20 S211 1902 1822 01189 6792 mm. HV^^B! B0BR presented to the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by Ms . Ma,rv Alplanalap E. W. Estes. ran D ? S211 1902 THE WORLD'S HISTORY AND ITS MAKERS EDGAR SANDERSON, A. M. AUTHOR "HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE" J. P. LAMBERTON, A. M. AUTHOR "HISTORIC CHARACTERS AND FAMOUS EVENTS," "LITERATURE OF ALL NATIONS," ETC. JOHN McGOVERN AUTHOR. " THE GOLDEN LEGACY," " THE TOILERS' DIADEM," " FAMOUS AMERI- CAN STATESMEN," ETC. OLIVER H. G. LEIGH COLLABORATOR ON "HISTORIC CHARACTERS AND FAMOUS EVENTS," " LITERA- TURE OF ALL NATIONS" AND "LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE ;" AUTHOR OF 'HISTORY OF THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA," ETC. AND THE FOLLOWING EMINENT AMERICAN EDITORS AND WRITERS: JOSEPH M. ROGERS. A. M. ; LAURENCE E. GREENE ; M. A. LANE; G. SENECA JONES, A M. ; FREDERICK LOGAN ; WILLIAM MATTHEWS HANDY. INTRODUCTION BY MARSHALL S. SNOW, A. M. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND DEAN OF THE COLLEGE; AUTHOR "CITY GOVERNMENT," "POLITICAL STUDIES," ETC., ETC. TEN VOLUHES VOL. I ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY NEW YORK CHICAGO E. R. DU MONT 1902 BAAL R. DuMONT CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION - j IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY, FAMILIES AND RACES, CHINA, INDIA i GREAT ORIENTAL PEOPLES (EGYPTIANS, HITTITES, CHAL- D^ANS, ASSYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, ISRAELITES, PHOBNI- CIANS, MEDES AND PERSIANS) - 22 HISTORY OF GREECE - 82 HISTORY OF ROME - - 176 MEDIEVAL HISTORY - 294 RISE OF THE SARACENS - - 309 EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE * 320 BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATIONS - 325 GROWTH OF THE PAPAL POWER 333 THE CRUSADES - 339 ENGLAND'S RISE AS A NATION 357 CONSOLIDATION OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY - - 372 PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND - 378 DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER EUROPEAN NATIONS - 384 THE FEUDAL SYSTEM - 395 CHIVALRY - - 400 CIVILIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES - 408 PHOTOGRAVURES VOLUME I. PAGE. HISTORY (IDEAL) i ALCIBIADES AND ASPASIA 118 PAPIRIUS INSULTED BY THE GAULS 207 BUND APPIUS CLAUDIUS LED INTO THE SENATE 269 MOHAMMED 313 INTRODUCTION ADVANTAGES AND PLEASURES TO BE DERIVED FROM A STUDY OF HISTORY In laying before our readers the present series of ten volumes, which we have named THE WORLD'S HIS- TORY AND ITS MAKERS, it seems fitting not only to describe the general character of the work, but to dwell for a few moments on the study of history as an important part of a useful and well-spent life. History is the written record of the past ; it is also such written study of the present as enables us to reveal the un- written past. The great pyramid is not history, and until Herodotus wrote and Champollion deciphered, it was but an artificial mountain. The mounds in the region of Nine- veh were only heaps of sand whose excavation would have added little to history, had not Grotefend, by guessing from the pages of the Bible, happily found a key to the translation of the cuneiform writings of the Assyrians that lay buried in the libraries of Mesopotamia. History, again, beside its function of unequaled dramatic entertainment, gradually amasses the informing facts con- cerning man's action in his environment. Scholars for cen- turies have been striving to acquire the philosophy of history, in order to predetermine the destiny of their race. Man, physically a compound of many elements, stands in the midst of about one hundred things also called elements, arranged into one thing called the Universe. It has been the dream of philosophy since the days of Pythagoras first to demon- strate that man acts in accordance with the laws of his environment, and next to reach the plane of scientific proph- ecv as to his future actions. In this series, one volume 11 INTRODUCTION has been apportioned to the recent history of the triumph of man over the forces of a nature that once seemed rude and unfertile, but now teems with interest more startling than the boasts of necromancers. History, to the living, is not the chief function of lan- guage, but to the unborn the handing down of history will be by far the most notable of our deeds. Whoever, then, adds to this heritage that is to be transmitted to the future, throws himself wisely upon the gratitude of a race which will rapidly grow more generous and appreciative. As we may easily perceive the desirability of stores of knowledge for the future, so we may by that measure also value our own opportunities of peering into the past. By means of history, we who are limited in life to a few decades may dwell upon the experience of our own kind for sixty centuries. The earliest poets in the Ayran languages of Europe were historians. Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Mil- ton, Byron, are historians history is the very kernel of their song. The early balladists are tellers of story. The favor- ite short poems of the world are more often history than sentiment "Alexander's Feast," "Hohenlinden," "Scots Wha Hae," "The Charge of the Light Brigade" the more stirring the lyric, the more of history it recalls. There is no theatrical drama that is not the mimic of that imposing stage which we here place before the reader. To this, his own theater, he may enter at all hours ; these actors are always at his bidding. From his almost royal divan in this arena, he may summon before him a glittering pageant of patriarchs, kings, queens, conquerors, captives, statesmen, philosophers, inventors, magicians. All will obediently play their parts ; no poet, however godlike his imagination, has wrought with such skill of plot, as time has wrought. On this stage walk Adam (Manu, Menu, Menes, Minos. Man) and his nine descendants ; Noah and his nine descend- ants. Here is unrolled the chapter of the tenth of Genesis, that gives a geography to the world. Here rise Egypt and the pyramids ; Tyre and her dark daughter Carthage ; Greece INTRODUCTION ill and her white statues; Rome and her short sword; here comes Mohammed out of his cave, with his scimetar, and here flashes the panoply of ten crusades to the Holy Sepul- cher; here sleeps Europe through a devout siesta of ten centuries ; here again upspring art and architecture, freedom of thought and science; intercourse, knowledge, and prog- ress. What tragedian of the imagination has even mimicked the drama of Napoleon's life ? Here the reader may see the carnage of Wagram or Borodino, and may thrill with the early dreams of the Corsician soldier, or sadly ponder with him at St. Helena. He may tremble with Louis XI before Charles the Bold. He may build the long bridge with Alex- ander at Tyre, or peer with covetous eyes on the Persian treasure at Susa. He may watch the building of the pyra- mids, and set up the tall columns at Karnak. He may enter Granada with Isabella, or see Christina laying down her Northern crown. He may watch the world-beleaguered Fred- erick, now floundering in blood to immortality, now turning a verse to meet the tuneful ear of Voltaire. What stage- played scene shall so excite him again, after he has beheld the earth-enacted plot of the French Revolution, where trage- dies crash upon each other like glaciers falling into Arctic seas! We love Herodotus because he is old and honest ; Tacitus, because he is brilliant ; Gibbon, because he is great. These are but brighter stars in the firmament ; innumerable are the lesser lights that twinkle. Hardly a novelist but if he did his work with probity, he filled in the arabesquerie which the more stately historian must forego. We know more of old Paris when we read Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame ;" more of later Paris when we read Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities ;" more of modern Paris when we read Daudet's "Im- mortals." A love of History, early instilled, will not only acquaint the child with human life, but elevate the taste, to demand a high standard of entertainment. These volumes are the in- to INTRODUCTION dex to all that has been genuinely exciting and instructive. Three of the series cover the general History of the World. Seven other volumes, again, tarry to give detailed studies of exceedingly valuable parts of the panorama. The series has been compiled \vith a view of itself acting as a pleasant and effective stimr/.its to the receptive powers of the mind, in order that the reader may move into a position to scan the entire history of our race. So far we have spoken largely of the history of deeds; more should be said of the history of thought a world of delight equally keen, a study no less beneficial. Through this lens of knowledge, guided by such seers as Lenormant, we look upon the stars, and in the names of the constellations we read the prehistoric ideas of men. We consider the nam- ing of the days after the seven planets ; we read the ancient names of the months and gather meanings new to us ; we consider the sacred numbers of twelve and sixty the sixty shekels, manehs, talents; the sixty seconds, degrees, circles or hours. We see the struggles of Light and Darkness ; the grasping of the cycles of eclipse and Sirian star. We see in geometry the magic results of study of the circle and its diameters ; Ptolemy hanging the orbs in the sky ; Copernicus rearranging them; Columbus, their pupil, sailing into the abyss of the sunset. We see Napier consolidating our fig- ures into logarithms, and Linnaeus, by similar methods, nam- ing all organic things. We see Darwin successfully offer to man a hypothesis of animal variation and form, and Faraday hard after an equally successful hypothesis for Matter and Motion. Man, who has harnessed Niagara, and liquefied the air, stands at the seaside, bridle in hand, ready to ensnare the tides and banish manual labor from the world. If philoso- phers have written about the philosophy of history, they in turn must peruse the history of philosophy, which already far surpasses the wonders of Oriental fable. It is the duty of those who have lived many years to guide the footsteps of those who with glad countenances are eagerly pressing upon the scene. Their advent becomes W. Es INTRODUCTION v more and more interesting and optimistic. At the portal we should stand, offering, as our most precious possession, the History that we received from our ancestors, the History that our own generation has increased with its deeds and adven- tures; the History into which each coming year must add even more remarkable chapters. ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY History is a record of the doings of civilized mankind, in its progress toward the greatest of political and social blessings a rational freedom of thought and action. History deals with the life only of political communities, or nations, and not with races of men who have made lit- tle advance from a primitive state. The special duty of history is to sketch the career and describe the condition of those great nations whose ideas and institutions, or whose achievements in art, science, politics, literature, and war were remarkable in their own epoch, or, by influencing other nations, helped to make the civilized world what it is now. The Eastern nations did not reach to the height of the idea that mankind is, and ought to be, free; they only knew of freedom for one the despot to whose caprices they became victims and slaves. The Greeks first be- came conscious of freedom as the right of mankind, but they, as well as the Romans, knew only of freedom for a part of mankind their own citizens, and so had a system of slave-holding bound up with the free constitution which those citizens enjoyed. The Teutonic nations, aided by Christianity, first became conscious that man, as such, is free, and by slow degrees slavery was abolished, and con- stitutional freedom was established in modern states, organized in a rational way. The history of the world is an account of the growth among mankind of this con- Voi,. i i sciousness of freedom for the race. This is the grand aim which the world's history has seen, at least in part, attained the acquirement of freedom for the heaven-born spirit of man. On this altar have been laid the sublime sacrifices of patriots and heroes ; to this pole-star, amid the constant change of conditions and events, the magnet guid- ing the track of this great laboring sorrow-laden bark of humanity has been, on a wide view, ever true. The springs of action in history are the various needs, char- acters, passions, and talents of men. Passing to the pic- turesque view of this great subject, we find that "the world's history is a grand panorama of events and changes, the sight of which calls into play all the emotions of the soul of man love of goodness, enjoyment of beauty, admiration of greatness ; hope and fear for the results of struggles in which human action and suffering are involved ; pity for the fallen greatness both of men and of empires ; joy in the issuing of new life from the ashes of the funeral-pile of nations that have consumed themselves away." The grand crisis in the history of the world is the con- test between freedom and despotism which was, in Grecian history, decided on the plain of Marathon, where the Greeks overthrew the power of Persia, and saved Europe from falling under the rule of an Eastern despot. From that hour is was possible for Europe to work out and to enjoy true liberty and civilization in the combination of the personal freedom of the private citizen with a will- ing submission to the supremacy of public law. In the Roman Empire we have the spectacle of almost the whole civilized world ruled by one state, upon a system adapted with consummate skill for the maintenance of law and order throughout. When the Roman Empire perished under the pressure of foreign influence, aided by internal IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY $ corruption and decay, the vigorous races of northern and central Europe began a new development of civilization which, combined with Christianity, by slow degrees made Europe what we see it now. The shattered fragments of the Roman Empire, under the pressure of the conquering tribes, assumed new forms, and new nations arose to become the founders of the state-system of Modern Europe. The political and social life of Greece and Rome have directly influenced all European nations down to the pres- ent hour. The present character of the English-speaking race is closely connected with the facts that, at Athens, a citizen enjoyed absolute political and social freedom, and that in the Roman system all personal feelings and tastes were subjected to the rigorous supremacy of absolute law. All ancient history leads up, through Greece, to Rome tri- umphant ; all modern history comes down to us from Rome beaten and broken. This is the ample vindication of the claims of Greek and Roman history to the study and regard of modern readers. How stands the case with India and China, as contrasted with Greece and Rome ? The China- man was, and is, a pedant; the Hindoo was, and is, a dreamer ; the Greek was a thinker and an artist ; the Roman was a man. For European civilization, the pedant could teach nothing; the dreamer has done nothing; the thinker and artist developed, molded, and improved himself and all around him, and all that came after him ; the man con- quered and governed the world. It is interesting and important to notice the geographi- cal conditions under which great nations have arisen. This has always occurred either in valley-plains, the regions traversed and watered by some great river and its tributaries, or on a coast which has afforded the means of commercial intercourse with other nations. Thus 4 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY India and China consist of valley-plains, and have given rise to great nations, lying beyond the scope of the general history of the world, though curious and interesting in themselves. Babylonia, which had the Euphrates and the Tigris for its rivers, was one of the great empires of old. Egypt was watered by the Nile. In all these regions, agriculture provided plenteous food for man, and soon gave rise to property in land ; this property was the origin of legal relations, and so we have the basis of a state. The chief seat of the history of the ancient world was the great Mediterranean Sea. "On its shores," says Hegel, "lie Greece, a focus of light ; Syria, the center of Judaism and of Christianity; southeast, not far away, are Mecca and Medina, cradle of the Mussulman faith ; Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, lay all on the Mediterranean, mighty heart of the old world. Around this great uniting sea, a bond between the three great continents of the eastern half of this our globe, all ancient history of the higher value gathers." Nations really great in arts and arms, in polity and learning, have arisen only in the temperate zone of the earth. The reason is that there alone has nature allowed man to devote his time and powers to self-culture. In the torrid and the frigid zones, the struggle with the forces of nature is too fierce and constant to allow men to do more than reach a certain point of civilization. THE FAMILIES AND RACES OF MANKIND Ethnologists have divided mankind into five leading families the Caucasian, Mongolian or Tartar, Negro or Ethiopian, Malay, and American or, according to color, the white, yellow, black, brown, and red races. The epithet Caucasian is taken from the mountain-range between the Black and Caspian Seas, near to which region FAMILIES AND RACES 5 the finest specimens of man regarded physically have always been found. Mongolian is derived from the wan- dering races who inhabit the plateaux of Central Asia. Negro is the Spanish word for black. Malay is connected with the peninsula of Malacca, where some of the race founded a. state in the Thirteenth Century. American is applied to the copper-colored race found in that continent when it was discovered. The Caucasian race has now spread, through coloniza- tion, over the whole world, but its proper region is Europe, Western Asia, and the northern strip of Africa. Nine- tenths of the people of Europe belong to the Caucasian family, the other tenth consisting of the Turks, the Magyars (in Hungary), the Finns, the Laplanders, and the pagan tribe called Samoyeds in the extreme northeast of European Russia. In Asia, the Caucasians include the Arabs, the Persians, the Afghans, and the Hindoos. In Africa, the Caucasians are spread over the whole north, from the Mediterranean to the south of the Sahara Desert, and to the farthest border of Abyssinia. In North and South America two-thirds of the people are now Cauca- sian. In Australia and New Zealand the Caucasian colon- ists have almost extinguished the native races. The Mongolian family includes the Mongols proper, or the wandering and settled tribes between China and Siberia; the Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, and other peoples in the southeast and east of Asia, and the native tribes of the Siberian plains. The Turks, Magyars, Finns, Laplanders, and Samoyeds, in Europe, and the Esquimaux, in America, are all Mongolian. The proper home of the Negro race is Africa, to the south of the Sahara. The Malay tribes inhabit the peninsula of Malacca and the adjacent islands, and include the people of Madagascar, the New Zealanders, and 6 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY the dwellers in most of the Polynesian archipelagoes. The American or red variety of mankind includes the native races of North and South America. Of all these races of mankind the only one whose his- tory is important for us is the Caucasian or white race, to which belong the people of those states and empires of old the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Hebrew, the Phoenician, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman. This race is historical, because it displays the most highly civilized type of mankind that type whose progress and achievements are the true prov- ince of history. This grand stock the Caucasian race has been classified into three main branches the Aryan, or Indo-European, the Semitic and the Hamitic. The term Aryan is derived either from one ancient word implying that they were "cultivators of the soil," or from another meaning "worthy, noble." The earliest known home of the Aryan people was the high table-land of Central Asia, near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. The great philologist Max Miiller says that "the parent-stock (from whom all the Aryan tribes have sprung) was a small clan settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, speaking a language not yet Sanskrit, or Greek, or Ger- man, but containing the dialectic roots of all. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Ger- mans, the Slavonians, the Greeks and Italians, the Per- sians and Hindoos were living together, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic race." The Semitic branch is so called from Shem, son of Noah, described in the Bible as ancestor of some of the nations which it includes. The Hamitic branch is named from Ham, the son of Noah, and ancestor of some of its peoples. The Aryan branch includes nearly all the present and past nations of Europe -the Greeks, Latins, Teutons or Germans (including the. FAMILIES AND RACES 7 English race), Celts and Slavonians, as well as three Asiatic peoples the Hindoos, the Persians, and the Afghans. The Semitic branch includes, as its chief his- torical representatives, the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Assy- rians, Arabs, and Babylonians. The Hamitic branch is represented in history by one great ancient nation the Egyptians. A leading part in the history of the world has been, and it still, played by the Aryan nations. The only great Hamitic nation the Egyptians became highly civil- ized at a very early time, and exerted a marked influence on others, and so on the civilization of succeeding ages. The Semitic race is highly distinguished in the records of religious belief, because with them originated three faiths whose main doctrine is that there is but one God namely, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan. Apart from this, and with the special exception of the ancient Phoenicians, the Semitic nations have not done so much for mankind as the Aryan. They have not been generally distinguished for progress and enterprise, but have mainly kept to their old home between the Mediterranean, the river Tigris, and the Red Sea. It is the Aryans that have been the parents of new nations, and that have reached the highest point of intellectual development, as shown in their political freedom, and in their science, literature and art. The glory of the Aryan element is shown in the fact that the ancient Greek and Roman, the modern German, Englishman, American and Frenchman are all of Aryan race. The Caucasian presents us with the highest type among the five families of man : the Aryan branch of the Caucasian family presents us with the noblest pattern of that highest type. The Aryan in history shows all that is 8 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY most worthy of renown in energy, and enterprise, and skill, and claims of right the foremost place on history's page. At some remote period of the past the forefathers of the Hindoos and the Persians and of nearly all the Euro- pean nations were one people, living together on the plateau north and northwest of the Himalaya Mountains. Under the pressure of numbers, and spurred on by their own enterprising nature, these Aryan peoples began and for ages continued to move, mainly westward, from their ancestral seats. Of this great original stock a portion went southward across the Himalayas, and peopled Hin- dostan, Persia, and the intervening lands ; the other por- tion, at different times and long intervals, came westward into Europe. The Celts were the first comers into Europe from among the Aryan race. They appear to have spread themselves over a great part of the continent ; but as a distinct people they are now only found inhabiting parts of the British Isles and France. Later came the Italic Latin tribes, who drove the Celts out of the pen- insula now known as Italy; the Hellenic or Grecian tribes, who occupied the peninsula of Greece ; the Teutonic tribes, who drove out the Celts from Central Europe, and finally occupied Denmark Sweden and Norway. The last comers of the Aryans were the Lithuanians and Slavonians the Slavonians being now spread over Rus- sia, Poland, and Bohemia, while the Lithuanians settled on the Baltic Coast, partly in Prussia, partly in Russia. The greatest part of these movements took place before the dawn of history, and thus was Europe gradually overspread by successive waves of Aryan settlement. The proof is here simple and decisive. The compar- ison of words in Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Hindoos; Zend, the olden speech of Persia; Greek, Latin, FAMILIES AND RACES 9 English, and other tongues, has shown that all these lan- guages come from a distant common original, spoken by some race yet unparted by migration. In all, or nearly all, these tongues, the names of common things and persons, the words expressing simple implements and actions, the words for family relations, such as father, sister, mother, brother, daughter, son, the earlier numerals, the pronouns, the very endings of the nouns and verbs, are substantially the same. Accident could not have caused this phenome- non; and, since many of the nations speaking thus have for long ages been parted from each other by vast stretches of the earth's broad surface, they could not learn them, in historic times, one from another. Borrowing and imi- tation being thus excluded, the only possible account is that these words and forms were carried with them by the migratory Aryan tribes as part of the possessions once shared by all in their one original home. The study of these Aryan tongues has also told what progress had been made by this, the king of races, before the time arrived for starting south and west, to fill, to conquer, and to civilize the Western world. Whatever words are alike in all or nearly all these Aryan tongues, must be the names of implements, or institutions, or ideas, used, started, or conceived before the first wave of migration made its way. We thus learn that, at that far-distant time, the Aryans had houses, ploughed the earth, and ground their corn in mills. The family life was settled basis as it is of all society and law. The Aryans had sheep and herds of cat- tle, horses, and dogs, and goats, and bees; they drank a beverage made of honey ; knew and could work in copper, silver, gold; fought with the sword and bow; had the beginnings of kingly rule ; looked up and worshiped either the sky itself, or One whom they regarded as the God who io ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY ruled there. Thus far above the savage state the Aryan race had risen. All history is really one unbroken whole, but for prac- tical convenience it has been divided into Ancient History, ending with the breaking up of the dominion of Rome in the Fifth Century (A. D. 476) ; Mediaeval History, from the downfall of Rome to about the middle of the Fifteenth Century; and Modern History, from that part of the Fifteenth Century to the present day. CHINA China is one of the oldest and strangest of nations. At a very early period she advanced to the state in which she now is, with the exclusion of all change in her system, and with an apparent incapacity for vital progress. China has always been a subject of marvel to Europeans, as a country which, self-originated, appeared to have no con- nection with the outer world. Recently some eminent scholars have maintained that by researches into the most ancient writings of the Chinese they have been able to dis- cover an early communication or connection between China and Western Asia, and that the culture of China must have borrowed various elements from an earlier civil- ization in Babylonia. The people belong to the Mon- golian family of man. China proper, sloping eastward from a mountainous interior, sinks by successive terraces into a vast level tract of unequaled fertility, formed by the alluvial deposits of its great rivers, the Yang-tse ("Son of the Ocean"), and the Hoang-ho ("Yellow River," from the color of its mud). Its temperate climate and rich soil, productive in wheat, barley, rice, roots, and green crops, favored the CHINA ii early and rapid growth in numbers of a people dis- tinguished by skill and industry in agriculture. The traditions of China, setting aside fabulous absurd- ities, go back to 3,000 years before Christ, and one of their sacred books, the Shu-king (treating of history and of the government and laws of the ancient monarchs), begins with the Emperor Yao, 2357 B. C. About 600 B. C. the philosopher Lao-tse was born. He is famous as the founder of a part of Chinese religion, called "Taou-tse" or "Worship of Reason," and as the author of the "Tao-te- king" or "Book of Reason and Virtue." He teaches a kind of Deism in theology, and a sort of Stoicism in prac- tical philosophy. About 550 B. C. the great philosopher Confucius was born. His name is a Latinized form of the Chinese word "Kong-fu-tse, i. e., "the teacher, Kong." This great teacher of religion and morals is still venerated by his countrymen. He was of royal descent, and held high office at court, which he left to become the founder of a philosophical sect and an earnest instructor of the people. After his death, about B. C. 480, the Chinese worshiped him as a god. He taught that there was but one God and one Emperor, to whom all rulers of other nations are as vassals. His moral teaching dwelt on reverence for ancestors, benevolence, justice, virtue, and honesty, the observance of all usages and customs once introduced, rev- erence for old age, and strict discipline for children. He inculcated the peaceful virtues of domestic life, and justice and humanity as duties of monarchs. He praises also the delights of friendship, and teaches the forgiveness of offences. He revised the five Kings or sacred books of the Chinese, documents similar, as regards the estimation in which they are held in China, to the Mosaic records of the Jews, or to the Vedas of the Hindoos, and the 12 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY Homeric poems of the Greeks. These old books are the foundation of all Chinese studies. Besides the Shu-king, there are the Y-king, a metaphysical work ; the Shi-king, a book of ancient poems ; the Li-king, dealing with the cus- toms and ceremonial observances connected with the Emperor and the state functionaries ; and the Tshun-tsin, a history of China in the time of Confucius. In the Third Century B. C. the Great Wall of China, 1,500 miles in length, was built on the northern frontier, to defend it against the inroads of the Huns, who, how- ever, broke through the wall at the beginning of the Sec- ond Century B. C. and overran the country. The Chinese Emperors bought off the barbarians by a regular tribute of money and silk, as in England Ethelred II paid Dane- geld to his foes. The famous Mongol Emperor Jenghis Khan, who reigned from A. D. 1206 to 1227, invaded China, took the royal city of Pekin, and annexed some of the northern provinces. In A. D. 1260 the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, a grandson of Jenghis, conquered the whole of Northern China, to which, in 1279, he added Southern China, and so became the ruler of the whole country. Kublai Khan thus founded the Mongol dynasty of China, and removed the capital from Nankin to Pekin. At this time an interesting connection between China and Europe arose. The celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, explored the strange Eastern land for the first time, and lived for seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan, about whom he gives some interesting infor- mation in the trustworthy book of travels which his own age rejected as fabulous. About the middle of the Seventeenth Century the Manchoos, from the northeast, invaded and conquered the cpuntry and established the Manchoo dynasty, which still. CHINA 13 reigns there, the language of the conquerors being that used at court and for official documents. In recent times the East India Company established a trade with China, and in 1793 Lord Macartney was sent by George III as Ambassador. He had several inter- views with the Emperor, but the mission had no result beyond the insight it gave into Chinese character and cus- toms. In 1816 Lord Amherst's embassy tried to obtain permission for a British Minister to reside at Pekin, and sought the opening of ports on the northern coast to British trade. Lord Amherst did not even succeed in see- ing the Chinese Emperor, owing to his refusal to perform the ceremony of Koutou, or prostration at the Celestial ruler's feet, and returned to England with a letter to the Prince Regent, which contained the words, "I have sent thine ambassadors back to their own country without punishing them for the high crime they have committed" (in approaching me) . This revealed the secret of China's failure to make real advances from her stationary condi- tion the insanity of self-conceit and the stolid refusal of intercourse with other nations. The overcoming of that reserve by force and the political and commercial encroach- ments of the Caucasian race will be treated in its proper place in modern history. If the state and the upper classes of China can be said to have any religion at all, it is Confucianism, a system of morality and philosophy which has little or nothing to do with a creed in the true sense. The lower classes believe to some extent in the religion called Buddhism, introduced from India in the First Century A. D. It is called in China the "religion of Fo," another name for Buddha, and is a system of materialism which teaches the annihilation of man after death, mixed with gross idolatry and super- stition. There is also a sect devoted to the worship of M Lao-tse, the philosopher. In fact, however, the ordinary Chinaman has no religion whatever, and almost universal indifference to all creeds prevails. In China a patriarchal despotism is the system of rule. The laws of the state are partly civil ordinances and partly moral requirements reaching to the inner self of every citizen. The state is treated as virtually one great family, and the people regard themselves as children of the state. The whole development of the civil and social polity is a grotesque mixture of reason and absurdity. An exagger- ated filial reverence causes the merits of a son to be attributed to his dead father, and ancestors have titles of honor bestowed upon them for the good deeds of their posterity. The Emperor is supposed to direct the whole business of the state, for which end the Imperial Princes are educated on a strict system that has furnished China with a succession of pedantic Solomons. There is no proper nobility official station, based entirely upon com- petitive examinations, being the only rank recognized out- side the Imperial family. The administration of the gov- ernment is exercised, under the Emperor, by the high officials called Mandarins, of two classes, learned (the civil officers) and military. The highest administrative body is the Council of the Empire, composed of the most learned and able men. There is a permanent board of Censors, who exercise a strict supervision in all matters of govern- ment and over the public and private conduct of the Man- darins, reporting thereon direct to the Emperor. The monarch is the center round which everything turns, and as the well-being of the state is made to depend on him, the succession of a slothful and unprincipled ruler is the signal for an all-pervading corruption. The officers of govern- ment are supposed to have no conscience or honor of their own to keep them to duty, but only external Mandates, CHINA 15 which, even with the highest officials, are enforced by the use of the stick. Every mandarin can inflict blows with the bamboo, and Ministers and Viceroys are punished in this way. At every turn, in a system in some points excel- lent, but