent yeoman's crops are 
 destroyed, his cattle " lifted," and his homestead in ashes, he 
 must himself repair the loss. This was, as we have said, the 
 condition of many Roman plebeians. To rebuild their houses 
 and restock their farms they borrowed; the patricians were 
 their creditors; and the law, instead of protecting the small 
 holders, like the law of the Hebrews, delivered them over into 
 serfdom or slavery. 
 
 Thus the free plebeian population might have been reduced
 
 318 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 to a state of mere dependency, and the history of Rome might 
 have presented a repetition of monotonous severity, like that 
 of Sparta or of Venice. 1 But it was ordained otherwise. The 
 distress and oppression of the plebeians led them to demand 
 and to obtain political protectors, by whose means they were 
 slowly but surely raised to equality of rights and privileges with 
 their rulers and oppressors. These protectors were the famous 
 Tribunes of the Plebs. We will now repeat the no less famous 
 legends by which their first creation was accounted for. 
 
 It was, by the common reckoning, fifteen years after the ex- 
 pulsion of the Tarquins (B.C. 494), that the plebeians were 
 roused to take the first step in the assertion of their rights. 
 After the battle of Lake Regillus, the plebeians had reason to 
 expect some relaxation of the law of debt, in consideration of 
 the great services they had rendered in the war. But none 
 was granted. The patrician creditors began to avail themselves 
 of the severity of the law against their plebeian debtors. The 
 discontent that followed was great, and the consuls prepared 
 to meet the storm. These were Appius Claudius, the proud 
 Sabine nobleman who had lately become a Roman, and who 
 now led the high patrician party with all the unbending energy 
 of a chieftain whose will had never been disputed by his obedi- 
 ent clansmen; and P. Servilius, who represented the milder 
 and more liberal party of the Fathers. 
 
 It chanced that an aged man rushed into the Forum on a 
 market-day, loaded with chains, clothed with a few scanty rags, 
 his hair and beard long and squalid; his whole appearance 
 ghastly, as of one oppressed by long want of food and air. He 
 was recognized as a brave soldier, the old comrade of many 
 who thronged the Forum. He told his story, how that in the 
 late wars the enemy had burned his house and plundered his 
 little farm ; that to replace his losses he had borrowed money 
 of a patrician, that his cruel creditor (in default of payment) 
 had thrown him into prison, 8 and tormented him with chains and 
 scourges. At this sad tale, the passions of the people rose high. 
 
 1 A well-known German historian calls the Spartans by the name of 
 "stunted Romans." There is much resemblance to be traced. 
 
 2 Such prisons were called ergastula, and afterward became the places 
 for keeping slaves in
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 310 
 
 Appius was obliged to conceal himself, while Servilius under 
 took to plead the cause of the plebeians with the senate. 
 
 Meantime news came to the city that the Roman territory 
 was invaded by the Volscian foe. The consuls proclaimed a 
 levy ; but the stout yeomen, one and all, refused to give in their 
 names and take the military oath. Servilius now came forward 
 and proclaimed by edict that no citizen should be imprisoned 
 for debt so long as the war lasted, and that at the close of the 
 war he would propose an alteration of the law. The plebeians 
 trusted him, and the enemy was driven back. But when the 
 popular consul returned with his victorious soldiers, he was de- 
 nied a triumph, and the senate, led by Appius, refused to make 
 any concession in favor of the debtors. 
 
 The anger of the plebeians rose higher and higher, when 
 again news came that the enemy was ravaging the lands of 
 Rome. The senate, well knowing that the power of the con- 
 suls would avail nothing, since Appius was regarded as a ty- 
 rant, and Servilius would not choose again to become an instru- 
 ment for deceiving the people, appointed a dictator to lead the 
 citizens into the field. But to make the act as popular as might 
 be, they named M. Valerius, a descendant of the great Popli- 
 cola. The same scene was repeated over again. Valerius pro- 
 tected the plebeians against their creditors while they were at 
 war, and promised them relief when war was over. But when 
 the danger was gone by, Appius again prevailed ; the senate 
 refused to listen to Valerius, and the dictator laid down his 
 office, calling gods and men to witness that he was not respon- 
 sible for his breach of faith. 
 
 The plebeians whom Valerius had led forth were still under 
 arms, still bound by their military oath, and Appius, with the 
 violent patricians, refused to disband them. The army, there- 
 fore, having lost Valerius, their proper general chose two of 
 themselves, L. Junius Brutus and L. Sicinius Bellutus by 
 name, and under their command they marched northward and 
 occupied the hill which commands the junction of the Tiber 
 and the Anio. Here, at a distance of about two miles from 
 Rome, they determined to settle and form a new city, leaving 
 Rome to the patricians and their clients. But the latter were 
 not willing to lose the best of their soldiery, the cultivators of
 
 320 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 
 
 the greater part of the Roman territory, and they sent repeated 
 embassies to persuade the seceders to return. They, however, 
 turned a deaf ear to all promises, for they had too often been 
 deceived. Appius now urged the senate and patricians to leave 
 the plebeians to themselves. The nobles and their clients, he 
 said, could well maintain themselves in the city without such 
 base aid. 
 
 But wiser sentiments prevailed. T. Lartius, and M.Valerius, 
 both of whom had been dictators, with Menenius Agrippa, an 
 old patrician of popular character, were empowered to treat 
 with the people. Still their leaders were unwilling to listen, 
 till old Menenius addressed them in the famous fable of the 
 " Belly and the Members " : 
 
 " In times of old," said he, " when every member of the body 
 could think for itself, and each had a separate will of its own, 
 they all, with one consent, resolved to revolt against the belly. 
 They knew no reason, they said, why they should toil from 
 morning till night in its service, while the belly lay at its ease 
 in the midst of all, and indolently grew fat upon their labors. 
 Accordingly they agreed to support it no more. The feet 
 vowed they would carry it no longer; the hands that they 
 would do no more work ; the teeth that they would not chew a 
 morsel of meat, even were it placed between them. Thus re- 
 solved, the members for a time showed their spirit and kept 
 their resolution ; but soon they found that instead of mortify- 
 ing the belly they only undid themselves : they languished for 
 a while, and perceived too late that it was owing to the belly 
 that they had strength to work and courage to mutiny." 
 
 The moral of this fable was plain. The people readily applied 
 it to the patricians and themselves, and their leaders proposed 
 terms of agreement to the patrician messengers. They re- 
 quired that the debtors who could not pay should have their 
 debts cancelled, and that those who had been given up into 
 slavery should be restored to freedom. This for the past. 
 And as a security for the future, they demanded that two of 
 themselves should be appointed for the sole purpose of protect- 
 ing the plebeians against the patrician magistrates, if they acted 
 cruelly or unjustly toward the debtors. The two officers thus to 
 be appointed were called " Tribunes of the Plebs." Their per-
 
 ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC 321 
 
 sons were to be sacred and inviolable during their year of office, 
 whence their office is called sacrosancta Potestas. They were 
 never to leave the city during that time, and their houses were 
 to be open day and night, that all who needed their aid might 
 demand it without delay. 
 
 This concession, apparently great, was much modified by the 
 fact that the patricians insisted on the election of the tribunes 
 being made at the Comitia of the Centuries, in which they them- 
 selves and their wealthy clients could usually command a ma- 
 jority. In later times, the number of the tribunes was increased 
 to five, and afterward to ten. They were elected at the Comitia 
 of the tribes. They had the privilege of attending all sittings 
 of the senate, though they were not considered members of 
 that famous body. Above all, they acquired the great and per- 
 ilous power of the veto, by which any one of their number 
 might stop any law, or annul any decree of the senate without 
 cause or reason assigned. This right of veto was called the 
 " Right of Intercession." 
 
 On the spot where this treaty was made, an altar was built 
 to Jupiter, the causer and banisher of fear, for the plebeians 
 had gone thither in fear and returned from it in safety. The 
 place was called Mons Sacer, or the Sacred Hill, forever after, 
 and the laws by which the sanctity of the tribunitian office was 
 secured were called the Leges Sacratce. 
 
 The tribunes were not properly magistrates or officers, for 
 they had no express functions or official duties to discharge. 
 They were simply representatives and protectors of the plebs. 
 At the same time, however, with the institution of these pro- 
 tective officers, the plebeians were allowed the right of having 
 two aediles chosen from their own body, whose business it was 
 to preserve order and decency in the streets, to provide for the 
 repair of all buildings and roads there, with other functions 
 partly belonging to police officers, and partly to commissioners 
 
 of public works. 
 
 E., VOL. I. at
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 B.C. 490 
 
 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY 
 
 Marathon I A name to conjure up such visions of glory as few battle- 
 fields have ever shown. Heroism and determination on the part of the 
 Athenians, supported by the small but ever noble band of Platasans who 
 came to their aid ; who can read the repulse of the Persians on this ever 
 memorable plain without experiencing a thrill of admiration and delight 
 at the achievement? The whole world since that battle has looked upon 
 it as a victory of the under dog. Many of the great engagements of 
 modern times have been likened unto it. For long it has been the syno- 
 nym of brave despair; the conquering of an enemy many times superior 
 in numbers to its opponent 
 
 This attempt of the Persians on the Greeks was not the first against 
 them. That took place B.C. 493 under Mardonius. This commander 
 had reduced Ionia, dethroned the despots, and established democracy 
 throughout the land. After this he turned his attention to Eretria and 
 Athens, taking his army across the straits in vessels. But the ships of 
 war and transports were wrecked by a mighty headwind as they rounded 
 Mount Athos. Many were driven ashore, about three hundred of them 
 were totally lost, and some twenty thousand men perished in the catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 All the trouble between the Persians and Greeks arose over the cap- 
 ture of Sardis by the lonians, B.C. 500. The city was burned, and then 
 the lonians retreated. It was to avenge this that Persia determined on 
 a punitive expedition against the Greeks. The lonians and Milesian 
 men were mostly slain by the Persians, the women and children led into 
 captivity, and the temples in the cities burned and razed to the ground. 1 
 
 In the battle of Marathon, which succeeded these events, we have a 
 vivid picture presented to us in Creasy's glowing words : 
 
 thousand three hundred and forty years ago a council 
 of Athenian officers was summoned on the slope of one 
 of the mountains that look over the plain of Marathon, on the 
 eastern coast of Attica. The immediate subject of their meet- 
 
 1 The year following the fall of the Ionic city of Miletus the poet 
 Phrynichus made it the subject of a tragedy. On bringing it on the stage 
 he was fined one thousand drachmae for having recalled to them their 
 own misfortunes. SMITH.
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 323 
 
 ing was to consider whether they should give battle to an 
 enemy that lay encamped on the shore beneath them; but on 
 the result of their deliberations depended, not merely the fate 
 of two armies, but the whole future progress of human civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 There were eleven members of that council of war. Ten 
 were the generals who were then annually elected at Athens, 
 one for each of the local tribes into which the Athenians were 
 divided. Each general led the men of his own tribe, and each 
 was invested with equal military authority. But one of the 
 archons was also associated with them in the general command 
 of the army. This magistrate was termed the " Polemarch" or 
 War-ruler. He had the privilege of leading the right wing of 
 the army in battle, and his vote in a council of war was equal 
 to that of any of the generals. A noble Athenian named Cal- 
 limachus was the war-ruler of this year, and, as such, stood 
 listening to the earnest discussion of the ten generals. They 
 had, indeed, deep matter for anxiety, though little aware how 
 momentous to mankind were the votes they were about to give, 
 or how the generations to come would read with interest the 
 record of their discussions. They saw before them the invad- 
 ing forces of a mighty empire, which had in the last fifty years 
 shattered and enslaved nearly all the kingdoms and principal 
 cities of the then known world. They knew that all the re- 
 sources of their own country were comprised in the little army 
 intrusted to their guidance. They saw before them a chosen 
 host of the great king, sent to wreak his special wrath on that 
 country and on the other insolent little Greek community which 
 had dared to aid his rebels and burn the capital of one of his 
 provinces. That victorious host had already fulfilled half its 
 mission of vengeance. 
 
 Eretria, the confederate of Athens in the bold march against 
 Sardis nine years before, had fallen in the last few days ; and 
 the Athenian generals could discern from the heights the island 
 of yEgilia, in which the Persians had deposited their Eretrian 
 prisoners, whom they had reserved to be led away captives into 
 Upper Asia, there to hear their doom from the lips of King 
 Darius himself. Moreover, the men of Athens knew that in 
 the camp before them was their own banished tyrant, who was
 
 324 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 seeking to be reinstated by foreign cimeters in despotic sway 
 over any remnant of his countrymen that might survive the 
 sack of their town, and might be left behind as too worthless 
 for leading away into Median bondage. 
 
 The numerical disparity between the force which the Athe- 
 nian commanders had under them, and that which they were 
 called on to encounter, was hopelessly apparent to some of the 
 council. The historians who wrote nearest to the time of 
 the battle do not pretend to give any detailed statements of the 
 numbers engaged, but there are sufficient data for our making 
 a general estimate. Every free Greek was trained to military 
 duty ; and, from the incessant border wars between the differ- 
 ent states, few Greeks reached the age of manhood without 
 having seen some service. But the muster-roll of free Athe- 
 nian citizens of an age fit for military duty never exceeded 
 thirty thousand, and at this epoch probably did not amount to 
 two-thirds of that number. Moreover, the poorer portion of 
 these were unprovided with the equipments, and untrained to 
 the operations of the regular infantry. 13ome detachments of 
 the best-armed troops would be required to garrison the city 
 itself and man the various fortified posts in the territory, so 
 that it is impossible to reckon the fully equipped force that 
 marched from Athens to Marathon, when the news of the Per- 
 sian landing arrived, at higher than ten thousand men. 1 
 
 With one exception, the other Greeks held back from aiding 
 them. Sparta had promised assistance, but the Persians had 
 landed on the sixth day of the moon, and a religious scruple 
 delayed the march of Spartan troops till the moon should have 
 reached its full. From one quarter only, and that from a most 
 unexpected one, did Athens receive aid at the moment of her 
 great peril. 
 
 Some years before this time the little state of Plataea in 
 Boeotia, being hard pressed by her powerful neighbor, Thebes, 
 had asked the protection of Athens, and had owed to an Athe- 
 
 1 The historians, who lived long after the time of the battle, such as 
 Justin, Plutarch, and others, give ten thousand as the number of the 
 Athenian army. Not much reliance could be placed on their authority 
 if unsupported by other evidence ; but a calculation made for the number 
 of the Athenian free population remarkably confirms it.
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 125 
 
 nian army the rescue of her independence. Now when it was 
 noised over Greece that the Mede had come from the uttermost 
 parts of the earth to destroy Athens, the brave Plataeans, unso- 
 licited, marched with their whole force to assist the defence, 
 and to share the fortunes of their benefactors. 
 
 The general levy of the Platasans amounted only to a thou- 
 sand men ; and this little column, marching from their city along 
 the southern ridge of Mount Cithaeron, and thence across the 
 Attic territory, joined the Athenian forces above Marathon 
 almost immediately before the battle. The reinforcement was 
 numerically small, but the gallant spirit of the men who com- 
 posed it must have made it of tenfold value to the Athenians, 
 and its presence must have gone far to dispel the cheerless 
 feeling of being deserted and friendless, which the delay of the 
 Spartan succors was calculated to create among the Athenian 
 ranks. 1 
 
 This generous daring of their weak but true-hearted ally 
 was never forgotten at Athens. The Plataeans were made the 
 civil fellow-countrymen of the Athenians, except the right of 
 exercising certain political functions ; and from that time forth 
 in the solemn sacrifices at Athens, the public prayers were 
 offered up for a joint blessing from Heaven upon the Athe- 
 nians, and the Plataeans also.. 
 