the product of a prosaic understanding, without regard to sentiment, honor, or free-will, we are met in China by pedantic pettiness and degrading folly. In respect of civilization the Chinese have ever been a nation of ingenious and precocious children who have never succeeded in growing up. They are said to have known the art of making paper as early as the First Cen- tury A. D., and to have practiced printing from wooden blocks, which they still continue to do, as early as the Seventh or Eighth Century. They were famous at a very early period for the porcelain, which has made the name of their country a generic term for all such fine and beautiful earthenware. Their robes of woven silk were worn by the luxurious Roman ladies under the early Empire, and they have been long noted for their skill in lacquered ware and their delicacy of carving in wood, ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother-of-pearl. They profess to hold the sciences in great honor, and one of the highest governmental boards is the Academy of Sciences. What they call science, however, is merely a collection of ill-arranged facts and beliefs; it is pursued without regard to intellectual ends, and hindered in prog- ress to what is higher by a curious, cumbersome, and clumsy language. The Chinese tongue has never attained to the possession of an alphabet, which, with nations of the higher development, has always been the first step toward the acquirement of a rational instrument for the expres- sion of thought. Each Chinese character represents a word, and in writing and printing the characters are not arranged horizontally either from left to right as in Euro- 16 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY pean languages, or from right to left as in Hebrew and the cognate languages, but in vertical columns, to be read from top to bottom. China's want of scientific attain- ments in astronomy is attested by the fact that for hun- dreds of years the Chinese calendars have been made by Europeans ; and in medicine, by the theory that the beating of the pulse alone can tell the physician the cause and locality of the disease. It is clear enough that Europe and true civilization had nothing to gain, and have gained nothing, in culture, from a country where 400 millions of people are treated like children; where there is no originality and no free- will; where no progress, save from outward impulse, is possible. The outcome of the elaborate and minute regu- lations, of the severe and constant competitive examina- tions, of the Chinese system is simply, that after the lapse of 4,000 years, they still have no convenient written language; that, pretending to be astronomers, they know not how to use the telescope ; that the medical art is a mere ignorant superstition ; and that the artist cannot shade a drawing, and has no notion of perspective. The super- ficial cleverness of handiwork displayed by Chinese artisans serves but to heighten the effect of the ludicrous produced on the European mind by the paltry results of a preten- tious, antiquated, and inherently unprogressive order of civilization. INDIA Indian civilization, like that of China, has contributed little or nothing to the culture of the Western world. From the prosaic pedantry of China, however, we pass, in India, to a region where fancy and sensibility have held sway, though the absence of energy, and of true human dignity and freedom, has prevented the people from INDIA 17 exhibiting historical progress of the highest order. Indian records present us with no political action; the people have achieved no foreign conquests, and have repeatedly succumbed to foreign invasion. They are a people of dreams, not of deeds. In regard to general history, India has been an object of desire to other nations from very early times, as a land teeming with riches and marvels ; the treasures of nature, such as pearls, perfumes, diamonds, elephants, gold ; and treasures of wisdom in her sacred books. Alexander the Great was the first European recorded to have arrived there by land ; in modern times the European nations first made their way to India by sea round the Cape of Good Hope. The Hindoos are one of the three Aryan races of Asia, and probably crossed the Indus into the rich alluvial river-plain of the Ganges about 2,000 years B. C. They dispossessed the peoples, probably of Tartar origin, to the north of the River Nerbudda, and gradually penetrated the great southern peninsula known as the Deccan. The dark-skinned aboriginal natives were by no means exterm- inated, and their descendants, in the persons of the hill- tribes and others, amount to many millions. India first came into historical connection with Europe at the invasion of Alexander the Great in B. C. 327. The Macedonian conqueror did not go far beyond the Indus, and, after defeating a king named Porus, returned to Per- sia by way of the Indus and the sea. Early in the Tenth Century A. D. Mohammedan invas- ions of India, through Afghanistan, began, and early in the Thirteenth Century an Afghan dynasty was estab- lished at Delhi, and northern India was subdued. During the Thirteenth Century the Mongols of the Empire of Jenghis Khan invaded India and met with many successes and defeats. In 1398 the great Tartar VOL. i 2 i8 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY conqueror, Tamerlane, took and sacked Delhi, and, after overrunning the land to the mouths of the Ganges, retired and left anarchy and misery behind him. In 1526 Sultan Baber, a descendant of Tamerlane, founded the Mogul Empire in India. His grandson, Akbar, reigned from 1556 to 1607, and extended his power over most of the peninsula, being distinguished by his justice and his tolerance in matters of religion. Akbar's son, Jehanghir, received in 1615 the English Ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, despatched by James I; Jehanghir's son, Shah Jehan, displayed great architectural magnificence, culminating in the exquisite Taj Mahal ("Crown of Empires") at Agra, a mausoleum of white marble built for the remains of his favorite wife. During his reign, which ended in 1658, the Mahrattas began to be formidable in Southern India. The history of British presence in India begins at about this time, and the commercial con- nection of other European nations with the Hindoos will be noticed in its proper place. In India we see an essential advance, in theory, from the Chinese state of a dead-level of equality for all below the Emperors. In spite of the despotic power of the ruler are found also different ranks and orders of men. These distinctions are the Castes, established in accordance with religious doctrine, and viewed by the people, at last, as natural distinctions. The very ancient book of Hindoo laws, called the Institutes of Menu, regulates these class- divisions of society. In later times many minute subdi- visions of caste have arisen, but there were originally four only : The Brahmins, the order of men devoted to religion and philosophy ; the Shatryas, or military and governing class; the Vaisyas, or professional and mercantile class; the Sudras, or lower-class traders, artisans, and field- laborers. The rigid stereotyped character of these order? INDIA 19 caused the people of India to be spiritual slaves. Into his caste a man was born, and bound to it for life, without regard to poverty or riches, talents, character, or skill. Thus life and energy were fettered ; the individual could not make his own position. Nature had for ever settled it for him. Human dignity and human feeling were bound up in the separate castes, and so true expansive morality was unknown ; the spirit of man wandered into the world of dreams, and political progress was impossible. Government in India, before its conquest by the Eng- lish, was nothing but the most arbitrary, wicked, and degrading despotism, unchecked by any rule of morality or religion a condition worse than that of China under the worst of Emperors. The people were degraded even below a feeling of true resentment against oppression; much less were they capable of any manly attempt to throw off the yoke. The prevailing religions of India are Brahminism, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism. More than two-thirds of the people are supposed to hold the Brahminical creed, more than one-fourth are Mohammedans, and the rest are mainly Buddhists, with a small fraction of Christians. Brahminism is the oldest religion, and its tenets are contained in the sacred books called Vedas, of which the oldest, the Rig- Veda, is certainly one of the most ancient literary documents in existence. The pure Deism of the older form of this religion had for its leading doctrine that of an all-pervading mind, from which the universe took its rise. Then came a belief in three deities, or diverse forms of the same universal deity, viz., Brahma, or the Creator; Vishnu, or the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. This was further corrupted into a pantheism, which sees a god in everything in sun, moon, stars, the Ganges, the Indus, beasts ^and flowers. In its higher *> ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY development, Brahminism holds that the human soul is of the same nature with the supreme being, and that its des- tiny is to be reunited with him. This led to the great doc- trine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, which is necessary to purify the human soul for union with the divine. According to this view, man's soul in this world is united to the body in a state of trial, which needs prayer, penance, sacrifice, and purification. If these are neglected, then the human soul, after death, is joined to the body of some lower animal, and begins a fresh course of probation. In popular practice, the grossest idolatry and superstition, with a cowardly and selfish disregard of human life, have largely prevailed alongside of the philosophical tenets of the educated class. Mohammedanism was introduced by conquering armies of Islam's prophets early in the Tenth Century A. D. Buddhism arose about 550 B. C, and derives its name from Buddha, or the Buddha ("the enlightened one"), a surname bestowed upon its founder Gautama, a Hindoo of high rank, who developed his creed in retired meditation, and began to teach it in opposition to Brahminism. This religion recognizes no supreme being; it insists on prac- tical morality; teaches the transmigration of souls, and regards annihilation as the good man's final reward. The Sanskrit tongue was spoken by the ancient Hin- doos, but has been in disuse, save as a literary language, for over 2,000 years. From it most of the numerous Hindoo dialects are derived. Its condition is a testimony to the high intelligence of the Aryans who peopled India. The name of this elder sister of the Greek, Latin, Persian, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic tongues is derived from sam, "with," and krita, "made," meaning "carefully constructed" or "symmetrically formed." It is rich in inflectional forms and very flexible, and it has a boundless wealth of epithets. The alphabet is a very perfect instrument for representing INDIA ai the sounds of the language. A vast religious, poetical, philosophical, and scientific literature is written in Sanskrit. The Hindoos, at the time of Alexander's invasion, had reached a high point of development. They were good astronomers and mathematicians ; had great skill in logic and philosophy; manufactured silk and cotton in beauti- ful and costly forms, and worked rich ornaments in gold and silver. The chief artistic works of India have been architectural. Many splendid buildings are scattered over the country, displaying a variety of styles in which the pyramidal form is very prevalent, a profusion of sculptured ornamentation being also a marked feature. Remarkable works of a somewhat different kind are the rock temples of Ellora in the Deccan, near Aurungabad, and of Ele- phanta, a small island near Bombay. These stupenduous and magnificent works have massive pillars and display very rich and elaborate carving. The Phoenicians were probably the first of the nations dwelling round the Mediterranean to enter into commer- cial relations with India, the trade being carried on both by sea and land. In later times some of the products of India were also known to the Greeks, while among the Romans they were not uncommon, and fetched very high prices. As illustrating the character of the Hindoo intellect it is remarkable that their literature possesses no historical works. Their minds seem to have been unable to regard events in their true light, and they have had no love of veracity to induce them to record facts as they occurred. The Hindoos exhibit a state of mind in which a sensitive and imaginative temperament turns all outside them into a feverish dream, and so, with all their intelligence and taste, they have had slight influence upon the progress of other nations. GREAT ORIENTAL PEOPLES The old Eastern monarchies, with the sole exception of Hamitic Egypt, all arose in Asia. The truly historical nations of olden Asia are the Assyrians, Semitic; Babylon- ians, Semitic; Hebrews, Semitic; Phoenicians, Semitic, and Persians, Aryan. All these had their career in South- western Asia. This great area of early history may be divided into three regions : That west of the Euphrates; the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris; the region from the Zagros Mountains, east of the Tigris, to the Indus. West of the Euphrates were the peninsula of Asia Minor, containing the important Lydian nation and Greek colonies connected with the later Oriental history; Syria, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, divided into three distinct parts Syria proper; Phoenicia, or the strip of coast between Mount Lebanon and the sea; and Palestine, south of Phoenicia; the peninsula of Arabia, extending southeastward, and having little to do with ancient history. In the basin of the Tigris and the Euphrates were several distinct territories : Armenia, or the mountainous region between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea; Assyria proper, lying between the Tigris and the Zagros Moun- tains; Babylonia, the great alluvial plain between the lower courses of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, and extending westward to the Syrian Desert; Chaldsea (in the nar- rower sense, as a province of the Babylonian Empire), west of the Euphrates, at the head of the Persian Gulf; Mesopotamia, or the district between the middle courses of 33 GREAT ORIENTAL PEOPLES 23 the Tigris and the Euphrates ; Susiana, the country east of the Tigris and at the head of the Persian Gulf. In these territories, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, arose the three great monarchies of Chaldaea, Assyria, and Babylonia, afterward absorbed in the Sixth Century B. C, by the mighty Empire of Persia, extending almost from the Indus to the Mediterranean, ^gean, Euxine, and Caspian Seas, when it had reached the summit of its power. East of the Zagros Mountains lay Media and Persia proper Media, northeastward, towards the Caspian Sea, and Persia, on the table-land southward, stretching to the Persian Gulf. Before the rise of an extensive commerce by sea or land, it is possible for great communities to gather and continue to exist only in those regions where a rich soil provides plenteous food. No soils exceed in fertility the alluvial deposits of great rivers, and among such soils the valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris and Euphrates have ever been famous for their wonderful productive power. Nature herself provides man with that delicious and most nutritious food the date, and as for rice and other grain crops, the earth has fatness such that "if she be but tickled with a hoe, she laughs with a harvest." In pastoral lands the people wander, and must wander, with their flocks and herds, to find fresh grass; they cannot settle down into a polity or state; the agriculturists, who stayed to reap where they had sown the seed, became progenitors of mighty nations, founders of great empires famous through all regions and all ages of the civilized world. Here then, in such a territory, on such a soil here, in Egypt, and in Southwestern Asia, the true history of the civilized world begins, with those nations that had historic records of their own, that rose to a highly-civilized con- 34 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY dition; and, more than all, that brought their culture, with more or less of permanent effect, to bear on nations whom they conquered, or who subjugated them. As it comes forth from the gloom of a past before all records, we turn our gaze to greet the rising sun of history, disclosing to our view two grand developments of human culture Egypt and Chaldaea. EGYPT The people of Egypt are the earliest nation of whose government and political institutions we possess any certain record, with the exception of the Hittites, whose history has been but recently discovered. Long before the Hebrews came into possession of their promised land Canaan, Egypt had Kings, and priests, and cities, and armies; laws and ritual and learning; arts and sciences and books. Egypt is at this day, beyond all other lands, the land of ruins, surpassing all other countries in gigantic and stately monumental re- mains, the result of boundless human labor. In these great memorials of Egypt we have expressed for us the char- acter of the people, a half-fettered spirit, whose favorite symbol was the Sphinx a half-brute, half-human form. This human head looking out from the brute typifies the intellectual and moral part of man the human spirit beginning to emerge from the natural, striving to get loose and to look freely around, but still restrained by the de- based original state of existence. The edifices of the strange people who dwelt of old in this land of wonders are, as it were, half under and half above the ground, so that the kingdom of life seems ever in contact with the silent realm of death. Egypt is a land that has been created out of the desert by the alluvial deposits of her mighty river, the Nile. EGYPT 25 Flowing down from the