 After the junction of the column from Plataea, the Athenian 
 commanders must have had under them about eleven thousand 
 fully armed and disciplined infantry, and probably a large num- 
 ber of irregular light-armed troops ; as, besides the poorer citi- 
 zens who went to the field armed with javelins, cutlasses, and 
 targets, each regular heavy-armed soldier was attended in the 
 
 1 Mr. Grote observes that " this volunteer march of the whole Platasan 
 force to Marathon is one of the most affecting incidents of all Grecian 
 history." In truth, the whole career of Platsa, and the friendship, 
 strong, even unto death, between her and Athens form one of the most af- 
 fecting episodes in the history of antiquity. In the Peloponnesian war the 
 Platsans again were true to the Athenians against all risks, and all cal- 
 culation of self-interest: and the destruction of Plataea was the conse- 
 quence. There are few nobler passages in the classics than the speech 
 in which the Platsean prisoners of war, after the memorable siege of 
 their city, justify before their Spartan executioners their loyal adherence 
 to Athens.
 
 320 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 camp by one or more slaves, who were armed like the inferior 
 freemen. Cavalry or archers the Athenians (on this occasion) 
 had none, and the use in the field of military engines was not 
 at that period introduced into ancient warfare. 
 
 Contrasted with their own scanty forces, the Greek com- 
 manders saw stretched before them, along the shores of the 
 winding bay, the tents and shipping of the varied nations who 
 marched to do the bidding of the king of the Eastern world. 
 The difficulty of finding transports and of securing provisions 
 would form the only limit to the numbers of a Persian army. 
 Nor is there any reason to suppose the estimate of Justin ex- 
 aggerated, who rates at a hundred thousand the force which 
 on this occasion had sailed, under the satraps Datis and Arta- 
 phernes, from the Cilician shores against the devoted coasts of 
 Eubcea and Attica. And after largely deducting from this 
 total, so as to allow for mere mariners and camp followers, 
 there must still have remained fearful odds against the national 
 levies of the Athenians. 
 
 Nor could Greek generals then feel that confidence in the 
 superior quality of their troops, which ever since the battle of 
 Marathon has animated Europeans in conflicts with Asiatics, 
 as, for instance, in the after struggles between Greece and 
 Persia, or when the Roman legions encountered the myriads 
 of Mithradates and Tigranes, or as is the case in the Indian 
 campaigns of our own regiments. On the contrary, up to the 
 day of Marathon the Medes and Persians were reputed invin- 
 cible. They had more than once met Greek troops in Asia 
 Minor, in Cyprus, in Egypt, and had invariably beaten them. 
 
 Nothing can be stronger than the expressions used by the 
 early Greek writers respecting the terror which the name of 
 the Medes inspired, and the prostration of men's spirits before 
 the apparently resistless career of the Persian arms. It is, 
 therefore, little to be wondered at that five of the ten Athenian 
 generals shrank from the prospect of fighting a pitched battle 
 against an enemy so superior in numbers and so formidable in 
 military renown. Their own position on the heights was strong 
 and offered great advantages to a small defending force against 
 assailing masses. They deemed it mere foolhardiness to de- 
 scend into the plain to be trampled down by the Asiatic horse,
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 327 
 
 overwhelmed with the archery, or cut to pieces by the invinci- 
 ble veterans of Cambyses and Cyrus. 
 
 Moreover, Sparta, the great war state of Greece, had been 
 applied to, and had promised succor to Athens, though the re- 
 ligious observance which the Dorians paid to certain times and 
 seasons had for the present delayed their march. Was it not 
 wise, at any rate, to wait till the Spartans came up, and to have 
 the help of the best troops in Greece, before they exposed 
 themselves to the shock of the dreaded Medes ? 
 
 Specious as these reasons might appear, the other five 
 generals were for speedier and bolder operations. And, fortu- 
 nately for Athens and for the world, one of them was a man, 
 not only of the highest military genius, but also of that ener- 
 getic character which impresses its own type and ideas upon 
 spirits feebler in conception. 
 
 Miltiades was the head of one of the noblest houses at 
 Athens. He ranked the ^Eacidae among his ancestry, and the 
 blood of Achilles flowed in the veins of the hero of Marathon. 
 One of his immediate ancestors had acquired the dominion of 
 the Thracian Chersonese, and thus the family became at the 
 same time Athenian citizens and Thracian princes. This 
 occurred at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens. 
 Two of the relatives of Miltiades an uncle of the same name, 
 and a brother named Stesagoras had ruled the Chersonese 
 before Miltiades became its prince. He had been brought up 
 at Athens in the house of his father, Cimon, 1 who was renowned 
 throughout Greece for his victories in the Olympic chariot- 
 races, and who must have been possessed of great wealth. 
 
 The sons of Pisistratus, who succeeded their father in the 
 tyranny at Athens, caused Cimon to be assassinated ; but they 
 treated the young Miltiades with favor and kindness and When 
 his brother Stesagoras died in the Chersonese, they sent him 
 out there as lord of the principality. This was about twenty- 
 eight years before the battle of Marathon, and it is with his 
 arrival in the Chersonese that our first knowledge of the career 
 and character of Miltiades commences. We find, in the first 
 act recorded of him, the proof of the same resolute and unscru- 
 pulous spirit that marked his mature age. His brother's 
 
 1 Herodotus
 
 328 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 authority in the principality had been shaken by war and re- 
 volt: Miltiades determined to rule more securely. On his 
 arrival he kept close within his house, as if he was mourning 
 for his brother. The principal men of the Chersonese, hearing 
 of this, assembled from all the towns and districts, and went 
 together to the house of Miltiades, on a visit of condolence. 
 As soon as he had thus got them in his power, he made them 
 all prisoners. He then asserted and maintained his own abso- 
 lute authority in the peninsula, taking into his pay a body of 
 five hundred regular troops, and strengthening his interest by 
 marrying the daughter of the king of the neighboring Thra- 
 cians. 
 
 When the Persian power was extended to the Hellespont 
 and its neighborhood, Miltiades, as prince of the Chersonese, 
 submitted to King Darius ; and he was one of the numerous 
 tributary rulers who led their contingents of men to serve in 
 the Persian army, in the expedition against Scythia. Miltiades 
 and the vassal Greeks of Asia Minor were left by the Persian 
 king in charge of the bridge across the Danube, when the in- 
 vading army crossed that river, and plunged into the wilds of 
 the country that now is Russia, in vain pursuit of the ancestors 
 of the modern Cossacks. On learning the reverses that Darius 
 met with in the Scythian wilderness, Miltiades proposed to his 
 companions that they should break the bridge down and leave 
 the Persian king and his army to perish by famine and the 
 Scythian arrows. The rulers of the Asiatic Greek cities, 
 whom Miltiades addressed, shrank from this bold but ruthless 
 stroke against the Persian power, and Darius returned in 
 safety. 
 
 But it was known what advice Miltiades had given, and the 
 vengeance of Darius was thenceforth specially directed against 
 the man who had counselled such a deadly blow against his 
 empire and his person. The occupation of the Persian arms 
 in other quarters left Miltiades for some years after this in 
 possession of the Chersonese ; but it was precarious and inter- 
 rupted. He, however, availed himself of the opportunity which 
 his position gave him of conciliating the good-will of his fellow- 
 countrymen at Athens, by conquering and placing under the 
 Athenian authority the islands of Lemnos and Imbros, to
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 329 
 
 which Athens had ancient claims, but which she had never 
 previously been able to bring into complete subjection. 
 
 At length, in B.C. 494, the complete suppression of the 
 Ionian revolt by the Persians left their armies and fleets at 
 liberty to act against the enemies of the Great King to the west 
 of the Hellespont. A strong squadron of Phoenician galleys 
 was sent against the Chersonese. Miltiades knew that resist- 
 ance was hopeless, and while the Phoenicians were at Tenedos, 
 he loaded five galleys with all the treasure that he could col- 
 lect, and sailed away for Athens. The Phoenicians fell in with 
 him, and chased him hard along the north of the JEgean. One 
 of his galleys, on board of which was his eldest son Metiochus, 
 was actually captured. But Miltiades, with the other four, 
 succeeded in reaching the friendly coast of Imbros in safety. 
 Thence he afterward proceeded to Athens, and resumed his 
 station as a free citizen of the Athenian commonwealth. 
 
 The Athenians, at this time, had recently expelled Hippias 
 the son of Pisistratus, the last of their tyrants. They were in 
 the full glow of their newly recovered liberty and equality ; and 
 the constitutional changes of Clisthenes had inflamed their 
 republican zeal to the utmost. Miltiades had enemies at 
 Athens ; and these, availing themselves of the state of popular 
 feeling, brought him to trial for his life for having been tyrant 
 of the Chersonese. The charge did not necessarily import any 
 acts of cruelty or wrong to individuals : it was founded on no 
 specific law ; but it was based on the horror with which the 
 Greeks of that age regarded every man who made himself arbi- 
 trary master of his fellow-men, and exercised irresponsible 
 dominion over them. 
 
 The fact of Miltiades having so ruled in the Chersonese was 
 undeniable ; but the question which the Athenians assembled 
 in judgment must have tried, was whether Miltiades, although 
 tyrant of the Chersonese, deserved punishment as an Athenian 
 citizen. The eminent service that he had done the state in 
 conquering Lemnos and Imbros for it, pleaded strongly in his 
 favor. The people refused to convict him. He stood high in 
 public opinion. And when the coming invasion of the Persians 
 was known, the people wisely elected him one of their generals 
 for the year.
 
 330 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 Two other men of high eminence in history, though their 
 renown was achieved at a later period than that of Miltiades, 
 were also among the ten Athenian generals at Marathon. One 
 was Themistocles, the future founder of the Athenian navy, 
 and the destined victor of Salamis. The other was Aristides, 
 who afterward led the Athenian troops at Plataea, and whose 
 integrity and just popularity acquired for his country, when the 
 Persians had finally been repulsed, the advantageous preemi- 
 nence of being acknowledged by half of the Greeks as their 
 imperial leader and protector. It is not recorded what part 
 either Themistocles or Aristides took in the debate of the 
 council of war at Marathon. But, from the character of The- 
 mistocles, his boldness, and his intuitive genius for extempor- 
 izing the best measures in every emergency a quality which 
 the greatest of historians ascribes to him beyond all his con- 
 temporaries we may well believe that the vote of Themistocles 
 was for prompt and decisive action. On the vote of Aristides 
 it may be more difficult to speculate. His predilection for the 
 Spartans may have made him wish to wait till they came up ; 
 but, though circumspect, he was neither timid as a soldier nor 
 as a politician, and the bold advice of Miltiades may probably 
 have found in Aristides a willing, most assuredly it found in 
 him a candid, hearer. 
 
 Miltiades felt no hesitation as to the course which the Athe- 
 nian army ought to pursue; and earnestly did he press his 
 opinion on his brother generals. Practically acquainted with 
 the organization of the Persian armies, Miltiades felt convinced 
 of the superiority of the Greek troops, if properly handled ; he 
 saw with the military eye of a great general the advantage 
 which the position of the forces gave him for a sudden attack, 
 and as a profound politician he felt the perils of remaining in- 
 active, and of giving treachery time to ruin the Athenian cause. 
 
 One officer in the council of war had not yet voted. This 
 was Callimachus, the War-ruler. The votes of the generals 
 were five and five, so that the voice of Callimachus would be 
 decisive. 
 
 On that vote, in all human probability, the destiny of all 
 the nations of the world depended. Miltiades turned to him, 
 and in simple soldierly eloquence the substance of which we
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 331 
 
 may read faithfully reported in Herodotus, who had conversed 
 with the veterans of Marathon the great Athenian thus adjured 
 his countrymen to vote for giving battle : 
 
 "It now rests with you, Callimachus, either to enslave 
 Athens, or, by assuring her freedom, to win yourself an immor- 
 tality of fame, such as not even Harmodius and Aristogiton 
 have acquired ; for never, since the Athenians were a people, 
 were they in such danger as they are in at this moment. If 
 they bow the knee to these Medes, they are to be given up to 
 Hippias, and you know what they then will have to suffer. 
 But if Athens comes victorious out of this contest, she has it 
 in her to become the first city of Greece. Your vote is to de- 
 cide whether we are to join battle or not. If we do not bring 
 on a battle presently, some factious intrigue will disunite the 
 Athenians, and the city will be betrayed to the Medes. But if 
 we fight, before there is anything rotten in the state of Athens, 
 I believe that, provided the gods will give fair play and no 
 favor, we are able to get the best of it in an engagement." 
 
 The vote of the brave War-ruler was gained, the council 
 determined to give battle ; and such was the ascendency and 
 acknowledged military eminence of Miltiades, that his brother 
 generals one and all gave up their days of command to him, 
 and cheerfully acted under his orders. Fearful, however, of 
 creating any jealousy, and of so failing to obtain the vigorous 
 cooperation of all parts of his small army, Miltiades waited till 
 the day when the chief command would have come round to 
 him in regular rotation before he led the troops against the 
 enemy. 
 
 The inaction of the Asiatic commanders during this inter- 
 val appears strange at first sight ; but Hippias was with them, 
 and they and he were aware of their chance of a bloodless con- 
 quest through the machinations of his partisans among the 
 Athenians. The nature of the ground also explains in many 
 points the tactics of the opposite generals before the battle, as 
 well as the operations of the troops during the engagement. 
 
 The plain of Marathon, which is about twenty-two miles 
 distant from Athens, lies along the bay of the same name on 
 the northeastern coast of Attica. The plain is nearly in the 
 form of a crescent, and about six miles in length. It is about
 
 332 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 two miles broad in the centre, where the space between the 
 mountains and the sea is greatest, but it narrows toward either 
 extremity, the mountains coming close down to the water at 
 the horns of the bay. There is a valley trending inward from 
 the middle of the plain, and a ravine comes down to it to the 
 southward. Elsewhere it is closely girt round on the land side 
 by rugged limestone mountains, which are thickly studded with 
 pines, olive-trees and cedars, and overgrown with the myrtle, 
 arbutus, and the other low odoriferous shrubs that everywhere 
 perfume the Attic air. 
 
 The level of the ground is now varied by the mound raised 
 over those who fell in the battle, but it was an unbroken plain 
 when the Persians encamped on it. There are marshes at each 
 end, which are dry in spring and summer and then offer no ob- 
 struction to the horseman, but are commonly flooded with rain 
 and so rendered impracticable for cavalry in the autumn, the 
 time of year at which the action took place. 
 
 The Greeks, lying encamped on the mountains, could watch 
 every movement of the Persians on the plain below, while they 
 were enabled completely to mask their own. Miltiades also 
 had, from his position, the power of giving battle whenever he 
 pleased, or of delaying it at his discretion, unless Datis were to 
 attempt the perilous operation of storming the heights. 
 
 If we turn to the map of the Old World, to test the com- 
 parative territorial resources of the two states whose armies 
 were now about to come into conflict, the immense preponder- 
 ance of the material power of the Persian king over that of the 
 Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast 
 which history can supply. It has been truly remarked that, in 
 estimating mere areas Attica, containing on its whole surface 
 only seven hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if 
 compared with many a baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or 
 many a colonial allotment of modern times. Its antagonist, the 
 Persian, empire, comprised the whole of modern Asiatic and 
 much of modern European Turkey, the modern kingdom of 
 Persia and the countries of modern Georgia, Armenia, Balkh, 
 the Punjaub, Afghanistan. Beloochistan, Egypt and Tripoli. 
 
 Nor could a European, in the beginning of the fifth century 
 before our era, look upon this huge accumulation of power be-
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 333 
 
 neath the sceptre of a single Asiatic ruler with the indifference 
 with which we now observe on the map the extensive dominions 
 of modern Oriental sovereigns; for, as has been already re- 
 marked, before Marathon was fought, the prestige of success 
 and of supposed superiority of race was on the side of the 
 Asiatic against the European. Asia was the original seat of 
 human societies, and long before any trace can be found of the 
 inhabitants of the rest of the world having emerged from the 
 rudest barbarism, we can perceive that mighty and brilliant 
 empires flourished in the Asiatic continent. They appear 
 before us through the twilight of primeval history, dim and 
 indistinct, but massive and majestic, like mountains in the early 
 dawn. 
 
 Instead, however, of the infinite variety and restless change 
 which has characterized the institutions and fortunes of Euro- 
 pean states ever since the commencement of the civilization of 
 our continent, a monotonous uniformity pervades the histories 
 of nearly all Oriental empires, from the most ancient down to 
 the most recent times. They are characterized by the rapidity 
 of their early conquests, by the immense extent of the domin- 
 ions comprised in them, by the establishment of a satrap or 
 pashaw system of governing the provinces, by an invariable 
 and speedy degeneracy in the princes of the royal house, the 
 effeminate nurslings of the seraglio succeeding to the warrior 
 sovereigns reared in the camp, and by the internal anarchy and 
 insurrections which indicate and accelerate the decline and fall 
 of these unwieldy and ill-organized fabrics of power. 
 
 It is also a striking fact that the governments of all the great 
 Asiatic empires have in all ages been absolute despotisms. And 
 Heeren is right in connecting this with another great fact, 
 which is important from its influence both on the political and 
 the social life of Asiatics. " Among all the considerable nations 
 of Inner Asia, the paternal government of every household was 
 corrupted by polygamy: where that custom exists, a good 
 political constitution is impossible. Fathers, being converted 
 into domestic despots, are ready to pay the same abject obe- 
 dience to their sovereign which they exact from their family 
 and dependents in their domestic economy." 
 
 We should bear in mind, also, the inseparable connection
 
 334 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 between the state religion and all legislation which has always 
 prevailed in the East, and the constant existence of a powerful 
 sacerdotal body, exercising some check, though precarious and 
 irregular, over the throne itself, grasping at all civil administra- 
 tion, claiming the supreme control of education, stereotyping 
 the lines in which literature and science must move, and limit- 
 ing the extent to which it shall be lawful for the human mind 
 to prosecute its inquiries. 
 
 With these general characteristics rightly felt and under- 
 stood it becomes a comparatively easy task to investigate and 
 appreciate the origin, progress and principles of Oriental em- 
 pires in general, as well as of the Persian monarchy in particu- 
 lar. And we are thus better enabled to appreciate the repulse 
 which Greece gave to the arms of the East, and to judge of the 
 probable consequences to human civilization, if the Persians 
 had succeeded in bringing Europe under their yoke, as they 
 had already subjugated the fairest portions of the rest of the 
 then known world. 
 
 The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the 
 natural van-guard of European liberty against Persian ambition ; 
 and they preeminently displayed the salient points of distinctive 
 national character which have rendered European civilization 
 so far superior to Asiatic. The nations that dwelt in ancient 
 times around and near the northern shores of the Mediterranean 
 Sea were the first in our continent to receive from the East the 
 rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of social and 
 political organizations. Of these nations the Greeks, through 
 their vicinity to Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were among 
 the very foremost in acquiring the principles and habits of 
 civilized life ; and they also at once imparted a new and wholly 
 original stamp on all which they received. Thus, in their 
 religion, they received from foreign settlers the names of all 
 their deities and many of their rites, but they discarded the 
 loathsome monstrosities of the Nile, the Orontes, and the Gan- 
 ges ; they nationalized their creed, and their own poets created 
 their beautiful mythology. No sacerdotal caste ever existed 
 in Greece. 
 
 So, in their governments, they lived long under hereditary 
 kings, but never endured the permanent establishment of abso-
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 335 
 
 lute monarchy. Their early kings were constitutional rulers, 
 governing with denned prerogatives. And long before the Per- 
 sian invasion, the kingly form of government had given way in 
 almost all the Greek states to republican institutions, presenting 
 infinite varieties of the blending or the alternate predominance 
 of the oligarchical and democratical principles. In literature 
 and science the Greek intellect followed no beaten track, and 
 acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks thought their 
 subjects boldly out; and the novelty of a speculation invested 
 it in their minds with interest, and not with criminality. 
 
 Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the 
 Greeks presented the most striking contrast to the habitual 
 quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the 
 Greeks, the Athenians exhibited these national characteristics 
 in the strongest degree. This spirit of activity and daring, 
 joined to a generous sympathy for the fate of their fellow- 
 Greeks in Asia, had led them to join in the last Ionian war, 
 and now mingling with their abhorrence of the usurping family 
 of their own citizens, which for a period had forcibly seized on 
 and exercised despotic power at Athens, nerved them to defy 
 the wrath of King Darius, and to refuse to receive back at his 
 bidding the tyrant whom they had some years before driven 
 out. 
 
 The enterprise and genius of an Englishman have lately 
 confirmed by fresh evidence, and invested with fresh interest, 
 the might of the Persian monarch who sent his troops to com- 
 bat at Marathon. Inscriptions in a character termed the Ar- 
 row-headed, or Cuneiform, had long been known to exist on the 
 marble monuments at Persepolis, near the site of the ancient 
 Susa, and on the faces of rocks in other places formerly ruled 
 over by the early Persian kings. But for thousands of years 
 they had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the curious but 
 baffled beholder ; and they were often referred to as instances 
 of the folly of human pride, which could indeed write its own 
 praises in the solid rock, but only for the rock to outlive the 
 language as well as the memory of the vainglorious inscribers. 
 
 The elder Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some 
 guesses at the meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major 
 Rawlinson of the East India Company's service, after years of
 
 336 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 labor, has at last accomplished the glorious achievement of fully 
 revealing the alphabet and the grammar of this long unknown 
 tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and expounded 
 the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western 
 frontiers of Media. These records of the Achaemenidae have 
 at length found their interpreter ; and Darius himself speaks to 
 us from the consecrated mountain, and tells us the names of 
 the nations that obeyed him, the revolts that he suppressed, his 
 victories, his piety, and his glory. 
 
 Kings who thus seek the admiration of posterity are little 
 likely to dim the record of their successes by the mention of 
 their occasional defeats ; and it throws no suspicion on the nar- 
 rative of the Greek historians that we find these inscriptions 
 silent respecting the overthrow of Datis and Artaphernes, as 
 well as respecting the reverses which Darius sustained in per- 
 son during his Scythian campaigns. But these indisputable 
 monuments of Persian fame confirm, and even increase the 
 opinion with which Herodotus inspires us of the vast power 
 which Cyrus founded and Cambyses increased ; which Darius 
 augmented by Indian and Arabian conquests, and seemed like- 
 ly, when he directed his arms against Europe, to make the pre- 
 dominant monarchy of the world. 
 
 With the exception of the Chinese empire, in which, 
 throughout all ages down to the last few years, one-third of the 
 human race has dwelt almost unconnected with the other por- 
 tions, all the great kingdoms, which we know to have existed 
 in ancient Asia, were, in Darius' time, blended into the Per- 
 sian. The northern Indians, the Assyrians, the Syrians, the 
 Babylonians, the Chaldees, the Phoenicians, the nations of Pal- 
 estine, the Armenians, the Bactrians, the Lydians, the Phryg- 
 ians, the Parthians, and the Medes, all obeyed the sceptre of 
 the Great King : the Medes standing next to the native Per- 
 sians in honor, and the empire being frequently spoken of as 
 that of the Medes, or as that of the Medes and Persians. Egypt 
 and Cyrene were Persian provinces; the Greek colonists in 
 Asia Minor and the islands of the ^Egean were Darius' sub- 
 jects ; and their gallant but unsuccessful attempts to throw off 
 the Persian yoke had only served to rivet it more strongly, and 
 to increase the general belief that the Greeks could not stand
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 337 
 
 before the Persians in a field of battle. Darius' Scythian war, 
 though unsuccessful in its immediate object, had brought about 
 the subjugation of Thrace and the submission of Macedonia. 
 From the Indus to the Peneus, all was his. 
 
 We may imagine the wrath with which the lord of so many 
 nations must have heard, nine years before the battle of Mara- 
 thon, that a strange nation toward the setting sun, called the 
 Athenians, had dared to help his rebels in Ionia against him, 
 and that they had plundered and burned the capital of one of 
 his provinces. Before the burning of Sardis, Darius seems 
 never to have heard of the existence of Athens ; but his satraps 
 in Asia Minor had for some time seen Athenian refugees at 
 their provincial courts imploring assistance against their fellow- 
 countrymen. 
 
 When Hippias was driven away from Athens, and the 
 tyrannic dynasty of the Pisistratidae finally overthrown in B.C. 
 510, the banished tyrant and his adherents, after vainly seeking 
 to be restored by Spartan intervention, had betaken themselves 
 to Sardis, the capital city of the satrapy of Artaphernes. There 
 Hippias in the expressive words of Herodotus began every 
 kind of agitation, slandering the Athenians before Artaphernes, 
 and doing all he could to induce the satrap to place Athens in 
 subjection to him, as the tributary vassal of King Darius. 
 When the Athenians heard of his practices, they sent envoys 
 to Sardis to remonstrate with the Persians against taking up 
 the quarrel of the Athenian refugees. 
 
 But Artaphernes gave them in reply a menacing command 
 to receive Hippias back again if they looked for safety. The 
 Athenians were resolved not to purchase safety at such a price, 
 and after rejecting the satrap's terms, they considered that they 
 and the Persians were declared enemies. At this very crisis 
 the Ionian Greeks implored the assistance of their European 
 brethren, to enable them to recover their independence from 
 Persia. Athens, and the city of Eretria in Eubcea, alone con- 
 sented. Twenty Athenian galleys, and five Eretrian, crossed 
 the ^Egean Sea, and by a bold and sudden march upon Sardis, 
 the Athenians and their allies succeeded in capturing the capi- 
 tal city of the haughty satrap who had recently menaced them 
 with servitude or destruction. They were pursued, and de* 
 
 H. E., VOL. I. 22
 
 338 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 feated on their return to the coast, and Athens took no further 
 part in the Ionian war ; but the insult that she had put upon 
 the Persian power was speedily made known throughout that 
 empire, and was never to be forgiven or forgotten. 
 
 In the emphatic simplicity of the narrative of Herodotus, 
 the wrath of the Great King is thus described : " Now when it 
 was told to King Darius that Sardis had been taken and 
 burned by the Athenians and lonians, he took small heed of 
 the lonians, well knowing who they were, and that their revolt 
 would soon be put down ; but he asked who, and what manner 
 of men, the Athenians were. And when he had been told, he 
 called for his bow ; and, having taken it, and placed an arrow 
 on the string, he let the arrow fly toward heaven ; and as he 
 shot it into the air, he said, * Oh ! supreme God, grant me that 
 I may avenge myself on the Athenians.' And when he had 
 said this, he appointed one of his servants to say to him every 
 day as he sat at meat, * Sire, remember the Athenians.' " 
 
 Some years were occupied in the complete reduction of 
 Ionia. But when this was effected, Darius ordered his victo- 
 rious forces to proceed to punish Athens and Eretria, and to 
 conquer European Greece. The first armament sent for this 
 purpose was shattered by shipwreck, and nearly destroyed off 
 Mount Athos. But the purpose of King Darius was not easily 
 shaken. A larger army was ordered to be collected in Cilicia, 
 and requisitions were sent to all the maritime cities of the Per- 
 sian empire for ships of war, and for transports of sufficient 
 size for carrying cavalry as well as infantry across the ^Egean. 
 While these preparations were being made, Darius sent heralds 
 round to the Grecian cities demanding their submission to 
 Persia. It was proclaimed in the market-place of each little 
 Hellenic state some with territories not larger than the Isle 
 of Wight that King Darius, the lord of all men, from the 
 rising to the setting sun, 1 required earth and water to be deliv- 
 ered to his heralds, as a symbolical acknowledgment that he 
 was head and master of the country. Terror-stricken at the 
 power of Persia and at the severe punishment that had re- 
 cently been inflicted on the refractory lonians, many of the 
 continental Greeks and nearly all the islanders submitted, and 
 
 1 yEschines
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 339 
 
 gave the required tokens of vassalage At Sparta and Athens 
 an indignant refusal was returned a refusal which was dis- 
 graced by outrage and violence against the persons of the 
 Asiatic heralds. 
 
 Fresh fuel was thus added to the anger of Darius against 
 Athens, and the Persian preparations went on with renewed 
 vigor. In the summer of B.C. 490, the army destined for the 
 invasion was assembled in the Aleian plain of Cilicia, near the 
 sea. A fleet of six hundred galleys and numerous transports 
 was collected on the coast for the embarkation of troops, horse 
 as well as foot. A Median general named Datis, and Arta- 
 phernes, the son of the satrap of Sardis, and who was also 
 nephew of Darius, were placed in titular joint-command of the 
 expedition. The real supreme authority was probably given 
 to Datis alone, from the way in which the Greek writers speak 
 of him. 
 
 We know no details of the previous career of this officer; 
 but there is every reason to believe that his abilities and brav- 
 ery had been proved by experience, or his Median birth would 
 have prevented his being placed in high command by Darius. 
 He appears to have been the first Mede who was thus trusted 
 by the Persian kings after the overthrow of the conspiracy of 
 the Median magi against the Persians immediately before 
 Darius obtained the throne. Datis received instructions to 
 complete the subjugation of Greece, and especial orders were 
 given him with regard to Eretria and Athens. He was to take 
 these two cities, and he was to lead the inhabitants away cap- 
 tive, and bring them as slaves into the presence of the Great 
 King. 
 
 Datis embarked his forces in the fleet that awaited them, 
 and coasting along the shores of Asia Minor till he was off 
 Samos, he thence sailed due westward through the ^Egean 
 Sea for Greece, taking the islands in his way. The Naxians 
 had, ten years before, successfully stood a siege against a Per- 
 sian armament, but they now were too terrified to offer any 
 resistance, and fled to the mountain tops, while the enemy 
 burned their town and laid waste their lands. Thence Datis, 
 compelling the Greek islanders to join him with their ships 
 and men, sailed onward to the coast of Eubcea. The little
 
 340 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 town of Carystus essayed resistance, but was quickly over- 
 powered. 
 
 He next attacked Eretria. The Athenians sent four thou- 
 sand men to its aid ; but treachery was at work among the 
 Eretrians ; and the Athenian force received timely warning 
 from one of the leading men of the city to retire to aid in sav- 
 ing their own country, instead of remaining to share in the 
 inevitable destruction of Eretria. Left to themselves, the 
 Eretrians repulsed the assaults of the Persians against their 
 walls for six days ; on the seventh they were betrayed by two 
 of their chiefs, and the Persians occupied the city. The tem- 
 ples were burned in revenge for the firing of Sardis, and the 
 inhabitants were bound, and placed as prisoners in the neigh- 
 boring islet of .Lgilia, to wait there till Datis should bring the 
 Athenians to join them in captivity, when both populations 
 were to be led into Upper Asia, there to learn their doom from 
 the lips of King Darius himself. 
 
 Flushed with success, and with half his mission thus 
 accomplished, Datis reembarked his troops, and, crossing the 
 little channel that separates Eubcea from the mainland, he 
 encamped his troops on the Attic coast at Marathon, drawing 
 up his galleys on the shelving beach, as was the custom with 
 the navies of antiquity. The conquered islands behind him 
 served as places of deposit for his provisions and military 
 stores. His position at Marathon seemed to him in every re- 
 spect advantageous, and the level nature of the ground on 
 which he camped was favorable for the employment of his cav- 
 alry, if the Athenians should venture to engage him. Hippias, 
 who accompanied him, and acted as the guide of the invaders, 
 had pointed out Marathon as the best place for a landing, for 
 this very reason. Probably Hippias was also influenced by the 
 recollection that forty-seven years previously, he, with his 
 father Pisistratus, had crossed with an army from Eretria to 
 Marathon, and had won an easy victory over their Athenian 
 enemies on that very plain, which had restored them to tyran- 
 nic power. The omen seemed cheering. The place was the 
 same, but Hippias soon learned to his cost how great a change 
 had come over the spirit of the Athenians. 
 
 But though " the fierce democracy" of Athens was zealous
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 341 
 
 and true against foreign invader and domestic tyrant, a faction 
 existed in Athens, as at Eretria, who were willing to purchase 
 a party triumph over their fellow-citizens at the price of their 
 country's ruin. Communications were opened between these 
 men and the Persian camp, which would have led to a catas- 
 trophe like that of Eretria, if Miltiades had not resolved and 
 persuaded his colleagues to resolve on fighting at all hazards. 
 