mountains of Abyssinia in its eastern branch, the Blue Nile, it unites at Khartoom, in Nubia, with the western and longer branch, or White Nile, which is now known to issue from the great equatorial lake, Victoria Nyanza. The river then flows, northward mainly, to the Mediterranean, and provides a rich soil of muddy deposit in the yearly overflow caused by the great rainfalls of the Abyssinian mountains. Egypt is thus composed of a highly fertile strip of territory inclosed by hills and sandy wastes on each side. The Delta of the Nile was ever noted for its rich soil and teeming popula- tion; the water of the river was always famous for its wholesomeness and pleasant taste. The chief mineral products of Egypt were the beauti- ful granite of Philae, Elephantine and Syene, whose quar- ries furnished the huge masses used for obelisks and statues ; the whitish or grayish sandstone of the hills north of Syene, which supplied the masonry for the temples ; and the limestone of the hills northward again to the Delta, which last chain furnished the material for the Pyramids. The climate of Egypt is remarkably dry, and to this is due the wonderful state of preservation seen in many of the monumental remains, which display a sharpness of outline in the stone and a freshness of color in the painting that arelike the work of yesterday. The vegetable products of Egypt, due in their great abundance to a hot sun acting on the thick fertile layer of fresh soil yearly bestowed by the river, were varied beyond all example in the ancient world. The olive and pomegranate, the orange and the vine, the citron, the date-palm and the fig, all yielded their delicious produce for the use of man. The vegetable gar- dens teemed with cabbages and cucumbers, onions, leeks, garlic, radishes, and melons. Rice and a species of millet called doora grew in great crops. The fir, the cypress, and 26 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY the cedar furnished valuable timber. The papyrus of the marshes by the river gave the material for writing which we call, in a different substance , "paper." The same plant furnished sailcloth, cordage, and baskets. Cotton and flax gave raw material for manufacturing skill. Medical science went to Egypt for its drugs, and in her later days Rome was largely fed by Egypt's corn. To the abundant food was due the plenteous popula- tion, and to that again the mighty architectural works raised by the toilsome efforts of cheap and well-fed labor. The country abounded, too, in animals and birds. Sheep, goats, and oxen swarmed; geese and ducks, and quails and widgeons flew in countless numbers. Egypt was famous for the horse as used in war in early times ; the scarabceus, or sacred beetle, is known to all from its sculptured semblance on the monuments; and the white ibis, among birds, migrating into Egypt along with the ris- ing of the Nile, became sacred in the eyes of those to whom the rising river gave their bountiful subsistence. Rain scarcely ever falls in Lower Egypt, or in the part nearer to the Mediterranean Sea. The inundation of the Nile begins early in August, turning the valley of the river into a shallow inland sea, and subsides by the end of October. Until the present Century, what was known about ancient Egypt was mainly got from the narrative of Herodotus, the great Greek, the father of history, who traveled in Egypt about the middle of the Fifth Century B. C, and made careful inquiries of the people and the priests; from Manetho, an Egyptian priest about 300 B. C., who wrote in Greek a lost work on the history of Egypt, of which the lists of dynasties of kings have been preserved by other writers; and from Diodorus Siculus, who wrote (in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus) a universal history, of which the portion about Egypt EGYPT 27 remains entire. During the present Century knowledge of the history of the "land of Pyramids and priests" has been greatly increased by the deciphering of the inscrip- tions on the monuments, and by extended observation of the countless sculptures in which the olden Egyptians have recorded their ways of life, their arts and arms and sciences and ritual and faith. In carving or in painting, or in both combined, the obelisks, the temple walls and temple col- umns, the inner walls of tombs, the coffins of the dead, utensils, implements, artistic objects, all are covered with the strange characters known as hieroglyphics. This word, of Greek extraction, means "sacred carvings," and the name was given to the sculptures in the supposition that all such characters were of religious import, and known only to the priests of ancient Egypt. The meaning of the characters had been utterly lost for many hundreds of years, and the word "hieroglyphics" had long become proverbial for mysteries and undecipherable puzzles, when a keen-eyed Frenchman found and put into the hands of scholars the clue that was to guide them within the labyrinth for ages inaccessible and unexplored. An artillery officer of Napoleon's army in Egypt, named Bouchart, discovered near Rosetta, in 1799, an oblong slab of stone engraved with three inscriptions, one under the other. The upper one (half of which was broken off) was in hieroglyphics, the lower one was in Greek, and the middle one was stated in the Greek to be in enchorial char- acters (i. e., characters of the country, Gr. chora, country), otherwise called demotic or popular (from the Greek, demos, the people). The victories of the British army in Egypt put the English government in possession of this celebrated and interesting relic, which George III pre- sented to the British Museum, where it stands now in the gallery of Egyptian sculpture. 28 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY The Greek inscription at once told scholars that all three inscriptions expressed a decree of the Egyptian priests, sitting in synod at Memphis, in honor of King Ptolemy V (Ptolemy Epiphanes, who reigned B. C. 205-181 ), to commemorate benefits conferred by him upon them. To the efforts of two men chiefly the world was indebted for the deciphering of the two forms of Egyptian writing found on the Rosetta stone. These were Dr. Thomas Young, an eminent linguist and natural philoso- pher, who was foreign secretary to the Royal Society, dying in 1829; and the great French orientalist, Jean Franqois Champollion, superintendent of Egyptian an- tiquities in the Louvre Museum, and member of the Academy of Inscriptions. M. Champollion died in 1832. By careful study and comparison, firstly of the Greek with the enchorial inscription, and then of both with the hieroglyphic characters, combined with the study of similar inscriptions on other monuments, a key to the mystery was at last obtained, and a flood of light thrown on the olden history and civilization of Egypt. Their work has been continued by the Egyptian Exploration fund established in 1881, under whose direction Petrie, Naville and others have discovered ancient Egyptian cities buried under the earth but which, excavated, confirmed the tales told by the hieroglyphics and have added new and interesting details to the world's knowledge of the won- derful civilization of the extinct race. Hieroglyphics are representations of objects or parts of objects, including heavenly bodies, human beings in various atti- tudes, parts of the human body, quadrupeds and parts of quadrupeds, birds and parts of birds, fishes, reptiles and parts of reptiles, insects, plants and parts of plants, build- ings, furniture, dresses and parts of dresses, weapons, tools and instruments, vases and cups, geometric forms, EGYPT 29 and fantastic forms, amounting in all to about a thousand different symbols. Of these more than six hundred are ideographic (idea-writing), i. e., the engraved or painted figure, either directly or metaphorically, conveys an idea which we express by a word composed of alphabetic signs. Thus, directly, the figure of a man means "man ;" meta- phorically, the figure of a man means "power." About one hundred and thirty of the hieroglyphs are phonetic (sound-conveying), i. e., the engraved or painted figures represent words (which are nothing but sound with a meaning attached thereto), of which the first letter is to be taken as an alphabetic sign, and thus phonetic hiero- glyphics answer the same end as our letters of the alphabet. An example of each will clearly show what is meant. In ideographic writing, a bird, a mason, a nest, mean "birds build nests ;" in phonetic hieroglyphs the figures of a bull, imp, rope, door, and ship would give the word "birds," and the words "build" and "nests" would be expressed in the same roundabout and clumsy fashion. The difficulty of deciphering the inscriptions on monuments was increased by the fact that both ideographic and phonetic hieroglyphs, along with certain mixed signs, or phonetic followed by ideographic, occur in the same inscriptions. The first inhabitants of Egypt came from the north by the Isthmus of Suez, and not from the South, descend- ing the Nile, as was supposed until recently. They belonged to the race known in Genesis as the Sons of Ham, whom the Arabs called the "red." Temples have been dis- covered built 1600 B. C, upon the ruins of buildings still more ancient. Egyptian chronology is not yet fixed with certainty, but the dates given by Mariette Bey, founder of the Museum of Boulak at Cairo, may be accepted. Under the name of Cushites, the Hamitic race constituted the basis of the population along the shores of the Indian jo ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY Ocean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea. These Cushites formed little states, which existed for many centuries, before the powerful chief, Menes, made himself master of all the val- ley from the sea to the cataracts of Syene, and founded, at least 5000 B. C, the first royal race of which we have any knowledge. Tradition is that at first gods reigned, and then demi-gods, represented by priests, but these were forced to yield to a warrior chief. Little has yet been dis- covered of these three first dynasties, the rule of which for eight centuries extended as far as to the peninsula of Sinai. But it is known that under the fourth dynasty, which began about 4020 B. C., there existed a civilization unparalleled at the period. The arts gained a development which is scarcely excelled by the most brilliant epoch. The building of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, near Cairo, is ascribed by Herodotus to King Cheops, otherwise called Suphis, according to the hieroglyphic royal name found inside the structure. This early King is believed to have reigned about the middle of the Twenty-fifth Century B. C. Cheops was the second and most celebrated monarch in the fourth of the dynasties of Manetho, which ruled at Memphis as the capital. The third King in this list, Cephren, also founded a pyramid, as did the fourth, Mencheres, a sovereign beloved and praised in poetry for his goodness. His mummified remains are now in the British Museum. In the sixth dynasty was a female sovereign noted for her beauty, named Nitocris, who also built a pyramid and reigned at Memphis. The monarchy appears to have been for some time divided, the chief power being held by the Kings ruling at Thebes, in Upper Egypt. To about 2050 B. C. is ascribed the invasion and conquest of the country by the Hyksos or Shepherd-Kings, said to be the Hittites. They conquered Lower Egypt first, and then subdued the A. VV'. Estes, EGYPT 31 kingdom of Thebes, ruling the whole land, as is supposed, from about B. C. 1900 to 1500. It is probably to this period that the story of Joseph belongs. Amenophis seems to have expelled the Shepherd-Kings, with the aid of the Ethiopians from the South, and then came the great period of Egyptian history, from about 1500 to 1200 B. C. Dur- ing this time Egypt was a great empire, having Thebes for its capital. The greatest monarch of this or perhaps any age of Egypt's history was Rameses the Great, called by the Greek writers, Sesostris. To him have been attributed many of the monuments and pictures which represent triumphal procession and the captives taken in war. Rameses tht Great reigned for nearly seventy years in the Fourteenth Century B.C. Among his many monuments two are chiefly remarkable, the Memnonium or palace-temple at Thebes, and the great rock-cut temple of Aboosimbel in Nubia. These great architectural works possess an interest more historical than that of the pyramids. Their sculptures and inscriptions tell us the chief events of the reign of Rameses, and even suggest some idea of his personality. His por- traits show a face of partly Semitic type, and indicate a strong but gentle character of unusual cultivation for the times. This great conqueror is said to have subdued Ethiopia, to have carried his arms beyond the Euphrates eastward, and among the Thracians in southeast Europe. The monumental sculptures and paintings tell us of war- galleys of Egypt in the Indian seas, and of Ethiopian trib- ute paid in ebony and ivory and gold, in apes and birds of prey, and even in giraffes from inner Africa. Other sculp- tures display the Egyptians fighting with success against Asiatic foes. To this monarch was due a vast system of irrigation by canals, dug through the whole of Egypt for conveying the waters of the Nile to every part. After 32 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY the great Rameses we find no sovereign of note until we come to Shishak, who, in the year B. C. 970, took and plundered Jerusalem. The empire continued to decline, and latterly it was attacked by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, who, however, accomplished little. By Esarhad- don and Assurbanipal, however, Egypt was entirely reduced, and became for a time tributary to the Assyrian monarchs. This was in the early part of the reign of a King named Psammetichus, who reigned from B. C. 671 to 617. Then Egypt was in connection, for the first time in her history, with foreign countries, otherwise than as con- quering or conquered. Psammetichus had in his pay a body of Greek mercenaries, and sought to introduce the Greek language among his subjects. In jealousy at this, the great military caste of Egypt emigrated into Ethiopia, and left the King dependent on his foreign troops, with whom he warred in Syria and Phoenicia. Egyptian policy at this time, and in succeeding reigns, seems to have aimed at the development of commerce, and the securing for Egypt of the routes and commercial centers for the trade, by the Red Sea, between Europe and Asia. Necho, son of Psammetichus, succeeded his father, and reigned from B. C. 617 to 60 1. He was an energetic, enterprising prince, who built fleets on the Red Sea and the Mediter- ranean, and strove to join the Nile, by a canal, with the Red Sea. Africa was circumnavigated by Phoenicians in his service, who sailed from the Arabian Gulf, and passed round by the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouths of the Nile. He was the King who fought with and defeated Josiah, King of Judah, sustaining afterwards defeat from Neb- uchadnezzar, King of Babylon. In B. C. 594 came Apries, the Pharaoh-Hophra of Scripture, who conquered Sidon, and was an ally of Zerte- EGYPT 33 kiah, King of Judah, against Nebuchadnezzar. After being repulsed with severe loss in an attack on the Greek colony of Cyrene, west of Egypt, Apries was dethroned by Amasis, who reigned from B. C. 570 to 526. His long and prosperous rule was marked by a closer intercourse than heretofore with the Greeks. Psammenitus, son of Amasis, inherited a quarrel of his father with Cambyses, King of Persia, who invaded and conquered Egypt in B. C. 525. For nearly two hun- dred years afterward the history of Egypt is marked, disastrously, by constant struggles between the people and their Persian conquerors, and, in a more favorable and interesting way, by the growing intercourse between the land of the Nile and the Greeks. Greek historians and philosophers Herodotus and Anaxagoras and Plato visited the country and took back stores of information on its wonders, its culture, and its faith. In B. C. 332 Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great, and with this event, and the foundation of the new capital, the great city of Alexandria, destined to a lasting literary and commercial renown, the history of ancient Egypt may end. At an early period the form of government in Egypt became a hereditary monarchy, but one of a peculiar kind. The power of the King was restricted by rigid law and antique custom, and by the extraordinary influence of the priestly class. In his personal life he was bound by minute regulations as to diet, dress, hours of business, of repose, and of religious worship, and submitted to a daily lecture from the sacred books as to the duties of his high office. Under the Kings, governors of the thirty-six nomes or dis- tricts held sway, and these high officials were invested with large powers over the land and the levying of taxes. The soil was held by the priests, the warriors, and the King. 34 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY The Egyptian monarchs appear, as a rule, to have used their authority well and wisely; there was sel- dom insurrection or rebellion, and many received divine honors after death for their beneficence and regal virtues. The common title, "Pharaoh," is de- rived from the Egyptian word "Phra," the sun. The body of the people was divided into castes, concern- ing the number and nature of which the accounts differ. It seems, however, that they were not rigidly sep- arated, as in India, and that the members of the different orders might intermarry, and the children pass from one caste to another by change of their hereditary occupation. The castes are, perhaps, most correctly given thus: ist, priests; 2nd, soldiers; 3rd, husbandmen; 4th, artificers and tradesmen; 5th, a miscellaneous class of herdsmen, fisher- men, and servants. The priests and warriors ranked far above the rest in dignity and privilege. The hierarchy was the highest order in power, influence, and wealth. To the priestly caste, however, many persons belonged who were not engaged in religious offices. They were a land- owning class, and they were, emphatically and solely, the learned class, like the clergy of the Middle Ages. In their possession were all the literature and science of the coun- try, and all employments dependent, for their practice, on that knowledge. The priesthood thus included the poets, the historians, the expounders and administrators of law, the physicians, and the magicians who did wonders before Moses. They paid no taxes, had large landed possessions, exercised immense influence over the minds of the people, and put no slight check even on the King. History dis- closes a powerful and excellent military organization in Egypt. An army of over 400,000 men was mainly com- posed of a militia supported by a fixed portion of land (six acres per man), free from all taxation. The chariots and EGYPt 35 horses of Egypt were famous ; the foot-soldiers were vari- ously armed with helmet, spear, coat of mail, shield, battle- axe, club, javelin, and dagger, for close fighting in dense array; and with bows, arrows and slings for skirmishing and conflict in open order. The soldier was allowed to cultivate his own land when he was not under arms, but could follow no other occupation. The castes below the warriors and priests had no political rights, and could not hold land. The husbandmen who tilled the soil paid rent in produce to the King or to the priests who owned it. The artisan-class included masons, weavers, sculptors, painters, embalmers of the dead, and workers in leather, wood, and metals, whose occupations are recorded upon the monu- ments. The herdsmen were the lowest class, and of these the swineherds were treated as mere outcasts, not per- mitted to enter the temples, or to marry except among themselves. The land of Egypt, teeming with population, abounded in cities and towns. Of these the greatest were Thebes, in Upper Egypt, and Memphis, in Middle Egypt, whose site was near the modern Cairo. Thebes is the No or No Am- mon of Scripture, and was at the height of its splendor as capital of Egypt about B. C. 2000. Its vastness is proved by the existing remains known (from the names of modern villages) as the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, etc. They consist of obelisks, sphinxes, colossal statues, tem- ples, and tombs cut in the rock. These mighty monu- ments, with their countless sculptured details and inscrip- tions, are themselves the historians of the Egyptian Em- pire of 3,000 years ago. Memphis, after the fall of Thebes, became the capital of Egypt, and kept its impor- tance till the conquest of the country by Cambyses. It was superseded as capital by Alexandria, and finally destroyed by the Arabs in the Seventh Century A. D. The desert 36 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY sands have overwhelmed its famous avenue of sphinxes, and the great pyramids of Gizeh, and the colossal Sphinx, are the chief memorials of the past in its vicinity. The chief feature of Egyptian architecture is its colos- sal, massive grandeur, derived from the use of enormous blocks of masonry, and from the vast extent of the build- ings in which these blocks were employed. Towering height and huge circumference in the pillars ; length and loftiness in the colonnades, and avenues, and halls, produce in the beholder an unequaled impression of sublimity and awe. The approaches to the palaces and temples were paved roads lined with obelisks and sphinxes, and the tem- ples and the palaces themselves surpassed in size and in elaborate ornament of sculpture and of painting all other works of man. There are about forty pyramids now left standing, all in Middle Egypt, and of these the most remarkable are the group of nine at Gizeh, near the site of ancient Memphis. The Great Pyramid, that of King Cheops, covers an area of more than twelve acres, and exceeds 450 feet in height. An outer casing of small stones has been removed, and, instead of showing a smooth and sloping surface, the sides have now a series of huge steps. A narrow passage, fifty feet above the base of the structure on its north face, leads to the sepulchral cham- bers, of which that called the King's chamber is lined with polished red granite. The wooden coffin with the King's mummy was long since removed from the red granite sar- cophagus which held it. The second large pyramid, that of King Cephren, is somewhat smaller. A third, that of Mycerinus, is far smaller than the other two. The removal of the vast blocks of stone from distant quarries, and their elevation to heights which have puzzled the heads of modern engineers, were effected not by the ingenuity of mechanical contrivance, but by the labor of human EGYPT 37 hands. Thousands of men, employed for months in mov- ing single stones, regardless of 'expense, might well effect results startling to modern ideas of economy in toil. Egyptian sculpture displays size, simplicity, stiffness, and little of what modern art calls taste or beauty. Statues are made either standing quite upright, or kneeling on both knees, or sitting with a rigid posture of the legs and arms. In the work of the tombs and temples a bolder and more varied style is often found. The work is remarkable for clean execution and fineness of surface, showing an excellent edge and temper in the tools employed. It is likely that improvement in the forms of Egyptian art was hindered by religious scruple, confining the artist to the limits of traditional example. In Egypt, life was the thing sacred. Hence all that had life was in a way divine; the sacred ibis, crocodile, bull, cat, snake. All that produced and all that ended life. Hence death, too, was sacred. The Egyptian lived in the contemplation of death. His coffin was made in his lifetime; his ancestors were embalmed; the sacred animals were preserved in myriad heaps, through generations in mummy-pits. The sovereign's tomb was built to last for, not centuries, but thousands of years. Hegel declares that in the religion of Egypt are united the worship of Nature and of the spirit which underlies and animates Nature. The physical existence of the Egyptians depended on the Nile and the Sun ; from those forces only could come the vegetation needed for the food of the people. This view of nature gives the principle of the religion, in which the Nile and the Sun are deities conceived under human forms. From the observation of the constant course of nature, on which the Egyptian rested as his sole hope for the bread of life, arose the myth- ology of Egypt. In the winter-solstice the power of the 38 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY sun has reached its minimum, and must be born anew. And so, according to the legend, the god Osiris, represent- ing both the Nile and the Sun, is born; but he is killed by Typhon, the burning wind of the desert, which parches up the waters of the Nile. Isis, the goddess representing the Earth, or the receptive fertility of Nature, from whom the aid of the Sun and of the Nile has been withdrawn, yearns after the dead Osiris, gathers his scattered bones, and with all Egypt bewails his loss. Osiris becomes judge of the dead, and lord of the kingdom of spirits. To Osiris and to Isis were ascribed the introduction' of agriculture, the invention of the plough and the hoe, because Osiris the Nile and the Sun not only makes earth fertile, but gives the means to turn its power of reproduction to account. He also gives men laws, and civil order, and religious rit- ual; he thus places in men's hands the means of labor, and secures its result. Isis and Osiris were the only divini- ties that were worshipped throughout Egypt. It was in later times that they came to be regarded as divinities of the sun and the moon. Another god, Anubis, worshipped in the form of a human being with the head of a dog, is represented as an Egyptian Hermes, and to him was ascribed the invention of writing, grammar, astronomy, mensuration, music, and medicine. The highest form of the religious belief of this strange people appears, beyond a doubt, to have included the idea that the soul of man is immortal. Whatever higher religious ideas may have been held by philosophical and learned priests, the worship of the common people was chiefly a zoolatry, or adoration of ani- mals. The sacred bull, called Apis, was worshipped at Memphis with the highest honors, and at his death was replaced by another, searched for until they found one with certain peculiar marks, and this was the,n pretended EGYPT 39 to be miraculously born as the successor. All Egypt rejoiced on his annual birthday festival, and there was a public mourning when he died. The dog, the hawk, the white ibis, and the cat were also specially revered. The sparrow-hawk, with human head and outspread wings, denoted the soul flying through space, to animate a new body. Thus in the religion of Egypt, gross superstition in the masses of the people was mingled with the spiritual Conceptions of cultivated minds. A papyrus-book discovered in the royal tombs of Thebes has revealed to the world some curious matter con- cerning the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians, and their belief, as expressed in those rites, as to a future life. In this book, called the Book of the Dead, we read in pictured writing of a second life, and of a Hall of Judgment, where the god Osiris sits, provided with a balance, a secretary and forty-two attendant-judges. In the balance a soul is weighed against a statue of divine justice, placed in the other scale, which is guarded by the god Anubis. The assistant- judges give separate decisions, after the person on trial has pleaded his cause before them. The soul rejected as unworthy of the Egyptian heaven was believed to be driven off to some dark realm, to assume the form of a beast, in accordance with a low character and sensual nature. An acquitted soul joined the throng of the blest. With the religion of the people, it is thought, was connected the practice of embalming the bodies of the dead. This was performed by the use of drugs and spices stuffed within the head, and by the baking of the body, followed by steeping for seventy days in a solution of salt- peter. It was then closely wrapped in linen bandages soaked in resinous and aromatic substances. The next thing was to place the swathed form in the mummy-case, which was then laid in a sarcophagus of stone or in. a 40 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY coffin made of sycamore-wood. If the origin of this prac- tice was not a belief that at some period after death the soul would rejoin the body, it may have been occasioned by the fact that the yearly inundation made burial impos- sible for weeks over so large a portion of the land. As the Egyptian columns were formed by their arch- itects on the model of the palm-tree, whose feathery crown of foliage was ever before their eyes, or of the full-blown or budding papyrus, so in the mural decorations the figure of the famous lotus-plant, or lily of the Nile, is found con- stantly. The lotus was beheld by the Egyptians with veneration, and was used in sculpture and in paintings as no mere ornament, but as a religious symbol. It occurs in all representations of sacrifices and other holy ceremon- ies, in tombs, and in all matters connected either with death or with another life. This water-lily of Egypt was the emblem to the people of the generative powers of the world. It was consecrated to Isis and Osiris, and typefied the creation of the world from water. It also symbolized the rise of the Nile, and the return of the sun in his full power. The lotus of Egypt must not be confounded with that of the fabled "lotus-eaters," which was probably the shrub called jujube, growing still in Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco. Their monuments prove that the Egyptians practiced the arts of the potter, glass-blower, carpenter, boat-build- er, and other mechanics; that they used balances, levers, saws, adzes, chisels, the forceps, syringes, and razors. They were adepts at gold-beating, engraving, inlaying, casting, and wire-drawing. They grew and prepared flax, which they wove into fine linen. The sailcloth of the boats on the Nile was often worked in colored and embroidered patterns. Bells, crucibles, and surgical instruments were all in u^, From the papyrus the Egyptians made excel- EGYPT 41 lent paper, and the present freshness of the writing on it proves their skill in the preparation of colors and inks. They could dye cloth in fast hues, and engrave precious stones with great delicacy. They were skilled in veneering and inlaying with ivory and precious woods. There is thus ample proof that the ancient Egyptians were a highly in- genious, artistic, tasteful and industrious race. The women adorned themselves with bracelets, anklets, armlets, finger- rings, ear-rings, and necklaces; they always wore their own hair, which it was the fashion to have long and braided ; the service of the toilet brought into use highly- polished bronze mirrors, large wooden combs, perfumes, and cosmetics, which included a preparation for staining the eyelids and the eyebrows. The women joined the men at dinner, where all guests sat, instead of reclining in the usual Eastern fashion ; and at the meal the wine was cooled in jars and handed round in cups of bronze, or porcelain, or silver. Before the feast was over, an attendant carried round a figure of a mummy, bidding the guests enjoy the present hour, for mummies after death they all should be. The music at dinner came from the lyre, tambourine, and harp; and dancing, tumbling, and games with dice and with ball helped frivolity under the Pharoahs to pass its hours of idleness away. Such was the land of Egypt, the wonder of the nations of old, and a marvel to us in this age. Among all nations, for the massive and sublime, for the quaintly picturesque, it stands unrivalled in the world. An Arabian conqueror describes the land as "first a vast sea of dust; then a sea of fresh water ; lastly, a sea of flowers," and, in the time of inundation, as "a sea of islands." When the waters cover the valley of the Nile, the villages and towns and scattered huts rise just above the level of the lake, and Virgil sings of how in the Delta, at that season, the farmer 42 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY "rides his fields in painted bark around." In the time when vegetation is luxuriant, the contrast of the greenery by the river, with the yellow sand of the desert and the red granite of the rocks and ruins, is very striking. So unlike all the rest of the world was Egypt in her nature and her art, that the mere names of things found there, and there alone, or there in hugest or in strangest form, call up the image of the whole strange land with magic power. Tem- ples, rock-tombs, gigantic ruins; the ibis, crocodile, ich- neumon, asp; the pyramids, the sphinx, the obelisks; the mummy, scarabseus, hieroglyph, papyrus these were the products of the region where the Pharaohs reigned, where Moses grew from birth to manhood, where Joseph came forth from a dungeon to rule in wisdom at the King's right hand, and whence the chosen people of God went out into the wilderness toward the promised land. HITTITES, CHALDEANS, ASSYRIANS, AND BABYLONIANS In the basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris we find a civilization more ancient than that of Egypt. To explorations in Egypt made during recent years we owe the discovery of an even more ancient empire, that of the Hittites. Modern research has greatly added to our knowl- edge of the history of this region. In 1843 M. Botta, French consul at Mosul, on the Tigris, discovered at Khorsabad, twelve miles northeast of Mosul, and be- yond the river, an Assyrian palace which had been buried for perhaps two thousand years. Austin Layard, then a traveler in the East, was hereupon incited to make excava- tions in the lofty mounds of Nimrud, eighteen miles southeast of Mosul, and also beyond i. e., east of the Tigris. The enterprise was rewarded with immediate HITTITES 43 and brilliant success. From the labors of Mr. Layard at Nimrud and at Koyunjik, on the Tigris, opposite to Mosul, came the slabs covered with cuneiform (wedge- shaped) or arrow-headed inscriptions, the huge winged bulls and lions, with human heads, bas-reliefs, figures, and ornaments, which are now to be seen, as one of its most valuable collections, in the British Museum. These ob- jects themselves gave instant and abundant information as to the state of art and the progress of civilization at the time when they were made, but the cuneiform inscriptions were a different matter. For these the penetrative power of superior intellects was needed, and the researches of Rawlinson, Norris, Grotefend, Smith, Sayce, and others, have resulted in the deciphering of a vast number of the inscriptions containing the history of ancient Babylonia and Assyria and their Kings. The study of cuneiform characters has revealed that the Hittites, instead of being merely a fierce and a warlike tribe, dwelling in the mountains around Hebron, to the annoyance and danger of the Israelites, were a great and powerful people, who ruled Asia Minor from the River Euphrates on the east to the shores of the ^Egean Sea on the west, during a period of over 3,000 years. The unpleasant Hittite neighbors of the Israelites were only a detached band of the great nation of the same name. Kadish, near the Levant, and Carchemish, on the Euphrates, were the two capitals of Khita, as the country of the Hittites was called. They dominated Babylon for years and fought again and again with the Egyptians, until an alliance, offensive and defensive was made B. C. 1383 between them and the great Pharaoh, Rameses II, who, in token of amity, married a daughter of Khitasire, King of Khita. Full account of this treaty and of the marriage are given on tablets discovered by recent 44 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY trian Egyptologists, and by a papyrus in the British Museum. The inscriptions on the walls of Thebes and the monuments found at Aleppo show the Hittites to have been of the Mongolian or Tartar race. They wore boots with long toes turning upwards, after the fashion