 When Miltiades arrayed his men for action, he staked on 
 the arbitrament of one battle not only the fate of Athens, but 
 that of all Greece ; for if Athens had fallen, no other Greek 
 state, except Lacedaemon, would have had the courage to 
 resist ; and the Lacedaemonians, though they would probably 
 have died in their ranks to the last man, never could have 
 successfully resisted the victorious Persians and the numerous 
 Greek troops which would have soon marched under the Per- 
 sian satraps, had they prevailed over Athens. 
 
 Nor was there any power to the westward of Greece that 
 could have offered an effectual opposition to Persia, had she 
 once conquered Greece, and made that country a basis for 
 future military operations. Rome was at this time in her sea- 
 son of utmost weakness. Her dynasty of powerful Etruscan 
 kings had been driven out ; and her infant commonwealth was 
 reeling under the attacks of the Etruscans and Volscians from 
 without, and the fierce dissensions between the patricians and 
 plebeians within. Etruria, with her lucumos and serfs, was 
 no match for Persia. Samnium had not grown into the might 
 which she afterward put forth ; nor could the Greek colonies 
 in South Italy and Sicily hope to conquer when their parent 
 states had perished. Carthage had escaped the Persian yoke 
 in the time of Cambyses, through the reluctance of the. Phoe- 
 nician mariners to serve against their kinsmen. 
 
 But such forbearance could not long have been relied on, 
 and the future rival of Rome would have become as submissive 
 a minister of the Persian power as were the Phoenician cities 
 themselves. If we turn to Spain ; or if we pass the great 
 mountain chain, which, prolonged through the Pyrenees, the 
 Cevennes, the Alps, and the Balkan, divides Northern from 
 Southern Europe, we shall find nothing at that period but 
 mere savage Finns, Celts, Slavs, and Teutons. Had Persia
 
 342 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 beaten Athens at Marathon, she could have found no obstacle 
 to prevent Darius, the chosen servant of Ormuzd, from advanc 
 ing his sway over all the known Western races of mankind. 
 The infant energies of Europe would have been trodden out 
 beneath universal conquest, and the history of the world, like 
 the history of Asia, have become a mere record of the rise and 
 fall of despotic dynasties, of the incursions of barbarous 
 hordes, and of the mental and political prostration of millions 
 beneath the diadem, the tiara, and the sword. 
 
 Great as the preponderance of the Persian over the Athe- 
 nian power at that crisis seems to have been, it would be unjust 
 to impute wild rashness to the policy of Miltiades and those 
 who voted with him in the Athenian council of war, or to look 
 on the after-current of events as the mere fortunate result of 
 successful folly. As before has been remarked, Miltiades, 
 while prince of the Chersonese, had seen service in the Persian 
 armies ; and he knew by personal observation how many ele- 
 ments of weakness lurked beneath their imposing aspect of 
 strength. He knew that the bulk of their troops no longer 
 consisted of the hardy shepherds and mountaineers from Persia 
 proper and Kurdistan, who won Cyrus's battles ; but that un- 
 willing contingents from conquered nations now rilled up the 
 Persian muster-rolls, fighting more from compulsion than from 
 any zeal in the cause of their masters. He had also the 
 sagacity and the spirit to appreciate the superiority of the 
 Greek armor and organization over the Asiatic, notwith- 
 standing former reverses. Above all, he felt and worthily 
 trusted the enthusiasm of those whom he led. 
 
 The Athenians whom he led had proved by their newborn 
 valor in recent wars against the neighboring states that 
 " liberty and equality of civic rights are brave spirit-stirring 
 things, and they, who, while under the yoke of a despot, had 
 been no better men of war than any of their neighbors, as soon 
 as they were free, became the foremost men of all ; for each 
 felt that in fighting for a free commonwealth, he fought for 
 himself, and whatever he took in hand, he was zealous to do 
 the work thoroughly." So the nearly contemporaneous histo- 
 rian describes the change of spirit that was seen in the Athe- 
 nians after their tyrants were expelled ; and Miltiades knew
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 343 
 
 that in leading them against the invading army, where they 
 had Hippias, the foe they most hated, before them, he was 
 bringing into battle no ordinary men, and could calculate on 
 no ordinary heroism. 
 
 As for traitors, he was sure that, whatever treachery might 
 lurk among some of the higher born and wealthier Athenians, 
 the rank and file whom he commanded were ready to do their 
 utmost in his and their own cause. With regard to future 
 attacks from Asia, he might reasonably hope that one victory 
 would inspirit all Greece to combine against the common foe; 
 and that the latent seeds of revolt and disunion in the Persian 
 empire would soon burst forth and paralyze its energies, so as 
 to leave Greek independence secure. 
 
 With these hopes and risks, Miltiades, on the afternoon of 
 a September day, B.C. 490, gave the word for the Athenian 
 army to prepare for battle. There were many local associ- 
 ations connected with those mountain heights which were cal- 
 culated powerfully to excite the spirits of the men, and of 
 which the commanders well knew how to avail themselves in 
 their exhortations to their troops before the encounter. Mara- 
 thon itself was a region sacred to Hercules. Close to them 
 was the fountain of Macaria, who had in days of yore devoted 
 herself to death for the liberty of her people. The very plain 
 on which they were to fight was the scene of the explc?ts of 
 their national hero, Theseus ; and there, too, as old legends 
 told, the Athenians and the Heraclidae had routed the invader, 
 Eurystheus. 
 
 These traditions were not mere cloudy myths or idle fic- 
 tions, but matters of implicit earnest faith to the men of that 
 day, and many a fervent prayer arose from the Athenian ranks 
 to the heroic spirits who, -while on earth, had striven and 
 suffered on that very spot, and who were believed to be now 
 heavenly powers, looking down with interest on their still be- 
 loved country, and capable of interposing with superhuman aid 
 in its behalf. 
 
 According to old national custom, the warriors of each tribe 
 were arrayed together; neighbor thus fighting by the side of 
 neighbor, friend by friend, and the spirit of emulation and the 
 consciousness of responsibility excited to the very utmost.
 
 344 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 The War-ruler, Callimachus, had the leading of the right wing; 
 the Plataeans formed the extreme left ; and Themistocles and 
 Aristides commanded the centre. The line consisted of the 
 heavy-armed spearmen only ; for the Greeks until the time 
 of Iphicrates took little or no account of light-armed soldiers 
 in a pitched battle, using them only in skirmishes, or for the 
 pursuit of a defeated enemy. The panoply of the regular in- 
 fantry consisted of a long spear, of a shield, helmet, breast- 
 plate, greaves, and short sword. 
 
 Thus equipped, they usually advanced slowly and steadily 
 into action in a uniform phalanx of about eight spears deep. 
 But the military genius of Miltiades led him to deviate on 
 this occasion from the commonplace tactics of his countrymen. 
 It was essential for him to extend his line so as to cover all 
 the practicable ground, and to secure himself from being out- 
 flanked and charged in the rear by the Persian horse. This 
 extension involved the weakening of his line. Instead of a 
 uniform reduction of its strength, he determined on detaching 
 principally from his centre, which, from the nature of the 
 ground, would have the best opportunities for rallying, if 
 broken ; and on strengthening his wings so as to insure advan- 
 tage at those points ; and he trusted to his own skill and to his 
 soldiers' discipline for the improvement of that advantage into 
 decisive victory. 1 
 
 In this order, and availing himself probably of the inequali- 
 ties of the ground, so as to conceal his preparations from the 
 enemy till the last possible moment, Miltiades drew up the 
 eleven thousand infantry whose spears were to decide this crisis 
 in the struggle between the European and the Asiatic worlds 
 The sacrifices by which the favor of heaven was sought, and 
 its will consulted, were announced to show propitious omens. 
 The trumpet sounded for action, and, chanting the hymn of 
 
 1 It is remarkable that there is no other instance of a Greek general 
 deviating from the ordinary mode of bringing a phalanx of spearmen into 
 action until the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea, more than a century 
 after Marathon, when Epaminondas introduced the tactics which Alex- 
 ander the Great in ancient times, and Frederick the Great in modern 
 times, made so famous, of concentrating an overpowing force to bear on 
 some decisive point of the enemy's line, while he kept back, or, in mili- 
 tary phrase, refused the weaker part of his own.
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 345 
 
 battle, the little army bore down upon the host of the foe. 
 Then, too, along the mountain slopes of Marathon must 
 have resounded the mutual exhortation which ^schylus, who 
 fought in both battles, tells us was afterward heard over the 
 waves of Salamis: "On, sons of the Greeks! Strike for the 
 freedom of your country! strike for the freedom of your 
 children and of your wives for the shrines of your fathers' 
 gods, and for the sepulchres of your sires. All all are now 
 staked upon the strife." 
 
 Instead of advancing at the usual slow pace of the phalanx, 
 Miltiades brought his men on at a run. They were all trained 
 in the exercise of the palcestra, so that there was no fear of 
 their ending the charge in breathless exhaustion ; and it was 
 of the deepest importance for him to traverse as rapidly as 
 possible the mile or so of level ground that lay between the 
 mountain foot and the Persian outposts, and so to get his 
 troops into close action before the Asiatic cavalry could mount, 
 form, and manoeuvre against him, or their archers keep him 
 long under fire, and before the enemy's generals could fairly 
 deploy their masses. 
 
 "When the Persians," says Herodotus, "saw the Athenians 
 running down on them, without horse or bowmen, and scanty 
 in numbers, they thought them a set of madmen rushing upon 
 certain destruction." They began, however, to prepare to 
 receive them, and the Eastern chiefs arrayed, as quickly as 
 time and place allowed, the varied races who served in their 
 motley ranks. Mountaineers from Hyrcania and Afghanistan, 
 wild horsemen from the steppes of Khorassan, the black 
 archers of Ethiopia, swordsmen from the banks of the Indus, 
 the Oxus, the Euphrates and the Nile, made ready against the 
 enemies of the Great King. 
 
 But no national cause inspired them except the division of 
 native Persians ; and in the large host there was no uniformity 
 of language, creed, race or military system. Still, among them 
 there were many gallant men, under a veteran general ; they 
 were familiarized with victory, and in contemptuous confi- 
 dence their infantry, which alone had time to form, awaited 
 the Athenian charge. On came the Greeks, with one unwav- 
 ering line of leveled spears, against which the light targets,
 
 346 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 the short lances and cimeters of the Orientals offered weak 
 defence. The front rank of the Asiatics must have gone down 
 to a man at the first shock. Still they recoiled not, but strove 
 by individual gallantry and by the weight of numbers to make 
 up for the disadvantages of weapons and tactics, and to bear 
 back the shallow line of the Europeans. In the centre, where 
 the native Persians and the Sacse fought, they succeeded in 
 breaking through the weakened part of the Athenian phalanx; 
 and the tribes led by Aristides and Themistocles were, after a 
 brave resistance, driven back over the plain, and chased by the 
 Persians up the valley toward the inner country. There the 
 nature of the ground gave the opportunity of rallying and 
 renewing the struggle. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Greek wings, where Miltiades had concen- 
 trated his chief strength, had routed the Asiatics opposed to 
 them ; and the Athenian and Plataean officers, instead of pur- 
 suing the fugitives, kept their troops well in hand, and, wheel- 
 ing round, they formed the two wings together. Miltiades 
 instantly led them against the Persian centre, which had hith- 
 erto been triumphant., but which now fell back, and prepared 
 to encounter these new and unexpected assailants. Aristides 
 and Themistocles renewed the fight with their reorganized 
 troops, and the full force of the Greeks was brought into close 
 action with the Persian and Sacean divisions of the enemy. 
 Datis' veterans strove hard to keep their ground, and evening 
 was approaching before the stern encounter was decided. 
 
 But the Persians, with their slight wicker shields, destitute 
 of body armor, and never taught by training to keep the even 
 front and act with the regular movement of the Greek infan- 
 try, fought at heavy disadvantage with their shorter and 
 feebler weapons against the compact array of well-armed 
 Athenian and Platsean spearmen, all perfectly drilled to per- 
 form each necessary evolution in concert, and to preserve a uni- 
 form and unwavering line in battle. In personal courage and 
 in bodily activity the Persians were not inferior to their adver- 
 saries. Their spirits were not yet cowed by the recollection 
 of former defeats ; and they lavished their lives freely, rather 
 than forfeit the fame which they had won by so many victo- 
 ries. While their rear ranks poured an incessant shower of
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 34; 
 
 arrows over the heads of their comrades, the foremost Per- 
 sians kept rushing forward, sometimes singly, sometimes in 
 desperate groups of ten or twelve, upon the projecting spears 
 of the Greeks, striving to force a lane into the phalanx, and 
 to bring their cimeters and daggers into play. But the Greeks 
 felt their superiority, and though the fatigue of the long-con- 
 tinued action told heavily on their inferior numbers, the sight 
 of the carnage that they dealt upon their assailants nerved 
 them to fight still more fiercely on. 
 
 At last the previously unvanquished lords of Asia turned 
 their backs and fled, and the Greeks followed, striking them 
 down, to the water's edge, 1 where the invaders were now 
 hastily launching their galleys, and seeking to embark and fly. 
 Flushed with success, the Athenians attacked and strove to 
 fire the fleet. But here the Asiatics resisted desperately, and 
 the principal loss sustained by the Greeks was in the assault 
 on the ships. Here fell the brave War-ruler Callimachus, the 
 general Stesilaus, and other Athenians of note. Seven galleys 
 were fired; but the Persians succeeded in saving the rest. 
 They pushed off from the fatal shore ; but even here the skill 
 of Datis did not desert him, and he sailed round to the west- 
 ern coast of Attica, in hopes to find the city unprotected, and 
 to gain possession of it from some of the partisans of Hippias. 
 
 Miltiades, however, saw and counteracted his manoeuvre. 
 Leaving Aristides, and the troops of his tribe, to guard the 
 spoil and the slain, the Athenian commander led his conquer- 
 ing army by a rapid night-march back across the country to 
 Athens. And when the Persian fleet had doubled the Cape of 
 Sunium and sailed up to the Athenian harbor in the morn- 
 ing, Datis saw arrayed on the heights above the city, the 
 troops before whom his men had fled on the preceding even- 
 ing. All hope of further conquest in Europe for the time 
 was abandoned, and the baffled armada returned to the Asi- 
 atic coasts. 
 
 1 The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow ; 
 The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; 
 Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below, 
 Death in the front, Destruction in the rear 1 
 Such was the scene. BYRON.
 
 348 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 After the battle had been fought, but while the dead bodies 
 were yet on the ground, the promised reinforcement from 
 Sparta arrived. Two thousand Lacedaemonian spearmen, 
 starting immediately after the full moon, had marched the hun- 
 dred and fifty miles between Athens and Sparta in the won- 
 derfully short time of three days. Though too late to share 
 in the glory of the action, they requested to be allowed to 
 march to the battle-field to behold the Medes. They proceeded 
 thither, gazed on the dead bodies of the invaders, and then 
 praising the Athenians and what they had done, they returned 
 to Lacedaemon. 
 
 The number of the Persian dead was sixty-four hundred ; 
 of the Athenians, one hundred and ninety-two. The number 
 of the Plataeans who fell is not mentioned ; but, as they fought 
 in the part of the army which was not broken, it cannot have 
 been large. 
 
 The apparent disproportion between the losses of the two 
 armies is not surprising when we remember the armor of the 
 Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter 
 being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long 
 as they kept firm in their ranks. 1 
 
 The Athenian slain were buried on the field of battle. 
 This was contrary to the usual custom, according to which the 
 bones of all who fell fighting for their country in each year 
 were deposited in a public sepulchre in the suburb of Athens 
 called the " Ceramicus." But it was felt that a distinction ought 
 to be made in the funeral honors paid to the men of Marathon, 
 even as their merit had been distinguished over that of all 
 other Athenians. A lofty mound was raised on the plain of 
 Marathon, beneath which the remains of the men of Athens 
 who fell in the battle were deposited. Ten columns were 
 erected on the spot, one for each of the Athenian tribes ; and 
 on the monumental column of each tribe were graven the 
 names of those of its members whose glory it was to have 
 fallen in the great battle of liberation. The antiquarian Pau- 
 sanias read those names there six hundred years after the 
 
 1 Mitford well refers to Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt as instances 
 of similar disparity of loss between the conquerors and the conquered.
 