revived during the Middle Ages, a short-skirted tunic, and gloves without fingers. The two-headed eagle of Austria occurs frequently upon Hittite monuments many ages before it was used by the Turcoman chiefs. The relics left by these mighty people prove them to have been fully equal in civ- ilization to the ancient Egyptians and to the Babylonians. Indeed, it was their wealth and luxury which made them the objects of attack by the Assyrians. Apparently their history is that of Egypt, Greece, Rome and all other na- tions that have grown great and luxurious and then been scattered because of their luxury. The Assyrians invaded Khita for the sake of spoil, returning with treasures of gold, copper and iron, of wood and ivory, slaves, and rich stuffs, as duly chronicled upon stones from Nineveh. They occupy an important place in Assyrian inscriptions, beginning in the reign of Sargon I. Under that of his sons they were finally subdued and their empire brought to an end by the capture of Carchemish and the defeat of Pisiri. Over 300 geographical names mentioned in these inscriptions show how extensive their empire was. Pro- fessor Sayce, the distinguished philologist, is of the opin- ion that the civilization of the Greeks was largely due to Hittite influences. Herodotus, Thales, Pythagoras, and Homer were all born in Asia Minor, and the Kiteians of whom Homer speaks in the Odyssey were supposed by Gladstone to be the Khetans or Hittites. The work of the Hittites seems, however, to have been carried on by the Chaldaeans. Chaldaean is a word of sev- eral meanings, being applied to the early Babylonian em- CHALDEANS 45 pire; to a province of the later Babylonian empire; to a learned class, a priestly caste, at the court of Nebuchad- nezzar, King of the later Babylonian empire. In a sense similar to the last the word was familiar to the Romans. Philip Smith, in his "Ancient History," says : "The Chal- daeans at the court of Nebuchadnezzar are classed with the astrologers and magicians, had a learning and lan- guage of their own, and formed a sort of college. Those who acquired their learning, and were admitted into their body, were called Chaldaeans, quite irrespective of their race, and thus Daniel became the master of the Chal- dasans." The Chaldsean, or Old Babylonian, Empire was founded in the south of Mesopotamia, the alluvial plain between the Tigris and Euphrates. This country was, like Egypt with the Nile, the creation of these rivers by their deposits of rich mud. The waters were supplied for cultivation partly by the natural inundations, partly by artificial irrigating canals. The fertility of the district was famous in ancient times, producing wheat as an indig- enous crop, and other kinds of grain, with dates, grapes and other fruits. The rivers and the marshes supplied huge reeds, which were used to make houses and boats. The chief building material was bricks made from the clay found on the spot, and springs of bitumen furnished a strong cement. In this region, as told in Scripture, Nim- rod, the "mighty hunter," of the race of Ham, founded a kingdom which included four cities named Babel (Bab- ylon), Erech, Calneh, and Accad. The land of Shinar was the name used in the Hebrew Scriptures, and also in the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, for the country called Babylonia. The capital of the Empire was Babylon. As to other cities, the ruins of Erech, of Calneh, and of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, have been identified. 46 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY The inhabitants of Chaldaea, of whom most is known, were undoubtedly of the Semitic race, and spoke a Semitic language closely akin to Hebrew. But the study of cune- iform inscriptions has revealed that there was here an earlier race as well as an earlier civilization than that of the Semites. This race, that of the Hittites, appears to have been absorbed by the Semites and disappears from history; but its influence on the later civilization and devel- opment of Chaldaea was very important, more especially as it is regarded as the inventor of the cuneiform system of writing, and of much besides pertaining to arts and sci- ence. The beginnings of civilization in Babylonia may per- haps be set down at about 5000 B. C. In the cuneiform inscriptions there is an account of a great flood, strikingly similar in details to the flood in the time of Noah. At some time, perhaps two or three hundred years, before 2000 B. C., the Kings of Elam invaded Babylonia, and for a time established themselves as rulers over it and Mesopotamia, and their supremacy lasted several centu- ries. Elam was a mountainous country to the eastward of Chaldaea, its capital being Susa. It is to this period of Chaldsean history that Abraham's connection with the country belongs. It has been supposed that in Abraham's time, about 2100 B. C., Chaldaea contained a Semitic pop- ulation professing a pure form of religion, in the midst of idolaters, and that Abraham, who was of Semitic race, was called to emigrate to the land of Canaan, with a view to the preservation of the pure faith. Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, invaded the land of Canaan soon after Abraham had migrated there, and, in his retreat with booty, was pursued and beaten by the brave patriarch. The period 2000-1000 B. C. was the most flourishing period of the monarchy, and Chaldaea was then the fore- CHALDEANS 47 most state of Western Asia in power as well as in science, art, and civilization. The rule of its princes extended to the mouth of the Euphrates and over Mesopotamia and the Upper Tigris. The rise of the powerful Assyrian Empire was what brought the downfall of Chaldaea, though it was able to maintain its independence against this rival down to the Ninth Century B. C. Indeed, it does not seem to have been thoroughly subdued, though greatly reduced from its former extent and power, till nearly two centuries later. With the Chaldaeans, as with the Egyptians, the art of writing, at first in the pictorial or hieroglyphic form, was early developed. Cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, writ- ing is a later stage of the pictorial, and the Chaldseans may thus claim to be one of the nations that invented alpha- betical writing. The contents of their tombs prove that they had much skill in pottery, and could make in various metals such articles as bracelets, ear-rings, fishhooks, nails, bolts, rings, and chains. Philip Smith says : "It is, how- ever, by their cultivation of arithmetic and astronomy, and the application of these sciences to the uses of common life, that the Chaldaeans have left the most permanent impress upon all succeeding ages. . . . All the systems of weights and measures used throughout the civilized world, down to the present time, are based upon the sys- tem which they invented. . . . Astronomical science seems to have been the chief portion of the learning handed down by the Chaldsean priests as an hereditary possession. . . . There is reason to believe that they mapped out the Zodiac, invented the names which we still use for the seven days of the week (based on the idea that each hour of the day was governed by a planet, and each day by the governor of its first hour, and from this one the day received its name) . . . and measured time by the 48 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY water-clock. . . . Connected with their astronomy and star-worship they had an elaborate system of judicial astrology." The importance attributed to astronomy is attested by the fact that there were astronomers-royal in several of the cities, who had to send in reports regularly to the King. The towers, such as that of Babel, were prob- ably both temples and observatories. The clearness of the sky and the levelness of the horizon on all sides favored the study of astronomy, which was, moreover, connected with religion. It is known that Chaldaeans worshiped the heavenly bodies. When Babylon was taken by Alex- ander the Great in B. C. 331, there was found in the city a series of observations of the stars dating from B. C. 2234. The Assyrians were a Semitic people, like the Chal- daeans, Hebrews, Arabs, and Phoenicians, and first acquired power in the district called Assyria, between the Upper Tigris and the Zagros Mountains. Assyria was in all probability peopled from Chaldsea, as the language, writing, and religion of both peoples exhibit the closest relationship and agreement. At an early period the Assyr- ians were subject to the Chaldaean monarchy, but their warlike spirit enabled them to become independent and to effect conquests among their neighbors, gaining at last the ascendency over Babylonia. Toward the end of the Four- teenth Century B. C., Shalmaneser is said to have founded the city of Calah on the upper Tigris, and to have restored the great temple at the ancient city of Nineveh. The early history of the Empire is still obscure, and no attention need be paid to the legends of Greek writers about Ninus, and the warrior-Queen Semiramis, and the voluptuous King Sardanapalus. About 1120 B. C., Tig- lath-Pileser I conquered nations to the west and north of Assyria, and to the borders of Babylonia on the south. He made his dominions stretch from the Mediterranean ASSYRIANS 49 to the Caspian, and was the greatest monarch of the ear- lier Assyrian period, but was not able to subdue the Chal- dseans. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I comes a long time of obscurity. Asurnasirpal carried on extensive war- like operations and made important conquests in the West. To him are attributed many of the great architectural works which have been lately discovered. He reigned from B. C. 884 to 859, and under him Assyria became the leading Empire of the world. He built afresh the city of Calah, then in ruins. The magnificent palaces and tem- ples built during this reign, with the sculptures and paint- ings that adorn them, prove the existence of great wealth and luxury, and the development of much artistic ability. His son Shalmaneser II, was successful in war against the monarch of Babylon, Benhadad, King of Damascus, the rulers of Tyre and Sidon, and Jehu, King of Israel. In B. C 745 Tiglath-Pileser II became King of Assyria. He made himself master of Babylon, and had great successes in war against Syria and Armenia, extending the Empire from Lake Van on the north to the Persian Gulf, and from the borders of India to those of Egypt Sargon reigned from B. C. 722 to 705, and was engaged in war against Samaria, which he captured, carrying the people into cap- tivity; against King Sabako, of Egypt, whom he defeated; and the revolted Armenians, whom he thoroughly sub- dued. He then turned against Merodach-Baladan, King of Babylonia, and drove him from his throne, and, after a period spent in internal reforms, was succeeded by his son, the famous Sennacherib. This warlike monarch marched into Syria in B. C. 701, captured Zidon and As- kelon, defeated the forces of Hezekiah, King of Judah, with his Egyptian and Ethiopian allies, and made Heze- kiah pay tribute. In B. C. 700 Sennacherib marched into Vor,. i 4 Arabia, where he defeated Tirhakah, King of Egypt and Ethiopia, and then his army perished before Libnah, in the south of Judah, by the catastrophe recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. Sennacherib was engaged, on his return to Assyria, in crushing rebellions of the Babylon- ians, constructing canals and aqueducts, and greatly adding to the size and splendor of Nineveh. In 68 1 he was murdered by two of his sons, and another son, Esar- haddon, became King in 680. Esar-haddon made success- ful expeditions into Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and as far as the Caucasus Mountains, and after the erection of splendid buildings at Nimrud and other cities, was succeeded in 667 by his son, Asurbanipal (the origin of the Greek "Sardanapalus"). The Assyrian Empire was at its height of power under the Kings Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and Asurbanipal. The states nominally subject to the Assyrian King, paying tribute and homage, extended from the river Halys, in Asia Minor, and the sea-board of Syria, on the west, to the Persian Desert on the east, and from the Caspian Sea and the Armenian Mountains, on the north, to Arabia and the Persian Gulf, on the south, and latterly included Egypt. But these states were held together by a very loose bond of connection, and we read in the Assyrian history, on the monuments, of constant wars, revolts, crushings of rebellion, and rebellion renewed. The risings of tribu- tary states were put down with great severity, which included the carrying of whole peoples into captivity, and the destruction of cities, but no effectual measures were taken to secure allegiance in subjugated nations, and the Empire was doomed to be the victim of the first really powerful assailant. Asurbanipal inherited Egypt as part of his dominions, but his power was not firmly established in that country ASSYRIANS 5 1 until he led an expedition there and sacked the city of Thebes. He erected splendid buildings at Nineveh and Babylon, and did much for literature and the arts, so that under him there was a great development of luxury and splendor. He died in B. C. 625, and soon afterwards Babylonia, for the last time, and now successfully, revolted. The Babylonians marched from the south against Nineveh, under their governor Nabopolassar, and the now powerful Medes, from the north, came against it under their King, Cyaxares. Nineveh was taken and given to the flames, which have left behind them in the mounds the calcined stone, charred wood, and statues spilt by heat, that furnish silent and convincing proof of the catastrophe. Thus, about B. C. 625, warlike, splendid, proud Assyria fell. Modern research has unearthed much of the remains of Nineveh from beneath the mounds that for many miles are found along the eastern bank of the Tigris. We are not to think of it as being like a city of modern times, composed of continuous or nearly adjacent buildings. The city was a large expanse, supposed to be at least sixty miles in circuit, containing temples, palaces, pasture-lands, ploughed fields and hunting-parks, as well as the dwellings of the people, built of sun-dried bricks. It thus resembled a modern suburban district, but included the stately struc- tures for the uses of religion and of royalty, which in modern cities usually hold a central place amongst dense masses of connected streets and squares. At the time of Alexander the Great, in the Fourth Century B. C., almost every trace of the great city in which Jonah preached repentance had vanished, save the shapeless mounds of earth. The Assyrian language was much like the Hebrew and Phoenician, and had a literature comprising hymns to the 52 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY gods, mythological and epic poems, and works on astrol- ogy, law, and chronology. The religion of Assyria was a worship of various gods, representing the powers of nature, and especially the heavenly bodies. The great national deity was Asur, appearing in the nation's name and in those of many of the Kings. All religion was con- nected with royalty, and in the pure despotism of Assyria the King was himself a deity, a type of the supreme being. All his acts in peace or war, were divine acts, and his robes and ornaments all have embroideries and figured animals of mystical religious import. Assyrian art must be considered great in architecture and sculpture. The emblematic figures of the gods show dignity and grandeur. The scenes from real life, of war, and of the chase, are bold and vivid; and in succeeding ages marked progress is shown in the acquirement of a more free, natural, lifelike, and varied execution, though the artists never learnt perspective and proportion. The Assyrians, as the sculptures and other remains prove, con- structed arches, tunnels, and aqueducts; they were skilled in engraving gems, and in the arts of enameling and inlay- ing; they made porcelain, transparent and colored glass, and even lenses; ornaments of bronze and ivory, bells and golden bracelets, and earrings of good design and work- manship, were all produced. In mechanics, and for measuring time, they used the pulley, the lever, the water- clock, and the sun-dial. Their astronomical science was that of the Chaldsean philosophers. The implements and methods used in war, as the mon- uments show, included swords, spears, maces, and bows and arrows, as weapons of offence; cavalry and chariots for charging; movable towers and battering-rams for sieges; and circular entrenched camps as quarters for a military force. The one thing wanting in Assyria, as in BABYLONIANS 53 ether Eastern Empires, for continued sway, was the genius for government which could at least make subject nations satisfied to serve, if it could not mould them into one coherent whole. The history of the later Babylonian Empire begins with the year 625 B. C, and ends in 538 with its subjec- tion to Persia. The founder of the Empire was Nabopo- lassar, the Assyrian general who joined the Medes in the destruction of the Assyrian power. Babylon then became an independent Kingdom, extending from the val- ley of the lower Euphrates to Mount Taurus, and partly over Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned from B. C. 604 to 561, and carried his arms with success against the cities of Jerusa- lem and Tyre, and even into Egypt. The Empire was at its height of power and glory under him, and extended from the Euphrates to Egypt, and from the deserts of Arabia on the south to the Armenian Mountains on the north. Nebuchadnezzar's chief work in home affairs was the renovation and decoration of the great city Babylon, capital of the Empire. This famous place was built on both sides of the Euphrates, and, on its completion by Nebuchadnezzar, formed a square said to have been sixty miles in circuit. The clay of the country furnished abun- dant and excellent brick, and springs of bitumen supplied a powerful cement. The walls of the city were of im- mense height and thickness, surrounded by a deep ditch, and having a hundred brazen gates. Like