 349 
 
 time when they were first graven. 1 The columns have long 
 perished, but the mound still marks the spot where the noblest 
 heroes of antiquity repose. 
 
 A separate tumulus was raised over the bodies of the slain 
 Plataeans, and another over the light-armed slaves who had 
 taken part and had fallen in the battle.* There was also a 
 separate funeral monument to the general to whose genius the 
 victory was mainly due. Miltiades did not live long after his 
 achievement at Marathon, but he lived long enough to experi- 
 ence a lamentable reverse of his popularity and success. As 
 soon as the Persians had quitted the western coasts of the 
 yEgean, he proposed to an assembly of the Athenian people 
 that they should fit out seventy galleys, with a proportionate 
 force of soldiers and military stores, and place it at his dis- 
 posal ; not telling them whither he meant to lead it, but prom- 
 ising them that if they would equip the force he asked for, 
 and give him discretionary powers, he would lead it to a land 
 where there was gold in abundance to be won with ease. 
 
 The Greeks of that time believed in the existence of east- 
 ern realms teeming with gold, as firmly as the Europeans of 
 the sixteenth century believed in El Dorado of the West. The 
 Athenians probably thought that the recent victor of Mara- 
 thon, and former officer of Darius, was about to lead them on 
 a secret expedition against some wealthy and unprotected 
 cities of treasure in the Persian dominions. The armament 
 was voted and equipped, and sailed eastward from Attica, no 
 one but Miltiades knowing its destination until the Greek isle 
 of paros was reached, when his true object appeared. In 
 former years, while connected with the Persians as prince of 
 the Chersonese, Miltiades had been involved in a quarrel with 
 
 1 Pausanias states, with implicit belief, that the battle-field was haunted 
 at night by supernatural beings, and that the noise of combatants and the 
 snorting of horses were heard to resound on it. The superstition has 
 survived the change of creeds, and the shepherds of the neighborhood still 
 believe that spectral warriors contend on the plain at midnight, and they 
 say that they have heard the shouts of the combatants and the neigh ing 
 of the steeds. 
 
 2 It is probable that the Greek light- armed irregulars were active in 
 the attack on the Persian ships, and it was in this attack that the Greeks 
 suffered their principal loss.
 
 350 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 one of the leading men among the Parians, who had injured 
 his credit and caused some slights to be put upon him at the 
 court of the Persian satrap Hydarnes. The feud had ever 
 since rankled in the heart of the Athenian chief, and he now 
 attacked Paros for the sake of avenging himself on his ancient 
 enemy. 
 
 His pretext, as general of the Athenians, was, that the 
 Parians had aided the armament of Datis with a war-galley. 
 The Parians pretended to treat about terms of surrender, but 
 used the time which they thus gained in repairing the defec- 
 tive parts of the fortifications of their city, and they then set 
 the Athenians at defiance. So far, says Herodotus, the ac- 
 counts of all the Greeks agree. But the Parians in after 
 years told also a wild legend, how a captive priestess of a 
 Parian temple of the Deities of the Earth promised Miltiades 
 to give him the means of capturing Paros ; how, at her bid- 
 ding, the Athenian general went alone at night and forced his 
 way into a holy shrine, near the city gate, but with what pur- 
 pose it was not known ; how a supernatural awe came over 
 him, and in his flight he fell and fractured his leg; how an 
 oracle afterward forbade the Parians to punish the sacrilegious 
 and traitorous priestess, "because it was fated that Miltiades 
 should come to an ill end, and she was only the instrument 
 to lead him to evil." Such was the tale that Herodotus 
 heard at Paros. Certain it was that Miltiades either dislocated 
 or broke his leg during an unsuccessful siege of the city, and re- 
 turned home in evil plight with his baffled and defeated forces. 
 
 The indignation of the Athenians was proportionate to the 
 hope and excitement which his promises had raised. Xanthip- 
 pas, the head of one of the first families in Athens, indicted 
 him before the supreme popular tribunal for the capital offence 
 of having deceived the people. His guilt was undeniable, and 
 the Athenians passed their verdict accordingly. But the recol- 
 lections of Lemnos and Marathon, and the sight of the fallen 
 general, who lay stretched on a couch before them, pleaded 
 successfully in mitigation of punishment, and the sentence was 
 commuted from death to a fine of fifty talents. This was paid 
 by his son, the afterward illustrious Cimon, Miltiades dying, 
 soon after the trial, of the injury which he had received at Paros.
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 35* 
 
 The melancholy end of Miltiades, after his elevation to such 
 a height of power and glory, must often have been recalled to 
 the minds of the ancient Greeks by the sight of one in particu- 
 lar of the memorials of the great battle which he won. This 
 
 was the remarkable statue minutely described by Pausanias 
 
 which the Athenians, in the time of Pericles, caused to be 
 hewn out of a huge block of marble, which, it was believed, 
 had been provided by Datis, to form a trophy of the antici- 
 pated victory of the Persians. Phidias fashioned out of this a 
 colossal image of the goddess Nemesis, the deity whose pecul- 
 iar function was to visit the exuberant prosperity both of 
 nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This 
 statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, 
 about eight miles from Marathon. Athens itself contained 
 numerous memorials of her primary great victory. Panenus, 
 the cousin of Phidias, represented it in fresco on the walls of 
 the painted porch; and, centuries afterward, the figures of 
 Miltiades and Callimachus at the head of the Athenians were 
 conspicuous in the fresco. The tutelary deities were exhibited 
 taking part in the fray. In the background were seen the 
 Phoenician galleys, and, nearer to the spectator, the Athenians 
 and the Plataeans distinguished by their leather helmets 
 were chasing routed Asiatics into the marshes and the sea. 
 The battle was sculptured also on the Temple of Victory in 
 the Acropolis, and even now there may be traced on the frieze 
 the figures of the Persian combatants with their lunar shields, 
 their bows and quivers, their curved cimeters, their loose 
 trousers, and Phrygian tiaras. 
 
 These and other memorials of Marathon were the produce 
 of the meridian age of Athenian intellectual splendor, of the 
 age of Phidias and Pericles; for it was not merely by the gen- 
 eration whom the battle liberated from Hippias and the Medes 
 that the transcendent importance of their victory was grate- 
 fully recognized. Through the whole epoch of her prosperity, 
 through the long Olympiads of her decay, through centuries 
 after her fall, Athens looked back on the day of Marathon as 
 the brightest of her national existence. 
 
 By a natural blending of patriotic pride with grateful piety, 
 the very spirits of the Athenians who fell at Marathon were
 
 352 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 deified by their countrymen. The inhabitants of the district 
 of Marathon paid religious rites to them, and orators solemnly 
 invoked them in their most impassioned adjurations before the 
 assembled men of Athens. " Nothing was omitted that could 
 keep alive the remembrance of a deed which had first taught 
 the Athenian people to know its own strength, by measuring 
 it with the power which had subdued the greater part of the 
 known world. The consciousness thus awakened fixed its 
 character, its station, and its destiny ; it was the spring of its 
 later great actions and ambitious enterprises." 
 
 It was not indeed by one defeat, however signal, that the 
 pride of Persia could be broken, and her dreams of universal 
 empire dispelled. Ten years afterward she renewed her at- 
 tempts upon Europe on a grander scale of enterprise, and was 
 repulsed by Greece with greater and reiterated loss. Larger 
 forces and heavier slaughter than had been seen at Marathon 
 signalized the conflicts of Greeks and Persians at Artemisium, 
 Salamis, Plataea, and the Eurymedon. But, mighty and mo- 
 mentous as these battles were, they rank not with Marathon in 
 importance. They originated no new impulse. They turned 
 back no current of fate. They were merely confirmatory 
 of the already existing bias which Marathon had created. 
 The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the 
 two nations. It broke forever the spell of Persian invincibility, 
 which had previously paralyzed men's minds. It generated 
 among the Greeks the spirit which beat back Xerxes, and 
 afterward led on Xenophon, Agesilaus, and Alexander, in ter- 
 rible retaliation through their Asiatic campaigns. It secured 
 for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth 
 of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the Western 
 world, and the gradual ascendency for many ages of the great 
 principles of European civilization. 
 
 EXPLANATORY REMARKS ON SOME OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES 
 OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 
 
 Nothing is said by Herodotus of the Persian cavalry tak- 
 ing any part in the battle, although he mentions that Hippias 
 recommended the Persians to land at Marathon, because the
 
 THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 353 
 
 plain was favorable for cavalry evolutions. In the life of Mil- 
 tiades which is usually cited as the production of Cornelius 
 Nepos, but which I believe to be of no authority whatever, it 
 is said that Miltiades protected his flanks from the enemy's 
 horse by an abatis of felled trees. While he was on the high 
 ground he would not have required this defence, and it is not 
 likely that the Persians would have allowed him to erect it on 
 the plain. 
 
 But, in truth, whatever amount of cavalry we suppose Datis 
 to have had with him on the day of Marathon, their inaction in 
 the battle is intelligible, if we believe the attack of the Athe- 
 nian spearmen to have been as sudden as it was rapid. The 
 Persian horse-soldier, on an alarm being given, had to take the 
 shackles off his horse, to strap the saddle on, and bridle him, 
 besides equipping himself (Xenophon), and when each indi- 
 vidual horseman was ready, the line had to be formed ; and the 
 time that it takes to form the Oriental cavalry in line for a 
 charge has, in all ages, been observed by Europeans. 
 
 The wet state of the marshes at each end of the plain, in 
 the time of year when the battle was fought, has been adverted 
 to by Wordsworth, 1 and this would hinder the Persian gen- 
 eral from arranging and employing his horsemen on his ex- 
 treme wings, while it also enabled the Greeks, as they came 
 forward, to occupy the whole breadth of the practicable ground 
 with an unbroken line of leveled spears, against which, if any 
 Persian horse advanced, they would be driven back in confu- 
 sion upon their own foot. 
 
 Even numerous and fully arrayed bodies of cavalry have 
 been repeatedly broken, both in ancient and modern warfare, 
 by resolute charges of infantry. For instance, it was by an 
 attack of some picked cohorts that Caesar routed the Pompeian 
 cavalry which had previously defeated his own and won the 
 
 battle of Pharsalia. 
 
 * Greece. 
 H. E., VOL. L 33
 
 INVASION OF GREECE BY PERSIANS 
 UNDER XERXES 
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 B.C. 480 
 
 HERODOTUS 
 
 The invasion of Greece by Xerxes is the subject of the great history 
 written in nine books by Herodotus. His object is to show the pre- 
 eminence of Greece, whose fleets and armies defeated the forces of the 
 Persians after these latter had triumphed over the most powerful nations 
 of the earth. Xerxes collected a vast army from all parts of the empire. 
 The Phoenicians furnished him with an enormous fleet, and he made a 
 bridge of a double line of boats across the Hellespont and cut a canal 
 through the peninsula of Mount Athos. He reached Sardis in the au- 
 tumn of B.C. 481, and the next year his army crossed the bridge of boats, 
 taking seven days and seven nights for the transit. The number of his 
 fighting men was over two millions and a hah*. His ships of war were 
 twelve hundred and seven in number, and he had three thousand smaller 
 vessels for carrying his land forces and supplies. At the narrow pass of 
 Thermopylae, in the northeast of Greece, this immense army was checked 
 for a while by the heroic Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who, 
 however, perished in their attempt to prevent the Persian's attack on 
 Athens, which city was almost entirely destroyed by the invaders. The 
 sea-fight of Salamis was won by the Greeks against enormous odds ; and 
 in the battle of Plataea, B.C. 479, the defeat of the Persians by the Greek 
 land forces was made more complete by the death of Mardonius, the 
 most renowned general of Xerxes. 
 
 HP HE Greeks, when they arrived at the Isthmus, consulted 
 on the message they had received from Alexander, in 
 what way and in what places they should prosecute the war. 
 The opinion which prevailed was that they should defend the 
 pass at Thermopylae ; for it appeared to be narrower than that 
 into Thessaly, and at the same time nearer to their own terri- 
 tories ; for the path by which the Greeks who were taken at 
 Thermopylae were afterward surprised, they knew nothing of, 
 
 354
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYL*: 355 
 
 till, on their arrival at Thermopylae, they were informed of it 
 by the Trachinians. They accordingly resolved to guard this 
 pass, and not suffer the barbarian to enter Greece ; and that 
 the naval force should sail to Artemisium, in the territory of 
 Histiasotis, for these places are near one another, so that they 
 could hear what happened to each other. These spots are 
 thus situated. 
 
 In the first place, Artemisium is contracted from a wide 
 space of the Thracian sea into a narrow frith, which lies be- 
 tween the island of Sciathus and the continent of Magnesia. 
 From the narrow frith begins the coast of Eubcea, called Ar- 
 temisium, and in it is a temple of Diana. But the entrance 
 into Greece through Trachis, in the narrowest part, is no more 
 than a half plethrum in width : however, the narrowest part of 
 the country is not in this spot, but before and behind Ther- 
 mopylae ; for near Alpeni, which is behind, there is only a sin- 
 gle carriage-road, and before, by the river Phoenix, near the 
 city of Anthela, is another single carriage-road. On the west- 
 ern side of Thermopylae is an inaccessible and precipitous 
 mountain, stretching to Mount CEta, and on the eastern side 
 of the way is the sea and a morass. In this passage there are 
 hot baths, which the inhabitants call " Chytri," and above these 
 is an altar to Hercules. A wall had been built in this pass, 
 and formerly there were gates in it. The Phocians built it 
 through fear, when the Thessalians came from Thesprotia to 
 settle in the yEolian territory which they now possess : appre- 
 hending that the Thessalians would attempt to subdue them, 
 the Phocians took this precaution; at the same time, they 
 diverted the hot water into the entrance, that the place might 
 be broken into clefts, having recourse to every contrivance to 
 prevent the Thessalians from making inroads into their coun- 
 try. Now this old wall had been built a long time, and the 
 greater part of it had already fallen through age; but they 
 determined to rebuild it, and in that place to repel the barba- 
 rian from Greece. Very near this road there is a village called 
 Alpeni; from this the Greeks expected to obtain provisions. 
 
 Accordingly, these situations appeared suitable for the 
 Greeks; for they, having weighed everything beforehand, and 
 considered that the barbarians would neither be able to use
 
 356 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 their numbers nor their cavalry, there resolved to await the 
 invader of Greece. As soon as they were informed that the 
 Persian was in Pieria, breaking up from the Isthmus some of 
 them proceeded by land to Thermopylae, and others by sea to 
 Artemisium. 
 
 The Greeks, therefore, being appointed in two divisions, 
 hastened to meet the enemy ; but, at the same time, the Del- 
 phians, alarmed for themselves and for Greece, consulted the 
 oracle, and the answer given them was, " that they should pray 
 to the winds, for that they would be powerful allies to Greece." 
 
 The Delphians, having received the oracle, first of all com- 
 municated the answer to those Greeks who were zealous to be 
 free ; and as they very much dreaded the barbarians, by giving 
 that message they acquired a claim to everlasting gratitude. 
 After that, the Delphians erected an altar to the winds at 
 Thyia, where there is an inclosure consecrated to Thyia, 
 daughter of Cephisus, from whom this district derives its name, 
 and conciliated them with sacrifices ; and the Delphians, in 
 obedience to that oracle, to this day propitiate the winds. 
 
 The naval force of Xerxes, setting out from the city of 
 Therma, advanced with ten of the fastest sailing ships straight 
 to Scyathus, where were three Grecian ships keeping a look- 
 out: a Troezenian, an ^Eginetan, and an Athenian. These, 
 seeing the ships of the barbarians at a distance, betook them- 
 selves to flight. 
 
 The Troezenian ship, which Praxinus commanded, the bar- 
 barians pursued and soon captured ; and then, having led the 
 handsomest of the marines to the prow of the ship, they slew 
 him, deeming it a good omen that the first Greek they had 
 taken was also very handsome. The name of the man that 
 was slain was Leon, and perhaps he in some measure reaped 
 the fruits of his name. 
 
 The ^Eginetan ship, which Asonides commanded, gave 
 them some trouble ; Pytheas, son of Ischenous, being a marine 
 on board, a man who on this day displayed the most consum- 
 mate valor ; who, when the ship was taken, continued fighting 
 until he was entirely cut to pieces. But when, having fallen 
 (he was not dead, but still breathed), the Persians who served 
 on board the ships were very anxious to save him alive, on
 
 
 lips keeping 
 
 three hundred immortai 
 ring for the defence , 
 opyke.against (I 
 Persian 
 
 'aiming by Jacques L Dav-3.
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 357 
 
 account of his valor, healing his wounds with myrrh, and bind- 
 ing them with bandages of flaxen cloth; and when they re- 
 turned to their own camp, they showed him with admiration 
 to the whole army, and treated him well; but the others, whom 
 they took in this ship, they treated as slaves. 
 
 Thus, then, two of the ships were taken ; but the other, 
 which Phormus, an Athenian, commanded, in its flight ran 
 ashore at the mouth of the Peneus, and the barbarians got 
 possession of the ship, but not of the men ; for as soon as the 
 Athenians had run the ship aground, they leaped out, and, 
 proceeding through Thessaly, reached Athens. The Greeks 
 who were stationed at Artemisium were informed of this event 
 by signal-fires from Sciathus; and being informed of it, and 
 very much alarmed, they retired from Artemisium to Chalcis, 
 intending to defend the Euripus, and leaving scouts on the 
 heights of Eubcea. Of the ten barbarian ships, three ap- 
 proached the sunken rock called Myrmex, between Sciathus 
 and Magnesia. Then the barbarians, when they had erected 
 on the rock a stone column, which they had brought with 
 them, set out from Therma, now that every obstacle had been 
 removed, and sailed forward with all their ships, having waited 
 eleven days after the king's departure from Therma. Pam- 
 mon, a Scyrian, pointed out to them this hidden rock, which 
 was almost directly in their course. The barbarians, sailing 
 all day, reached Sepias in Magnesia, and the shore that lies 
 between the city of Casthanasa and the coast of Sepias. 
 
 As far as this place and Thermopylae, the army had 
 suffered no loss, and the numbers were at that time, as I find 
 by calculations, of the following amount: of those in ships 
 from Asia, amounting to one thousand two hundred and seven, 
 originally the whole number of the several nations was- two 
 hundred forty-one thousand four hundred men, allowing two 
 hundred to each ship ; and on these ships thirty Persians, 
 Medes, and Sacse served as marines, in addition to the native 
 crews of each ; this farther number amounts to thirty-six thou- 
 sand two hundred and ten. To this and the former number I 
 add those that were on the penteconters 1 supposing eighty 
 men on the average to be on board of each. Three thousand 
 1 Fifty-oared ships.
 
 358 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 of these vessels were assembled ; therefore the men on board 
 them must have been two hundred and forty thousand. This, 
 then, was the naval force from Asia, the total being five hun- 
 dred and seventeen thousand six hundred and ten. Of infan- 
 try there were seventeen hundred thousand, and of cavalry 
 eighty thousand; to these I add the Arabians who drove 
 camels, and the Libyans who drove chariots, reckoning the 
 number at twenty thousand men. Accordingly, the numbers 
 on board the ships and on the land, added together, make up 
 two millions three hundred and seventeen thousand six hun- 
 dred and ten. This, then, is the force which, as has been men- 
 tioned, was assembled from Asia itself, exclusive of the ser- 
 vants that followed, and the provision ships, and the men that 
 were on board them. 
 
 But the force brought from Europe must still be added 
 to this whole number that has been summed up ; but it is nec- 
 essary to speak by guess. Now the Grecians from Thrace, 
 and the islands contiguous to Thrace, furnished one hundred 
 and twenty ships ; these ships give an amount of twenty-four 
 thousand men. Of land-forces, which were furnished by 
 Thracians, Paeonians, the Eordi, the Bottiaeans, the Chalcidian 
 race, Brygi, Pierians, Macedonians, Perrhaebi, ^Enianes, Dolo- 
 pians, Magnesians, and Achaeans, together with those who 
 inhabit the maritime parts of Thrace of these nations I sup- 
 pose that there were three hundred thousand men, so that 
 these myriads, added to those from Asia, make a total of two 
 millions six hundred and forty one thousand six hundred and ten 
 fighting men ! 
 
 I think that the servants who followed them, and with 
 those on board the provision ships and other vessels that 
 sailed with the fleet, were not fewer than the fighting men, but 
 more numerous ; but supposing them to be equal in number 
 to the fighting men, they make up the former number of 
 myriads? Thus Xerxes, son of Darius, led five millions two 
 hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty 
 men to Sepias and Thermopylae ! 
 
 This, then, was the number of the whole force of Xerxes. 
 But of women who made bread, and concubines, and eunuchs, 
 1 In Greek numeration, ten thousand.
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 359 
 
 no one could mention the number with accuracy; nor of 
 draught-cattle and other beasts of burden; nor of Indian dogs 
 that followed could any one mention the number, they were 
 so many; therefore I am not astonished that the streams of 
 some rivers failed, but rather it is a wonder to me how provis- 
 ions held out for so many myriads \ for I find by calculation, 
 if each man had a chcenix of wheat daily, and no more, one 
 hundred and ten thousand three hundred and forty medimni 
 must have been consumed everyday; and I have not reckoned 
 the food for the women, eunuchs, beasts of burden, and dogs. 
 But of these myriads of men, not one of them, for beauty 
 and stature, was more entitled than Xerxes himself to possess 
 the supreme command. 
 
 When the fleet, having set out, sailed and reached the shore 
 of Magnesia that lies between the city of Casthanaea and the 
 coast of Sepias, the foremost of the ships took up their station 
 close to land, others behind rode at anchor the beach not 
 being extensive enough with their prows toward the sea, and 
 eight deep. Thus they passed the night; but at daybreak, 
 after serene and tranquil weather, the sea began to swell, and a 
 heavy storm with a violent gale from the east which those who 
 inhabit these parts call a " Hellespontine " burst upon them ; 
 as many of them then as perceived the gale increasing, and 
 who were able to do so from their position, anticipated the 
 storm by hauling their ships on shore, and both they and their 
 ships escaped. But such of the ships as the storm caught at 
 sea it carried away, some to the parts called Ipni, near Pelion, 
 others to the beach ; some were dashed on Cape Sepias itself ; 
 some were wrecked at Melibcea, and others at Casthanaea. 
 The storm was indeed irresistible. 
 
 The barbarians, when the wind had lulled and the waves 
 had subsided, having hauled down their ships, sailed along the 
 continent ; and having doubled the promontory of Magnesia, 
 stood directly into the bay leading to Pagasae. There is a spot 
 in this bay of Magnesia where it is said Hercules was aban- 
 doned by Jason and his companions when he had been sent 
 from the Argo for water, as they were sailing to Colchis, in 
 Asia, for the golden fleece ; and from there they purposed to 
 put out to sea after they had taken in water. From this cir-
 
 3 6o DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 cumstance, the name of " Aphetae " was given to the place. In 
 this place, then, the fleet of Xerxes was moored. 
 
 Fifteen of these ships happened to be driven out to sea 
 some time after the rest, and somehow saw the ships of the 
 Greeks at Artemisium. The barbarians thought that they were 
 their own, and sailing on, fell among their enemies. They 
 were commanded by Sandoces, son of Thaumasius, governor 
 of Cyme, of JEolia. He, being one of the royal judges, had 
 been formerly condemned by King Darius (who had detected 
 him in the following offence), to be crucified. Sandoces gave 
 an unjust sentence, for a bribe ; but while he was actually hang- 
 ing on the cross, Darius, considering within himself, found that 
 the services he had rendered to the royal family were greater 
 than his faults. Darius, therefore, having discovered this, and 
 perceiving that he, himself, had acted with more expedition 
 than wisdom, released him. Having thus escaped being put 
 to death by Darius, he survived; but now, sailing down 
 among the Grecians, he was not to escape a second time ; for 
 when the Greeks saw them sailing toward them, perceiving 
 the mistake they had committed, they bore down upon them 
 and easily took them. 
 
 King Xerxes encamped in the Trachinian territory of 
 Malis, and the Greeks in the pass. This spot is called by 
 most of the Greeks, " Thermopylae," but by the inhabitants and 
 neighbors, "Pylae." Both parties, then, encamped in these 
 places. The one was in possession of all the parts toward the 
 north as far as Trachis, and the others, of the parts which 
 stretch toward the south and meridian of this continent. 
 
 The following were the Greeks who awaited the Persians in 
 this position. Of Spartans, three hundred heavy-armed men ; 
 of Tegeans and Mantineans, one thousand (half of each) ; from 
 Orchomenus in Arcadia, one hundred and twenty ; and from 
 the rest of Arcadia, one thousand (there were so many Arca- 
 dians) ; from Corinth, four hundred ; from Phlius, two hundred 
 men ; and from Mycenae, eighty. These came from Pelopon- 
 nesus. From Boeotia, of Thespians seven hundred; and of 
 Thebans, four hundred. 
 
 In addition to these, the Opuntian Locrians, being invited, 
 came with all their forces, and a thousand Phocians ; for the
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE, 361 
 
 Greeks themselves had invited them, representing by their 
 embassadors that "they had arrived as forerunners of the 
 others, and that the rest of the allies might be daily expected ; 
 that the sea was protected by them, being guarded by the 
 Athenians, the ^Eginetae, and others, who were appointed to 
 the naval service; and that they had nothing to fear, for that 
 it was not a god who invaded Greece, but a man ; and that 
 there never was, and never would be, any mortal who had not 
 evil mixed with his prosperity from his very birth, and to the 
 greatest of them the greatest reverses happen; that it must 
 therefore needs be that he who is marching against us, being 
 a mortal, will be disappointed in his expectation." They, hav- 
 ing heard this, marched with assistance to Trachis. 
 
 These nations had separate generals for their several cities, 
 but the one most admired, and who commanded the whole 
 army, was a Lacedaemonian, Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides, 
 son of Leon, son of Eurycratides, son of Anaxander, son of 
 Eurycates, son of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, son of Tele- 
 clus, son of Archelaus, son of Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, son 
 of Leobotes, son of Echestratus, son of Agis, son of Eurys- 
 thenes, son of Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of 
 Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, son of Hercules, who had unexpect- 
 edly succeeded to the throne of Sparta. 
 
 For, as he had two elder brothers, Cleomenes and Dorieus, 
 he was far from any thought of the kingdom. However, 
 Cleomenes having died without male issue, and Dorieus being 
 no longer alive having ended his days in Sicily the kingdom 
 thus devolved upon Leonidas ; both because he was older than 
 Cleombrotus for he was the youngest son of Anaxandrides 
 and also because he had married the daughter of Cleomenes. 
 He then marched to Thermopylae, having chosen the three 
 hundred men allowed by law, and such as had children. On 
 his march he took with him the Thebans, whose numbers I 
 have already reckoned, and whom Leontiades, son of Eury- 
 machus, commanded. For this reason Leonidas was anxious 
 to take with him the Thebans alone of all the Greeks, because 
 they were strongly accused of favoring the Medes : he there- 
 fore summoned them to the war, wishing to know whether 
 they would send their forces with him, or would openly
 
 362 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 renounce the alliance of the Grecians ; but they, though other 
 wise minded, sent assistance. 
 
 The Spartans sent these troops first with Leonidas, in 
 order that the rest of the allies, seeing them, might take the 
 field, and might not go over to the Medes if they heard that 
 they were delaying; but afterward for the Carnean festival 
 was then an obstacle to them they purposed, when they had 
 kept the feast, to leave a garrison in Sparta and to march 
 immediately with their whole strength. The rest of the con- 
 federates likewise intended to act in the same manner; for the 
 Olympic games occurred at the same period as these events. 
 As they djd not, therefore, suppose that the engagement at 
 Thermopylae woulrl so soon be decided, they despatched an 
 advance-guard. 
 
 The Greeks at Thermopylae, when the Persians came near 
 the pass, being alarmed, consulted about a retreat ; accordingly, 
 it seemed best to the other Peloponnesians to retire to Pelo- 
 ponnesus, and guard the Isthmus; but Leonidas, perceiving 
 the Phocians and Locrians were very indignant at this propo- 
 sition, determined to stay there, and to despatch messengers 
 to the cities, desiring them to come to their assistance, they 
 being too few to repel the army of the Medes. 
 
 While they were deliberating on these matters, Xerxes 
 sent a scout on horseback, to see how many they were and 
 what they were doing ; for while he was still in Thessaly, he 
 had heard that a small army had been assembled at that spot, 
 and as to their leaders, that they were Lacedaemonians, and 
 Leonidas, who was of the race of Hercules. When the horse- 
 man rode up to the camp, he reconnoitred, and saw not indeed 
 the whole camp, for it was not possible that they should be 
 seen who were posted within the wall, which having rebuilt 
 they were now guarding; but he had a clear view of those on 
 the outside, whose arms were piled in front of the wall. At 
 this time the Lacedaemonians happened to be posted outside ; 
 and some of the men he saw performing gymnastic exercises, 
 and others combing their hair. On beholding this he was 
 astonished, and ascertained their number, and having in- 
 formed himself of everything accurately, he rode back at his 
 leisure, for no one pursued him and he met with general con-
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 363 
 
 tempt. On his return he gave an account to Xerxes of all that 
 he had seen. 
 
 When Xerxes heard this, he could not comprehend the 
 truth that the Grecians were preparing to be slain and to slay 
 to the utmost of their power; but, as they appeared to 
 behave in a ridiculous manner, he sent for Demaratus, son of 
 Ariston, who was then in the camp, and when he was come 
 into his presence Xerxes questioned him as to each particular, 
 wishing to understand what the Lacedaemonians were doing. 
 Demaratus said : " You before heard me when we were setting 
 out against Greece, speak of these men, and when you heard, 
 you treated me with ridicule though I told you in what way 
 I foresaw these matters would issue ; for it is my chief aim, O 
 king, to adhere to the truth in your presence ; hear it, there- 
 fore, once more. These men have to fight with us for the 
 pass and are now preparing themselves to do so; for such is 
 their custom when they are going to hazard their lives, then 
 they dress their heads ; but be assured if you conquer these 
 men and those that remain in Sparta, there is no other nation 
 in the world that will dare to raise its hand against you, O 
 king ! for you are now to engage with the noblest kingdom and 
 city of all among the Greeks and with the most valiant men." 
 What was said seemed incredible to Xerxes and he asked 
 again, " how, being so few in number, they could contend with 
 his army." He answered : " O king, deal with me as with a 
 liar if these things do not turn out as I say !" 
 
 By saying this he did not convince Xerxes. He therefore 
 let four days pass, constantly expecting that they would be 
 taking themselves to flight; but on the fifth day, as they had 
 not retreated, but appeared to him to stay through arrogance 
 and rashness, he, being enraged, sent the Medes and Cissians 
 against them, with orders to take them alive, and bring them 
 into his presence. When the Medes bore down impetuously 
 upon the Greeks, many of them fell; others followed to the 
 charge, and were not repulsed, though they suffered greatly; 
 but they made it evident to every one, and not least of all to 
 the king himself, that they were indeed many men, but few 
 soldiers. The engagement lasted through the day. 
 
 When the Medes were roughly handled, they thereupon
 
 364 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 retired, and the Persians whom the king called " Immortal/' 
 and whom Hydarnes commanded, taking their place advanced 
 to the attack thinking that they indeed would easily settle the 
 business. But when they engaged with the Grecians they suc- 
 ceeded no better than the Medic troops, but just the same ; as 
 they fought in a narrow space and used shorter spears than 
 the Greeks, they were unable to avail themselves of their num- 
 bers. The Lacedaemonians fought memorably in other re* 
 spects, showing that they knew how to fight with men who 
 knew not, and whenever they turned their backs they retreated 
 in close order, but the barbarians, seeing them retreat, followed 
 with a shout and clamor ; then they, being overtaken, wheeled 
 round so as to front the barbarians, and having faced about, 
 overthrew an inconceivable number of the Persians, and then 
 some few of the Spartans themselves fell, so that when the 
 Persians were unable to gain anything in their attempt on the 
 pass by attacking in troops and in every possible manner, they 
 retired. 
 