Nineveh, the city included large open spaces, some being parks and pleasure-grounds of the King and the nobles. The arch- itectural wonder of the place were the temple of Belus, a huge eight-storied tower, the remains of which are be- lieved to be identified at Birs Nimrud, "the tower of Nim- 54 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY rod," on the west side of the Euphrates, six miles south- west of the town of Hillah; and the "hanging gardens" of Nebuchadnezzar, which consisted of a series of terraces rising one above another, supported by huge pillars and arches, and covered with earth, in which grew beautiful shrubs and trees. The carrying into captivity of the Jews by Nebuchad- nezzar, and the pride of his heart, his image of gold in the plain of Dura, his fiery furnace, his strange madness, recovery, and repentance, are well known from the inter- esting and eloquent account in the Hebrew Scriptures, as written by the prophet Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil- Mero- dach, the friend of Jehoiachin, captive King of Judah. He was followed by Neriglassar, a successful conspirator against his power and life, who, after some years, was defeated and slain in battle against the Medes and Per- sians. After a few months of tyranny, ended by assassina- tion, under the cruel and sensual Laborosoarchod, the last Babylonian monarch, Nabonadius came to the throne, in B. C. 555. The Medes and Persians to the north had now become a formidable power, and in 540 the Babylonians came into collision with them. The Persian King, Cyrus, marched against Babylon, and under its walls defeated Nabonadius, who fled to Borsippa, a city to the south of Babylon. The capital was held by a son of Nabonadius, who had been made co-king with his father, and is known to us by the name of Belshazzar. The revelries of this sovereign during the siege, the handwriting on the wall, and his death on that same night, are given in the Scrip- tural narrative of Daniel. According to Herodotus, the army of Cyrus entered the city along the bed of the river Euphrates, which they had drained off into canals, and thus the Babylonian Empire fell in B. C. 538, and became BABYLONIANS 55 a province of the Persian Empire. Recently deciphered inscriptions, however, would seem to prove that this account is erroneous, and that the city was surrendered without any siege. The site of the great city of Babylon is now a marsh formed by inundations of the river, due to the destruction of the embankments and the choking up of the canals. The Assyrians were, pre-eminently, a warlike, the Babylonians a commercial and luxurious people. The position of the great city on the lower Euphrates, near to the Persian Gulf, made it a great emporium for the trade between India and Eastern Asia and Western Asia, with the nearest parts of Africa and Europe. From Ceylon came ivory, cinnamon, and ebony; spices from the East- ern islands ; myrrh and frankincense from Arabia ; cotton, pearls, and valuable timber, both for shipbuilding and ornament, from the islands in the Persian Gulf. There was also a great caravan trade with Northern India and adjacent lands, whence came gold, dyes, jewels, and fine wool. The wealth of Babylon became prodigious and proverbial, and her commerce was in large measure due to ingenious and splendid manufactures. Carpets, curtains, and fine muslins, skillfully woven and brilliantly dyed, of elegant pattern and varied hue, were famous wherever luxury was known. The Babylonian gems in the British Museum display art of the highest order in cutting preci- ous stones. The system of government was a pure despotism, with viceroys ruling the provinces under the monarch, who dwelt in luxurious seclusion from his people. The fall of Babylon was a proof that the real power of nations does not reside in trade and luxury and wealth, but in the spirit, equal to the occasions both of peace and of war, developed in a people by the possession of freedom. 56 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY THE ISRAELITES The Hebrews were a pure Semitic race, akin to the Phoenicians, Chaldseans, and Assyrians. The founder of the nation was Abraham, who in the Twentieth or Twenty- first Century B. C, removed from the plains of Mesopo- tamia to the land of Canaan, on the south-eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In this people we have the worship of the one spiritual God Jehovah the purely One. In the Jewish idea He was the God of a family that became a nation the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, He who commanded them to depart out of Egypt and gave them the land of Canaan. With the other Eastern nations, the primary and fundamental existence was Nature; but that, with the Hebrews, becomes a mere creature, and Spirit is foremost. God is the creator of Nature and all men, the only first cause of all things. The great element in the Jewish religion was exclusive unity only one people, only one God. All other gods were regarded as thoroughly false; nothing divine was admitted to exist in them. In the religion of the Hebrews, Spirit became the one great truth, and true morality appeared; God was honored, and could be honored, only by righteousness, the reward of which was to be happiness, life, and temporal prosperity. Their earliest history, as told in the Bible, that of Abra- ham and his first descendant, is merely a family history, and the Jewish nation begins with the departure from Egypt in B. C. 1491. The interval between that time and the conquest of Judaea by the Romans may be divided into four periods. From the departure out of Egypt to the establishment of the monarchy under Saul, B. C. 1491-1095 ; From the establishment of the monarchy to the sepa- THE ISRAELITES 57 ration into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, B. C. 1095-975; From the separation of the kingdoms to the Babylon- ian captivity, B. C. 975-588; From the Babylonian captivity to the conquest of Judaea by Rome, B. C. 588-63. The first period opens, on the departure from Egypt, with the theocracy or government by God in revelations of His will to the people, through laws directly given from Sinai, and communications made to the high-priest. This lasted, during the wanderings in the wilderness under Moses, and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, until B. C. 1426. Then came the Federal Republic, from 1426 to 1095, under which system the tribes were separately governed, subject to the divine laws, by their own patri- archs, but were all united in one state and one common bond by the worship of Jehovah. As the people from time to time fell off into idolatry, they suffered at the hands of neighboring tribes, and rulers called "Judges" were given by divine appointment to deliver the people, governing according to the divine laws, and having no royal preroga- tives. Of this line of rulers the last single governor wa/ the Prophet Samuel, and the misconduct of his sons caused the people to ask for a King to be appointed over them. The time of the sole monarchy includes three reigns, those of Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul reigned for nearly forty years, from B. C. 1095 to 1056, and, after wars with neighboring heathens called Moabites, Edom- ites, Amalekites, etc., was defeated and driven to suicide by the powerful Philistines. Saul's son-in-law, David, the son of Jesse, reigned also about forty years, from B. C. 1056 to 1015, and having conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites in 1048, made it the capital of his kingdom, the seat of the national government and religion. David was 58 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY a warlike monarch, and conquered the Philistines, Moab- ites, Edomites, and Syrians, extending his power from the Red Sea to the Euphrates. His son Solomon succeeded him in B. C. 1015, and also reigned forty years, from 1015 to 975. Under him the Jewish nation attained the height of its power, and he confirmed and extended the con- ' quests of David. Solomon married a daughter of a Pharaoh, King of Egypt, formed an alliance with Hiram, King of Tyre, built the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, and made his kingdom the supreme monarchy in Western Asia. An extensive commerce was carried on by land and sea. Solomon's ships, manned by Phoenician sailors, traded to the furthest parts of the Mediterranean west- ward, and from ports on the Red Sea to Southern Arabia, Ethiopia, and perhaps India. From Egypt came horses, chariots, and linen; ivory, gold, silver, peacocks and apes from Tarshish or Tartessus, a district in the south of Spain; and gold, spices, and jewels from the place called Ophir, variously placed in Southern Arabia, India, and Eastern Africa, south of the Red Sea. The corn, wine and oil of Judaea were exchanged by Solomon for the cedars of Lebanon supplied by Hiram, King of Tyre. On the death of Solomon, in B.C. 975, the temporal glory of the Hebrews was eclipsed. Ten of the twelve tribes revolted against Solomon's son and successor, Reho- boam, and formed a separate Kingdom of Israel, with Samaria as capital, while the tribes of Judah and Benjamin made up the Kingdom of Judah, having Jerusalem for the chief city. The Syrian possessions were lost; the Am- monites became independent ; commerce declined ; idolatry crept in and grew; the prophets of God threatened and warned in vain; gleams of success against neighboring nations were mingled with defeat and disgrace suffered from the Edomites, Philistines, and Syrians, until, in B.C. THE ISRAELITES 59 740, Tiglath-pileser II, King of Assyria, carried off into captivity to Media the tribes east, and partly west, of the Jordan Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. In B.C. 721 Sar- gon, King of Assyria, took Samaria, and carried away the people of Israel as captives, beyond the Euphrates. The Kingdom of Israel thus came to an end after a dura- tion of about 250 years. In B.C. 713 Judah, under King Hezekiah, was attacked by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, and relieved by the destruction of the Assyrian army. A time of peace and prosperity followed, but in 677 the Assyrians again invaded the country, and carried off King Manasseh to Babylon. In B.C. 624 the good King Josiah repaired the temple and put down idolatry, but was de- feated and slain by the Egyptian King, Pharaoh-Necho, in 610. In B.C. 606 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took Jerusalem, and made the King, Jehoiakim, tributary ; on his revolt Jerusalem was again taken, and 10,000 cap- tives of the higher class were carried off to Babylon, with the treasures of the palace and temple, in 599. In B.C. 593 the Jewish King, Zedekiah, revolted from Nebuchad- nezzar, who now determined to make an end of the exist- ence of the rebellious nation. In B.C. 588 Jerusalem was taken and plundered; the walls were destroyed, and the city and temple burnt, and nearly the whole nation was carried away as prisoners to Babylon. For over fifty years the land lay desolate, and the history of the Hebrew nation is transferred to the land where they mourned in exile. The history of the Jews during the Babylonish cap- tivity is contained chiefly in the book of Daniel, and in- cludes the episodes of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the faithful Jews thrown into the furnace by order of Nebuchadnezzar, and of Daniel's deliverance when he was thrown into a pit containing lions by order of Darius the 60 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY Mede, or Cyaxares II, who was placed by the success of his nephew Cyrus on the throne of Babylon after the death of Belshazzar. In B.C. 537 Cyaxares II died, and Cyrus became monarch of the Persian Empire. He issued an edict in B. C. 536, by which the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Nearly 50,000 Jews, chiefly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, went to the old home of their race under the command of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, taking with them many of the vessels of silver and gold carried away by Nebuchad- nezzar. Zerubbabel was appointed Governor of the land, now a dependency of the Persian Empire. In B.C. 519 the Persian King, Darius Hystaspis, confirmed the edict of Cyrus, and in 515 the temple was completed and dedi- cated. The ten tribes disappear at this time from history, such of them as returned to their land having united them- selves with the tribe of Judah, and henceforth the Hebrews are called Jews and their country Judaea. In the reign of the Persian King, Artaxerxes Longimanus, more of the Jews emigrated from Babylonia to Judaea under the com- mand of Ezra, B.C. 458, and Ezra was Governor of the land until 445. Nehemiah was Governor, (with an inter- val), from 445 to 420, and under him the walls and towers of Jerusalem were rebuilt, and the city acquired something of its ancient importance. With B. C. 420 the history of the Jews ends, as far as the Scriptural narrative goes in books esteemed to be of sacred authority. From 420 to 332 Judaea continued subject to Persia, paying a yearly tribute, and being governed by the high- priest, under the Satrap of Syria. In B.C. 332 Alexander the Great, then engaged in conquering the Persian Em- pire, visited Jerusalem, and showed respect to the High- priest and the sacred rites of the Temple. In 330 the Persian Empire fell under the arms of Alexander, who THE ISRAELITES 61 died at Babylon in B. C. 323. Judaea was taken possession of by Alexander's General, Ptolemy Lagus, and from 300 to 202 B.C. was governed by the dynasty of the Ptolemies, ruling Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and Southern Syria. The Government was administered by the High-priest under the Ptolemies, whose capital was at the new city of Alex- andria in Egypt. At this time the Jews began to spread themselves over the world, the Greek language became common in Judaea, and the Septuagint (or Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures), was written during this and the following Century. In B.C. 202 Antiochus the Great, King of Syria (including in its empire Asia Minor, Meso- potamia, Babylonia, etc. ) , conquered Judaea from Ptolemy V. Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the sons and successors of the great Antiochus, drove the Jews to rebellion by persecution and profanation of their Temple and religion. Under the great patriot and hero, Judas Maccabaeus, the Jews asserted their religious freedom in B.C. 166. Antiochus Epiphanes died in 164, and Maccabaeus fought with success against the Idumaeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, and others, who had formed a league for the destruction of the Jews. In 163 Judas Maccabaeus became Governor of Judaea under the King of Syria, but fell in battle, in 161, while he was resisting an invasion of his country by the troops of Demetrius Soter, new ruler of the Empire. His brother, Jonathan Maccabaeus, ruled from B.C. 161 to 143 amidst many troubles from Syria, and was succeeded by his brother, Simon Maccabaeus, who strengthened the land by fortifications, was recognized by the Romans as High-priest and ruler of Judaea, and fell by assassination in B.C. 136. His son, John Hyrcanus, threw off at last the yoke of Syria, and made himself master of all Judsea, Galilee, and Samaria,, reigning then in peace till B. C. 106, when the line of the greater Maccabaean Princes ended. 62 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY A miserable time of civil wars and religious and political faction followed. These ended in the interference of Rome, and in B.C. 63 Pompeius Magnus took Jerusalem after a siege of three months, and entered the "Holy of Holies" in the Temple, with a profanation before unheard of in Jewish history. From this time the Jewish state was virtually subject to Rome, and became in the end a part of the Roman province of Syria. The turbulence of the Jews under Roman rule is well known, and a general rebellion ended, after fearful bloodshed and misery, in the capture and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A. D. 70. The history, as a separate political body, of the chosen people of God, unequaled in the annals of our race for sin and suffering, ends with the dispersion of their remnant over the face of the civilized world. The Hebrew language, in the antiquity of its literary remains, surpasses all the other Semitic tongues, and in the importance of its chief treasures, the books of the Old Testament canon, outweighs all other languages. The country of the Hebrew nation was of very limited extent ; the political value of the race, as compared with that of the great Eastern empires, was trifling; the contributions of the Jews to art and science, until the downfall and disper- sion of the people, were yet more insignificant. It was their mission to conserve and to convey to future ages that deposit of moral and spiritual truth which, combined with its development and exaltation in the form of Christianity, was to influence mankind in all time to come. THE PHOENICIANS The Phoenicians were the people most distinguished in the most ancient times for industry, commerce, and navigation. They were of pure Semitic race, closely con- THE PHOENICIANS 63 nectecl with the Hebrews in blood and language, and be- came a separate nation so early that they are found to have settled on the southeastern coasts of the Mediterran- san before the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan, in the Fifteenth Century B. C. The distinctive character of the Phoenicians among the nations of the most ancient world is, that they were colonizers, not conquerors ; peaceful mer- chants, not fighting meddlers; intrepid and enterprising seamen, not bold and ambitious soldiers ; industrious and ingenious workmen and cfeators, not ruthless and wanton destroyers of the labors of their fellow-men. A high place in the history of ancient civilization is held by the Phoenicians, for their diffusion of commodities and of culture partly produced at home, in part received from abroad. They present a new principle of develop- ment in civilization, that of a nation relying solely on the activity of industry, combined