 It is said that during these onsets of the battle, the king, 
 who witnessed them, thrice sprang from his throne, being 
 alarmed for his army. Thus they strove at that time. On the 
 following day the barbarians fought with no better success ; 
 for considering that the Greeks were few in number, and ex- 
 pecting that they were covered with wounds and would not be 
 able to raise their heads against them any more, they renewed 
 the contest. But the Greeks were marshalled in companies 
 and according to their several nations, and each fought in turn, 
 except only the Phocians ; they were stationed at the moun- 
 tain to guard the pathway. When, therefore, the Persians found 
 nothing different from what they had seen on the preceding 
 day, they retired. 
 
 While the king was in doubt what course to take in the 
 present state of affairs, Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus, a 
 Malian, obtained an audience of him (expecting that he should 
 receive a great reward from the king), and informed him of the 
 path which leads over the mountain to Thermopylae, and by 
 that means caused the destruction of those Greeks who were 
 stationed there ; but afterward, fearing the Lacedaemonians, he 
 fled to Thessaly, and when he had fled, a price was set on his
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 36* 
 
 head by the Pylagori when the Amphictyons were assembled 
 at Pylae ; but some time after, he went down to Anticyra and 
 was killed by Athenades, a Trachinian, 
 
 Another account is given, that Onetes, son of Phanagoras, 
 a Carystian, and Corydallus of Anticyra, were the persons who 
 gave this information to the king and conducted the Persians 
 round the mountains ; but to me, this is by no means credible ; 
 for, in the first place, we may draw the inference from this 
 circumstance, that the Pylagori of the Grecians set a price on 
 the head, not of Onetes and Corydallus, but of Ephialtes the 
 Trachinian, having surely ascertained the exact truth ; and, in 
 the next place, we know that Ephialtes fled on that account 
 Onetes, indeed, though he was not a Malian, might be ac- 
 quainted with this path if he had been conversant with the 
 country; but it was Ephialtes who conducted them round 
 the mountain by the path, and I charge him as the guilty 
 person 
 
 Xerxes, since he was pleased with what Ephialtes promised 
 to perform, being exceedingly delighted, immediately de- 
 spatched Hydarnes and the troops that Hydarnes commanded, 
 and he started from the camp about the hour of lamp-lighting. 
 The native Malians discovered this pathway, and having dis- 
 covered it, conducted the Thessalians by it against the Pho- 
 cians at the time when the Phocians, having fortified the pass 
 by a wall, were under shelter from an attack. From that time 
 it appeared to have been of no service to the Malians. 
 
 This path is situated as follows : it begins from the river 
 Asopus, which flows through the cleft ; the same name is 
 given both to the mountain and to the path, "Anopaea," and 
 this Anopsea extends along the ridge of the mountain and 
 ends near Alpenus, which is the first city of the Locrians 
 toward the Malians, and by the rock called " Melampygus," and 
 by the seats of the Cercopes, and there the path is the nar- 
 rowest. 
 
 Along this path, thus situate, the Persians, having crossed 
 the Asopus, marched all night, having on their right the 
 mountains of the GErzeans, and on their left those of the 
 Trachinians; morning appeared, and they were on the summit 
 of the mountain At this part of the mountain, as I have
 
 366 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 already mentioned, a thousand heavy-armed Phocians kept 
 guard, to defend their own country and to secure the path- 
 way for the lower pass was guarded by those before men- 
 tioned and the Phocians had voluntarily promised Leonidas 
 to guard the path across the mountain. 
 
 The Phocians discovered them after they had ascended, in 
 the following manner; for the Persian ascended without being 
 observed, as the whole mountain was covered with oaks ; there 
 was a perfect calm, and, as was likely, a considerable rustling 
 taking place from the leaves strewn under foot, the Phocians 
 sprang up and put on their arms, and immediately the barba- 
 rians made their appearance. But when they saw men clad 
 in armor they were astonished, for, expecting to find nothing 
 to oppose them, they fell in with an army; thereupon Hy- 
 darnes, fearing lest the Phocians might be Lacedaemonians, 
 asked Ephialtes of what nation the troops were, and being 
 accurately informed, he drew up the Persians for battle. The 
 Phocians, when they were hit by many and thick-falling arrows, 
 fled to the summit of the mountain, supposing that they had 
 come expressly to attack them, and prepared to perish. Such 
 was their determination. But the Persians, with Ephialtes 
 and Hydarnes, took no notice of the Phocians but marched 
 down the mountain with all speed. 
 
 To those of the Greeks who were at Thermopylae, the augur 
 Megistias, having inspected the sacrifices, first made known 
 the death that would befall them in the morning ; certain de- 
 serters afterward came and brought intelligence of the circuit 
 the Persians were taking. These brought the news while it 
 was yet night ; and, thirdly, the scouts running down from the 
 heights as soon as day dawned, brought the same intelligence. 
 Upon this the Greeks held a consultation, and their opinions 
 were divided ; some would not hear of abandoning their post, 
 and others opposed that view. After this, when the assembly 
 broke up, some of them departed, and being dispersed, betook 
 themselves to their several cities ; but others of them prepared 
 to remain there with Leonidas. 
 
 It is said that Leonidas himself sent them away, being anx- 
 ious that they should not perish, but that he and the Spartans 
 who were there could not honorably desert the post which
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 367 
 
 they originally came to defend. For my own part, I am rather 
 inclined to think that Leonidas, when he perceived that the 
 allies were averse and unwilling to share the danger with him, 
 bade them withdraw, but that he considered it dishonorable 
 for himself to depart; on the other hand, by remaining there, 
 great renown would be left for him and the prosperity of 
 Sparta would not be obliterated, for it had been announced to 
 the Spartans by the Pythian, when they consulted the oracle 
 concerning this war as soon as it commenced, " that either 
 Lacedaemon must be overthrown by the barbarians, or their 
 king perish." This answer she gave in hexameter verses, to 
 this effect : " To you, O inhabitants of spacious Lacedasmon ! 
 either your vast glorious city shall be destroyed by men 
 sprung from Perseus, or, if not so, the confines of Lacedaemon 
 shall mourn a king deceased, of the race of Hercules. For 
 neither shall the strength of bulls nor of lions withstand him with 
 force opposed to force, for he has the strength of Jove, and I 
 say he shall not be restrained before he has certainly obtained 
 one of these for his share." I think, therefore, that Leonidas, 
 considering these things and being desirous to acquire glory 
 for the Spartans alone, sent away the allies, rather than that 
 those who went away differed in opinion, and went away in 
 such an unbecoming manner. 
 
 The following in no small degree strengthens my conviction 
 on this point; for not only did he send away the others, but it 
 is certain that Leonidas also sent away the augur who followed 
 the army, Megistias the Acarnanian, who was said to have 
 been originally descended from Melampus, the same who an- 
 nounced, from an inspection of the victims, what was about to 
 befall them, in order that he might not perish with them. He 
 however, though dismissed, did not himself depart but sent 
 away his son who served with him in the expedition, being his 
 only child. 
 
 The allies that were dismissed, accordingly departed, and 
 obeyed Leonidas, but only the Thespians and the Thebans 
 remained with the Lacedaemonians; the Thebans, indeed, re- 
 mained unwillingly and against their inclination, for Leonidas 
 detained them, treating them as hostages; but the Thespians 
 willingly, for they refused to go away and abandon Leonidas
 
 3 68 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 and those with him, but remained and died with them. De 
 mophilus, son of Diadromas, commanded them. 
 
 Xerxes, after he had poured out libations at sunrise, having 
 waited a short time, began his attack about the time of full 
 market, for he had been so instructed by Ephialtes ; for the 
 descent from the mountain is more direct and the distance 
 much shorter than the circuit and ascent. The barbarians, 
 therefore, with Xerxes, advanced, and the Greeks with Leo- 
 nidas, marching out as if for certain death, now advanced much 
 farther than before into the wide part of the defile, for the 
 fortification of the wall had protected them, and they on 
 the preceding days, having taken up their position in the nar- 
 row part, fought there ; but now engaging outside the narrows, 
 great numbers of the barbarians fell ; for the officers of the 
 companies from behind, having scourges, flogged every man, 
 constantly urging them forward; in consequence, many of 
 them, falling into the sea, perished, and many more were 
 trampled alive under foot by one another and no regard 
 was paid to any that perished, for the Greeks, knowing that 
 death awaited them at the hands of those who were going 
 round the mountain, being desperate and regardless of their 
 own lives, displayed the utmost possible valor against the 
 barbarians. 
 
 Already were most of their javelins broken and they had 
 begun to despatch the Persians with their swords. In this part 
 of the struggle fell Leonidas, fighting valiantly, and with him 
 other eminent Spartans, whose names, seeing they were de- 
 serving men, I have ascertained ; indeed, I have ascertained 
 the names of the whole three hundred. On the side of the 
 Persians also, many other eminent men fell on this occasion, 
 and among them two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyper- 
 anthes, born to Darius of Phrataguna, daughter of Artanes; 
 but Artanes was brother to king Darius, and son of Hystaspes, 
 son of Arsames. He, when he gave his daughter to Darius, 
 gave him also all his property, as she was his only child. 
 
 Accordingly, two brothers of Xerxes fell at this spot fight- 
 ing for the body of Leonidas, and there was a violent struggle 
 between the Persians and Lacedaemonians, until at last the 
 Greeks rescued it by their valor and four times repulsed the
 
 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 369 
 
 enemy. Thus the contest continued until those with Ephi- 
 altes came up. When the Greeks heard that they were ap- 
 proaching, from this time the battle was altered; for they 
 retreated to the narrow part of the way, and passing beyond 
 the wall came and took up their position on the rising ground 
 all in a compact body with the exception of the Thebans. 
 The rising ground is at the entrance where the stone lion now 
 stands to the memory of Leonidas. On this spot, while they 
 defended themselves with swords such as had them still 
 remaining and with hands and teeth, the barbarians over- 
 whelmed them with missiles, some of them attacking them in 
 front, having thrown down the wall, and others surrounding 
 and attacking them on every side. 
 
 Though the Lacedaemonians and Thespians behaved in 
 this manner, yet Dieneces, a Spartan, is said to have been the 
 bravest man. They relate that he made the following remark 
 before they engaged with the Medes, having heard a Tra- 
 chinian say that when the barbarians let fly their arrows they 
 would obscure the sun by the multitude of their shafts, so 
 great was their number ; but he, not at all alarmed at this, 
 said, holding in contempt the numbers of the Medes, that 
 " their Trachinian friend told them everything to their advan- 
 tage, since if the Medes obscure the sun, they would then have 
 to fight in the shade and not in the sun." This, and other 
 sayings of the same kind, they relate that Dieneces the Lace- 
 daemonian left as memorials. 
 
 Next to him, two Lacedaemonian brothers, Alpheus and 
 Maron, sons of Orisiphantus, are said to have distinguished 
 themselves most; and of the Thespians, he obtained the 
 greatest glory whose name was Dithyrambus, son of Har- 
 matides. 
 
 In honor of the slain, who were buried on the spot where 
 they fell, and of those who died before they who were dis- 
 missed by Leonidas went away, the following inscription has 
 been engraved over them : " Four thousand from Peloponnesus 
 once fought on this spot with three hundred myriads ! " > This 
 inscription was made for all; and for the Spartans in partic- 
 ular: "Stranger, go tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, 
 
 1 Three millions. 
 E., VOL. I.
 
 370 DEFENCE OF THERMOPYLAE 
 
 obedient to their commands ! " This was for the Lacedaemo- 
 nians; and for the prophet, the following: "This is the monu- 
 ment of the illustrious Megistias, whom once the Medes, 
 having passed the river Sperchius, slew ; a prophet who, at the 
 time well knowing the impending fate, would not abandon the 
 leaders of Sparta ! " 
 
 The Amphictyons are the persons who honored them with 
 these inscriptions and columns, with the exception of the in- 
 scription to the prophet ; that of the prophet Megistias, Simon- 
 ides, son of Leoprepes, caused to be engraved, from personal 
 friendship.
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL 
 HISTORY 
 
 EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME 
 
 B.C. 5867-B.c. 451 
 
 JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL 
 HISTORY 
 
 EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME 
 B.C. 586;-B.c. 451 
 
 JOHN RUDD, LL.D. 
 
 Events treated at length are here indicated in large 
 type ; the numerals following give volume and page. 
 
 Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of 
 the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX 
 VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where 
 the several events are fully treated. 
 
 All dates are approximate up to B.C. 776, the begin- 
 ning of the Olympiads. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 5867. Menes, the first human ruler recorded in history, unites the two 
 kingdoms of Egypt under one crown ; introduces the cult of Apis ; founds 
 the city of Memphis; rears the great temple of Ptah. See " DAWN OF 
 CIVILIZATION," 5, i. 
 
 5000. Babylonia is invaded by a race of Semites; they conquer the 
 land and become the Babylonians of history. 
 
 4500 (before). A patesi (priest-ruler), by name En-shag-kush-anna, is 
 King of Kengi, Southern Babylonia ; Sungir, which later gave the name 
 Sumer to the whole district, is his capital. 
 
 4400. Shirpurla, Mesopotamia, subjugated by Mesilim, King of Kish. 
 
 4200. The hero of Shirpurla, E-anna-tum, throws off the Kish yoke 
 and takes the title of king. He is successful in conflicts with Erech, Ur, 
 and Larsa. Walls are erected and canals dug by him. 
 
 3700. The great Pyramid of Gizeh erected. This was during the IV 
 or Pyramid dynasty; so called because its chief monarchs built the three 
 great pyramids. 
 
 Beautiful Queen Nitocris, of the VI dynasty, reigned about this time. 
 She is said to have avenged the killing of her brother, King of Egypt, by 
 inviting his murderers to a banquet held in a subterranean chamber. Into 
 this the river was turned, and they all miserably perished. 
 
 3000. Nineveh, colonized from Babylonia, ruled by subject princes of 
 that country. 
 
 2800. Probable date of the foundation of the Chinese empire. 
 
 373
 
 374 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 
 
 2500. Rise of the kingdom of Elam. Asshurbanipal (Sardanapalus), 
 King of Nineveh, records an invasion of Chaldaea, or Babylonia, by the 
 Elamites, B.C. 2300. The records of clay recently unearthed show that 
 Cyrus was originally king of Elam. See " CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE 
 GREAT," i, 250. 
 
 2458. Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) founds the religion known by his name. 
 Ancient tradition has it that he was a Median king who conquered Baby- 
 lon about B.C. 2458. M. Haug assigns the date as not later than B.C. 2300. 
 Be the time when he lived what it may, it is certain that, as the Per- 
 sian national religion, it dates little further back than B.C. 559 and up 
 to A.D. 641. The four elements fire, air, earth, and water, especially the 
 first were recognized as the only proper objects of human reverence. 
 
 2300. A chart of the heavens in China. 
 
 2250. Commencement of the reign of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia ; 
 the earliest compilation of a code of laws was made in this reign. See 
 "COMPILATION OF THE EARLIEST CODE," i, 14. 
 
 2200-1700. Dominion of the Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, in Egypt. 
 It is not improbable that Abraham made his well-known journey to 
 Egypt during the early reign of these kings. Joseph's visit occurred 
 near the close of their power. 
 
 2200. Hereditary monarchy founded in China. 
 
 1700-1250. The new empire of Egypt attains the period of its greatest 
 splendor and power. Meneptah, about 1320 (1322), has been generally 
 accepted as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. 
 
 1500. Independence of Assyria as the rising of a kingdom apart from 
 Babylonia; the rise of Nineveh. 
 
 1450-1300. The Hittite realm in Syria attains its greatest power. The 
 Egyptians knew the Hittites as the Khita or Khatta. Recent discoveries 
 indicate that they formed a civilized and powerful nation. Many inscrip- 
 tions and rock sculptures in Asia Minor, formerly inexplicable, are now 
 attributed to the Hittites of the Bible. 
 
 1330. Rameses II of Egypt; the Sesostris of the Greeks. 
 
 1300. Shalmaneser I reigns in Assyria. 
 
 1250. The Phoenicians, closely allied in language to the Hebrews, be- 
 gin their colonizing career. 
 
 1235. Probable date of the consolidation of Athens. See " THESEUS 
 FOUNDS ATHENS," i, 45. 
 
 1200. Exodus of Israel from Egypt. 
 
 " FORMATION OF THE CASTES IN INDIA." See i, 52. 
 
 1184. TALL OF TROY." See i, 70. 
 
 1 122. Wou Wang becomes emperor of China. 
 
 xi2o. Beginning of the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria. 
 
 i loo. Dorian migration into the Peloponnesus. 
 
 1095 (1055; 1080 common chronology). Hebrews establish the mon- 
 archy. Saul the first king. 
 
 1058 (1033). At Gilboa, Saul is defeated by the Philistines. David be- 
 comes king in Judah.
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 375 
 
 1017 (998). Accession of Solomon as king of the Hebrews. The 
 Temple at Jerusalem is built in this reign. See " ACCESSION OF SOLO- 
 MON," i, 92. 
 
 1015. Smyrna founded. 
 
 977 (953)- Israel and Judah become separate kingdoms, following the 
 revolt of the Ten Tribes under Jeroboam. 
 
 973 (949)- Jerusalem captured by Sheshonk, King of Egypt. 
 
 958 (929). Asa ascends the throne of Judah. 
 
 931 (899). Omri's accession in Israel. 
 
 9i7 (873)- Jehoshaphat begins his reign in Judah. 
 
 9o (853). The Syrians defeat and slay Ahab, King of Israel, at Ra- 
 moth-Gilead. 
 
 Divambar conquers Armenia, Persia, Syria, and adjacent lands. 
 
 88 7 (843). The throne of Israel usurped by Jehu. 
 
 850. The Tyrians colonize Carthage. 
 
 8n (792). Uzziah succeeds to the throne of Judah. 
 
 800. The canal and tunnel of Negoub constructed to convey the wa- 
 ters of the Zab River to Nineveh. 
 
 800 (850). Sparta : Probable date of the legislation of Lycurgus. 
 
 790 (825). Jeroboam II becomes King of Israel. 
 
 789. First destruction of Nineveh: death of Sardanapalus. See 
 " FIRST DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH," i, 105. 
 
 776. Beginning of the Olympiads. Olympiad in ancient Greece meant 
 the space of four years between one celebration of the Olympic games 
 and another. In this year it began as a system of chronology. 
 
 772* (748). End of Jehu's dynasty in Israel. 
 
 753 (common chronology). "FOUNDATION OF ROME." See i, 116. 
 
 750.* The Corinthians found Syracuse. 
 
 743-724. First great war between Sparta and Messenia : the latter is 
 subjugated. 
 
 734-* Syria becomes subject to Tiglath-Pileser II of Assyria. 
 
 731.* Tiglath-Pileser II subjects Chaldea. 
 
 727* (728). Hezekiah ascends the throne of Judah. 
 
 722.* King Sargon of Assyria conquers Samaria; he puts an end to 
 the kingdom of Israel. Captivity of the Ten Tribes. 
 
 701. Siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib; he encounters the Egyptian 
 and Ethiopian forces; his expedition into Syria fails. 
 
 697. Accession of Manasseh to the throne of Judah. 
 
 685-668. The second war between Sparta and Messenia. 
 
 660.* Prince Jimmu establishes Yamato as the capital of Japan. See 
 " PRINCE JIMMU FOUNDS JAPAN'S CAPITAL," i, 140. 
 
 650.* The whole of Egypt united under Psammetichus I, founder of 
 the XXVI dynasty. He frees Egypt from Assyrian rule and opens the 
 country to the Greeks. 
 
 645-628. The Messenians make an unsuccessful attempt to throw off 
 the yoke of Sparta. 
 
 * Date uncertain.
 
 376 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 
 
 640. Birth of Thales, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. He taught 
 the spherical form of the earth and the truecauses of lunar eclipses ; dis- 
 covered the electricity of amber. The Seven Sages, or Wise Men, are 
 commonly made up of Thales, Solon, Bias, Chilo, Cleobulus, Periander, 
 and Pittacus. 
 
 Media becomes independent of Assyria ; she appears as a single united 
 kingdom. 
 
 625. Media, Assyria, and Syria have a great irruption of Scythians in 
 their borders. 
 
 633. " FOUNDATION OF BUDDHISM." See i, 160. 
 
 621* (624). Date of the legislation of Draco, at Athens. 
 
 612. Conspiracy of Cylon at Athens. 
 
 609.* Josiah is slain at Megiddo, when Necho, the Egyptian King, 
 crushes the power of Judah. 
 
 607.* Nineveh taken by the Medes and Babylonians, who overthrow 
 the Assyrian monarchy. 
 
 605.* Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho at Carchemish. Necho main- 
 tained a powerful fleet; the Phoenician ships under his order rounded the 
 Cape of Good Hope. Herodotus says that twice during this voyage the 
 crews, fearing a lack of food, after landing, drew their ships on shore, 
 sowed grain and waited for a harvest. It will be noticed that this was 
 over two thousand years before Vasco da Gama, to whom is usually 
 given the credit of first circumnavigating Africa. 
 
 597.* Jerusalem captured by Nebuchadnezzar, who carries away the 
 principal inhabitants. 
 
 595. The Delphic Games in Greece. See "PYTHIAN GAMES AT 
 DELPHI," i, 181. 
 
 594. Adoption of the Constitution of Solon at Athens. See " SO- 
 LON'S EARLY GREEK LEGISLATION," i, 203. 
 
 586.* Nebuchadnezzar captures and destroys Jerusalem ; puts an end 
 to the kingdom of Judah. The Babylonish captivity. 
 
 570.* Egypt attacked by Nebuchadnezzar, who dethrones Hophra 
 (Apries) ; he places Amasis on the throne. 
 
 560. Tyranny of Pisistratus at Athens. The Grecian poor were still 
 getting poorer, notwithstanding Solon's legislation; they clamored for 
 relief, placed Pisistratus at their head, and passed a decree allowing him 
 to have a bodyguard of fifty men armed with clubs. Pisistratus then 
 threw off all disguise and established himself in the Acropolis as tyrant of 
 Athens. 
 
 550.* Cyrus, at the head of the Persians, destroys the Median mon- 
 archy. See " CONQUESTS OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. 
 
 550.* " RISE OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE SAGE." See i, 270. 
 
 546. Crcesus, King of Lydia, overthrown by Cyrus. See " CONQUESTS 
 OF CYRUS THE GREAT," i, 250. 
 
 540.* Calimachus invents the Corinthian order of architecture. 
 
 * Date uncertain.
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 377 
 
 538. Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. See " CONQUESTS OF CYRUS 
 THE GREAT," i, 250. 
 
 529. Death of Cyrus : Cambyses succeeds him on the throne of Persia. 
 
 527. Hippias and Hipparchus succeed their father, Pisistratus, at Ath- 
 ens, in the government of that city. 
 
 5 2 5 (527). Conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, King of Persia. He com- 
 pletely subdued it, and, after an attempted rising, crushed Egypt with 
 merciless severity. Cambyses treated the Egyptian deities, priests, and 
 temples with insult and contempt. 
 
 ^Eschylus, Greek tragic poet, born. 
 
 522. Pseudo-Smerdis usurps the Persian throne. Cambyses had slain 
 his brother Bardes, whom Herodotus calls Smerdis. A Magian, Gau- 
 mata by name, resembling Bardes in appearance, impersonated the mur- 
 dered prince. A revolution ensued and, owing to the death of Cambyses 
 by his own hand, Pseudo-Smerdis became master of the empire. 
 
 521. Darius I, by defeating Pseudo-Smerdis, who had reigned eight 
 months, ascends the Persian throne. 
 
 521-516. The Temple at Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the 
 Babylonians, rebuilt. 
 
 520.* Birth of Pindar, the chief lyric poet of Greece. He was in the 
 prime of life when Salamis and Thermopylae were fought. His poems 
 have as groundwork the legends which form the Grecian religious litera- 
 ture. 
 
 516.* Invasion of Scythia by Darius, King of Persia, who seems to 
 have acted according to an oriental idea of right, in that he claimed to 
 punish the Scythians for an invasion of Media at some previous time. 
 
 514. Hipparchus, of Athens, assassinated by Harmodius and Aristo- 
 giton. 
 
 514.* Birth of Themistocles, a famous Athenian commander and states- 
 man. He was largely instrumental in increasing the navy ; induced the 
 Athenians to leave Athens for Salamis and the fleet, and brought about 
 the victory of Salamis. 
 
 510. Hippias expelled from Athens. The democratic party is headed 
 by Clisthenes, the master-spirit of the revolution inaugurated for the 
 overthrow of the despotic and hated sons of Pisistratus. The Athenian 
 democracy was reorganized by Clisthenes. 
 
 510. The Crotonians destroy Sybaris. Croton and Sybaris were two 
 ancient Greek cities situated on the Gulf of Tarentum, Southern Italy. 
 Little is known of them except their luxury, fantastic self-indulgence, and 
 extravagant indolence, for which qualities their names remain a syno- 
 
 nyme. 
 
 510. Expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. Founding of the Re- 
 public; consulship instituted. See " ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUB- 
 LIC," i, 300. 
 
 506.* The Persians subject Macedonia, and extend their doi 
 
 * Date uncertain.
 
 378 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 
 
 over Thrace. The Thracians occupied the region between the rivers 
 Strymon and Danube. They were more Asiatic than European in char- 
 acter and religion. 
 
 500* (501, 502). Rising of the Greek colonies in Ionia against the Per- 
 sians. Harpagus, who had saved Cyrus in his infancy from his grand- 
 father, while governor of Lydia reduced the cities of the coast. Town 
 after town submitted. The Tieans abandoned theirs, retiring to Abdera 
 in Thrace ; the Phocians, after settling in Corsica, whence they were 
 driven by the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, went to Italy and later 
 founded Massalia (Marseilles) on the coast of Gaul. Thus the Greek 
 colonies became a portion of the Persian empire. The insurrection of 
 the lonians continued for six years, the fate of the revolt turning at last 
 on the siege of Miletus. 
 
 499* (500). Ionian expedition against Sardis. The city was taken and 
 during the pillage was accidentally burned. The Ionian forces were ut- 
 terly inadequate to hold Sardis ; and their return was not effected with- 
 out a serious defeat by the pursuing army of Persians. 
 
 497.* The Latins are defeated by the Romans at Lake Regillus. 
 
 495. Birth of Sophocles. 
 
 494. The naval battle of Lade, in which the Persians defeat the Asi- 
 atic Greeks. Fall of Miletus. 
 
 494 (492). First secession of the plebeians from Rome. Creation of 
 the tribunes of the people. See "ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUB- 
 LIC," i, 300. 
 
 493 (49 1 )- The Latins are compelled by the Romans to enter into a 
 league with Rome, which is threatened by the Etruscans, Volscians, and 
 the ^Equians. The Latins obtained the name of Roman citizens ; the 
 title disguised a real subjection, since the men who bore it had the ob- 
 ligation of citizens without the rights. 
 
 492.* Mardonius heads the first Persian expedition against Greece. 
 
 490. Battle of Marathon, in which Darius' Persian host is over- 
 whelmingly defeated by Miltiades. See "THE BATTLE OF MARA- 
 THON," i, 322. 
 
 489. Condemnation and death of Miltiades. See " THE BATTLE OF 
 MARATHON," i, 322. 
 
 486. Darius Hystaspes, of Persia, is'succeeded on the throne by his 
 son Xerxes. 
 
 League of Rome with the Hernici. 
 
 484.* Birth of Herodotus, the " Father of History." 
 
 483. Aristides, one of the ten leaders of the Greeks at Marathon, os- 
 tracized through the jealousy of Themistocles. 
 
 480. Second Persian invasion of Greece, this time by Xerxes. De- 
 fence of Thermopylae by Leonidas. See " DEFENCE OF THERMOPY- 
 LAE," i, 354. Naval battle of Artemisium. Athens burned. The Persian 
 fleet vanquished by Themistocles and Eurybiades at Salamis. Retreat 
 of Xerxes. 
 
 * Date uncertain.
 
 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 379 
 
 The Carthaginians attempt the conquest of the Greek cities of Sicily. 
 Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, defeats their army at Himera. 
 
 Birth of Euripides, the celebrated Greek tragic poet.* 
 
 479- The Greeks, under the command of Pausanias, at the battle of 
 Platasa, crush the Persian army under the lead of Mardonius. Leoty- 
 chides and Xanthippus gain a simultaneous victory over the Persian fleet 
 at Mycale. End of the Persian invasion of Greece. 
 
 478. The tyranny of Hieron, brother of Gelon, begins at Syracuse. 
 He was noted as a patron of literature. 
 
 477. The predominance in Greece passes from Sparta to Athens, by 
 the formation of the Confederacy of Delos. 
 
 474. Hieron, of Syracuse, defeats the Etruscans near Cumse. 
 
 471. Themistocles exiled from Athens, the Spartan faction having plot- 
 ted his ruin, alleging his complicity with the enemy. 
 
 Birth of Thucydides.* 
 
 470 (471). The Publilian law passed in Rome; the plebeians accorded 
 the right of initiating legislation in their assemblies. See " ROME ES- 
 TABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC," i, 300. 
 
 469.* Birth of Socrates. 
 
 468.* Democracy triumphs in the cities of Sicily. 
 
 466. Naval victory of the Greeks, under Cimon, over the Persians at 
 Eurymedon. B.C. 470 Cimon had reduced Eion, after a gallant defence 
 by Boges, the Persian governor, who, rather than surrender, cast all his 
 gold and silver into the river Strymon, raised a huge pile of wood, and 
 on it placed the bodies of his wives, children, and slaves all of whom he 
 had slain then, having set fire thereto, he flung himself into the flames 
 tnd perished. 
 
 The Revolt of Naxos crushed by Cimon during the expedition against 
 the Persians. 
 
 Fall of the tyrants at Syracuse. 
 
 465. Murder of Xerxes I, by Artabanus, captain of his guard; acces- 
 sion of Artaxerxes I to the Persian throne. 
 
 464. Sparta destroyed by an earthquake which shook the whole of 
 Laconia, opened great chasms in the ground, rolled down huge masses 
 from the peaks of Taygetus, and threw Sparta into a heap of ruins. 
 Not more than five houses are said to have remained standing. Twenty 
 thousand persons lost their lives by the shock. The flower of the Spar- 
 tan youth was slain by the overthrow of the building in which they were 
 exercising. 
 
 464-455. The Messenian helots rise against the Spartans, taking ad- 
 vantage of the confusion caused by the earthquake. This was the begin- 
 ning of the third Messenian war. 
 
 463. Mycens is reduced by the Argives, who enslave or drive away 
 its inhabitants. 
 
 460. Birth of Hippocrates, in the island of Cos, who became known 
 as the " Father of Medicine." 
 
 * Date uncertain.
 
 380 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 
 
 458.* Jews return from Babylonia to Jerusalem, under Ezra. 
 
 Esther, the Jewess, pleases King Ahasuerus and is made queen in place 
 of Vashti. This was the origin of the Jewish festival of Purim, cele- 
 brated on the I4th and i5th of the month Adar (March). 
 
 Beginning of the Long Walls of Athens ; built to protect the com- 
 munication of the city with its port. One, four miles long, ran to the har- 
 bor of Phalerum, and others, four and one-half miles long, to the Pi- 
 raeus. 
 
 457. Beginning of war of Corinth, Sparta, and /Egina with Athens: 
 Battle of Tanagra, in which the Athenians were defeated. 
 
 456. Athenian victory at CEnophyta; the Boeotians defeated by My- 
 ronides, who also secures the submission of Phocis and Locris. 
 
 455. End of the third Messenian war. 
 
 451. Ion of Chios, historian and tragedian, exhibits his first drama. 
 
 * Date uncertain. 
 
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