with the careful bravery which dares the deep, and devises means of safety thereon. Man's courage, energy, and intelligence is brought into play mainly for the benefit, not the bane, of mankind. Foremost in Phoenicia are human will and work, not Nature's bounty, as in the fertile valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. In Babylonia and Egypt, human subsistence depended largely upon Nature and the sun; in maritime Phoenicia, on the sailor's skill and courage. Valor gives way to intelligence, and warlike ferocity to ingenuity, in this sea-faring and manufacturing life, and thus the nations were freed from a bondage to Nature and from fear of her powers upon the ever-flowing sea. Phoenicia was a narrow strip of country on the south- eastern coast of the great inland sea of antiquity, lying chiefly between Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean shore, and extending for about 120 miles north of Mount Carmel, the scene of the contempt poured on her great 64 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY god Baal by the prophet Elijah. Here lay the cities Tyre and Sidon, Byblus and Berytus, Tripolis and Ptolemais. The land was fertile, and rich in timber-trees and fruits, such as the pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, and cedar; figs, olives, dates, pomegranates, citrons, almonds. Here was material for trade abroad, and comfort and prosperity at home, and the coast was so thickly studded with towns as almost to make one continuous populated line. Phoenicia's history is peculiar in that it is a history of separate cities and colonies, never united into one great independent state, though now and then alliances existed between several cities in order to repel a common danger. When the Israelites conquered Canaan in the middle of the Fifteenth Century B. C, they interfered but slightly with Phoenicia, and the two peoples dwelt side by side in friendship nearly always undisturbed. Each city of Phoe- nicia was governed by a King or a petty chief, under or with whom an aristocracy, and at times elective magis- trates, called in Latin suffetes, appear to have held sway. But Phoenician government is an obscure and unimportant subject; the genius of the race cared little for political development, and was one-sided in its devotion to com- mercial matters, regardless, in comparison, of freedom from inward or external domination. The two chief cities in the history are Sidon and Tyre. Of these, Sidon was probably the more ancient, being named in the Pentateuch as chief of the Phoenician cities, while its richly embroidered robes are mentioned in the Homeric poems. It was the greatest maritime place until its colony, Tyre, surpassed it, and it seems to have been subject to Tyre in the time of David and Solomon. About 700 B.C. it became independent again, but was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, about B.C. 600, and became subject to Persia about B.C. 500. Under the THE PHOENICIANS 65 Persian rule, it was a great and populous city, and, coming into the hands of Alexander the Great in B.C. 333, helped him with a fleet in his siege of Tyre. Its history ends with submission to Roman power in the last Century, year 63 B.C. Tyre was a powerful city as early as 1200 B.C. The friendship of her King Hiram with Solomon (reigned B. C. 101 5-975 ) is well known from the Hebrew Scriptures, and at this time the commerce of Tyre was foremost in the Mediterranean, and her ships sailed into the Indian Ocean from the port of Elath on the Red Sea. Tyre is celebrated in history for her obstinate resistance to ene- mies. Sargon, King of Assyria, besieged the city in vain for five years, 6^.721-717. Nebuchadnezzar took thir- teen years, B.C. 598-585, to capture the place partially, and it was only taken by Alexander the Great after a seven months' siege, in B.C. 332. The old glory of Tyre de- parted with the transfer of her chief trade to her con- queror's creation, Alexandria, though the indomitable energy of the Phoenician race had again, in Roman times, made her a great seat of trade. Phoenicia was at the height of prosperity from the Eleventh to the Sixth Centuries B.C. As a colonizing country she preceded the Greeks on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, and sent her ships to regions that the Greeks knewnothingof,saveby report of the bold mariners of Tyre. Until the rise of Alexandria, about B. C. 300, the sea-trade of Phoenicia was rivaled only by that of Carthage, her own colony, and she still kept up her great land-trade by caravans with Arabia, with Central Asia and Northern India (through Babylonia), and with Scythia and the Cau- casian countries, through Armenia. Their colonies were planted on the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, in Cyprus, Rhodes, the Islands of the ^Egean Sea, Sardinia, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Cilicia (in southeast of Asia Vox,. 15 6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY Minor) , and in Spain. Westward, they even passed out of the Mediterranean, and were the founders at an early period . of Gades, the modern Cadiz. They first in all the ancient world pushed out into the Atlantic Ocean, crossed the stormy region of the "Bay of Biscay," and traded to the British coast for tin from the Scilly Isles and Cornwall. Tradition tells of their mariners reaching sunny fertile shores in what must have been either the Canary Islands or the Azores. Under the patronage of Necho, King of Egypt, Phoenician sailors went round Africa from the Red Sea to the Nile. In the Eastern seas, they had estab- lishments on the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, from which they traded to the eastern coast of Africa, to Western India, and to Ceylon. By far the most renowned of all Phoenician colonies famous in poetry for Dido's hopeless love and hapless death, in history for Hannibal's heroic hate of Rome and warlike skill was Carthage, in the center of the northern coast of Africa. The date of her foundation is put about 850 B.C. At Utica and Tunis, to the north and south, Phoenician settlements were already existing. The trade of Tyre and her sister-cities reached almost throughout the then known world. They exported wares and manufactures of their own; they imported and re- exported products of every region east and south of their own land, that had anything of value for the markets of nations dwelling round the great central sea. Thus to Phoenicia came the spices notably myrrh and frankincense of Arabia ; the ivory, ebony, and cotton goods of India ; linen-yarn, and corn from Egypt; wool and wine from Damascus ; embroideries from Babylon and Nineveh ; pot- tery, in the days of Grecian art, from Attica ; horses and chariots from Armenia; copper from the shores of the Euxine Sea ; lead from Spain ; tin from Cornwall. From THE PHOENICIANS 67 Phoenicia went to foreign ports, not only these articles of food and use and luxury, but the rich purple dyes made from the murex (a kind of shell-fish) of her coast, the famous hue of Tyre, with which were tinged the silken costly robes worn by the despots of that time. From Sidon went the not less famous glass produced in part from fine white sand found near the headland called Mount Car- mel. So great and so important was the trade by cara- vans through Babylon with the interior of Asia that the great town Palmyra (or "Tadmor in the desert") was founded or enlarged by Solomon to serve the traffic on its route through Syria to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. With lawful trade these ancient merchants, like the English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, combined a taste for piracy and for indulgence in a slave-trade which included the kidnapping, at times, of Hebrew victims to the lust of gold. As a money-making race the Phoenicians were skilled in arts by which the grand aim of its life could be attained. Phoenician drinking-cups of silver and of gold, and Sidon's works in brass, were famous, and her weavers were skilled in making cloth of flax and of cotton, grown and spun in Egypt. Great as they were at the dyeing-vat and loom, adepts in working metals and in fabricating glass, they were also the best shipbuilders, and the most famous miners of their time. Their energy and enterprising char- acter are beyond dispute, but much has been ascribed to their invention, in the sciences and arts, which they re- ceived from nations further East. Their greatest service to civilization seems rather to have been in appropriating, developing, and spreading the ideas of others, especially in forming an alphabet for the Western world. Although the story about the mythical Cadmus taking his sixteen letters from Phoenicia into Greece must be 68 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY rejected, the European world owes to this race of traders the alphabetic symbols now in use. The Greeks and Romans from the Phoenicians, and most of modern Eu- rope from the Romans, acquired these precious and indis- pensable rudiments of learning. The gradual change of shape is easily traced in most of the signs. The simple and ingenious device by which each sign stands for one elementary sound of human speech is largely due to the Phoenician people, as an improvement on the cumbrous hieroglyphs of Egypt. Of literature they have left noth- ing whatever recognized by scholars as really theirs. In morals, they had a name for craftiness in trade, and wealth led to worse than luxury to soft licentiousness and flagrant vice. Their religion was a kind of nature- worship, which adored the sun and moon and five planets, the chief deities being the male Baal, and the female Ash- toreth, or Astarte. The worship itself was a sensual excess and revelry, combined with cruelty. Children were offered in sacrifice to idols, and the foulness of the rites is known by the denunciations of the Hebrew prophets Jere- miah and Ezekiel. At Tyre a deity was worshipped with the attributes of the Greek god Hercules. The worship of Adonis, under the name of Thammuz, in the coast- towns, included a commemoration of his death, a funeral- festival, at which women gave way to extravagant lamen- tations. It was Phoenician women, fair of face, that tempted Solomon the wise to foul idolatry ; it was a Prin- cess of Phoenicia, Jezebel, that brought Ahab, her husband, King of Israel, to ruin, that slew the prophets of God, and left a name proverbial for infamy in life, and for ignom- inious horror in her death. The work done by Phoenicia in the cause of human progress was important and interest- ing in material things, but not, with one great exception, leading to intellectual ends or moral and political improve- ment. THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 69 THE MEDES AND THE PERSIANS The last of the great Oriental empires was that of the Medes and Persians, commonly known as "the Persian Empire," which absorbed all the territories of Western and Southwestern Asia (except Arabia), as well as Egypt and a small portion of Europe. The Medes and the Per- sians are treated of together, because of their intimate con- nection in race and the fact that Media was conquered by and included in Persia, as the latter empire rose into power and importance in the Western Asiatic world. Media occupied the table-land south of the Caspian Sea, east of Armenia and the Zagros Mountains, and north and west of the mountains of Persia Proper and the great rainless Persian desert or desert of Iran. The mountain ranges inclosed fertile valleys, rich in corn and fruits, and the Zagros Mountains had on their pastures splendid horses of the breed famous as the Nisaean, which supplied the studs of the King and nobles of Persia. Persis, or Persia Proper, was a mountainous district between the desert of Iran and the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf. The country contained, amongst its hills, fertile plains and valleys abounding in corn, pasture, and fruits. The Medes were of Aryan race, and, like the Persians, called themselves "Aryans." Their close connection, in origin and institutions, with the Persians is shown in the famous expression, "The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not." The people began to migrate into Media at an early period, of which we have no record, from the original abode of the Aryan race. By degrees they overcame the Scythian races whom they found in possession of the land. The Medes were a warlike race, strong in cavalry and archers. Their language was a dialect of the Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, and their 70 ANCIENT AND MEDLEY AL HISTORY religion was the Magian, which involved the worship of a good principle or deity called Ormuzd, and the practice of divination of his will by dreams and omens. The Median tribes, who seem to have been in part subject to the King of Assyria, began toward 700 B. C. to be cemented to- gether under a chief named Deioces, who chose as his capital Ecbatana, identified with the modern Hamadan. Under his son Phraortes their power grew stronger, and that monarch subdued the Persians, but perished in war with the Assyrians. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, renewed the war against the Assyrians. Cyaxares extended the Median Empire westward, by conquest, through Armenia to the River Halys in Asia Minor. His great achievement was the capture of Nineveh about B.C. 620, in alliance with the revolted Babylonians, and the consequent overthrow of the Assyrian empire. Cyaxares reigned forty years and died about B.C. 593. He was succeeded by his son Astyages, who reigned for over thirty years, and seems to have been a despot of quiet life and peaceful disposition, enjoying what his father had acquired. Against him the Persians, under their Prince Cyrus, revolted about 558 B.C., and, being joined by a portion of the Median army under a chief named Harpagus, they took Ecbatana and deposed the Median ruler. From this time the two na- tions were spoken of as one people. Ecbatana became the summer residence of the Persian Kings. After the death of Alexander the Great, 324 B.C., the northwest portion ( Atropatene) of Media became a separate kingdom, which existed until the time of Augustus. In race, language, and religion, the Persians were closely connected with the Medes. Of their early migra- tion to the home where history finds them, little is known. They appear first in human records as hardy and warlike mountaineers, noble specimens of the great Aryan race. THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 71 They were simple in their ways of life, noted for truthful- ness, keen-witted, generous, and quick-tempered. The language which they brought with them when they mi- grated is known as the Zend, closely allied to the Sanscrit, and now only existing in the sacred books of the Zenda- vesta, containing the doctrine of Zoroaster, King of Bac- tria, founder of the Magian religion in 2115 B.C. The peculiarity of Persia, in the political history of Eastern empires, is that monarchy appears in an empire ruling over many peoples differing widely from each other. The several members of the state are allowed a free growth, and we find roving nomades existing in one part, whilst in other territories commerce and industrial pur- suits are in full vigor. The coasts of the empire are in communication with foreign lands, and the Israelites, amidst all the diversities of races and creeds, are allowed the free exercise of their own religion. Persia was an empire displaying a period of historical transition, at the time when the Persian world came in con- tact with the Greek. The Persian could conquer, but could not fuse into one harmonious whole the diverse nationalities that fell under his sway. The monarchy was thus a loose aggregate of peoples spread over three different geographical regions, the highlands of Media and Persia, the valley plains of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Nile, and the maritime districts in Syria, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor. In developing civilization Persia's mission was that of bringing to an end the barbarous feuds between the nations of the western world of Asia. With a settled dominion, comfort, and happiness were diffused, and with the growth of wealth, culture, and luxury, the military prowess of ruder times declined. Of the calm courage of well-ordered civilization the Asiatics had little. Effem- inacy relaxed their energies as opulence grew, and sensual indulgence, along with unwieldiness and want of organiza- tion in such elements of strength as they possessed, made them succumb, when the time came, to the superior skill and vitality of Greece. The Persians were, in their early history, subject to the Medes, but governed by their own native princes, called the Achsemenidse, who began to reign as semi-independent rulers about B. C. 700. The founder of the Persian Empire was Cyrus, who began his career of conquest by the defeat and dethronement of Astyages, King of Media, in B. C. 558. The Median supremacy thus passed to the Persians. Master of Media, Cyrus came next into collision with the great kingdom of Lydia, in Asia Minor. With its capital at Sardis, and extending from the coast of the ^gean Sea eastwards to the River Halys, Lydia was one of the most powerful monarchies of the second class in Asiatic history. The Lydians were a highly civilized, wealthy, and energetic people, great in agriculture, manu- factures, commerce, and the arts. In music and metal- lurgy their names are famous as inventors or improvers ; they were proverbial in the ancient world for luxury and the softer vices that attend it. Croesus was King of Lydia when Cyrus met his attack and conquered him in B. C. 546. The rising Empire of Persia was thus extended to the western sea-board of Asia Minor. The Greek colonies on the coast next fell a prey to the arms of Cyrus, and in B.C. 538 he got possession of Babylon, and added the provinces of the later Babylonian Empire to the Per- sian. Before this he had conquered the territory east- wards between Media and the Indus. The power and life alike of Cyrus came to an end in his expedition against the Scythian people, called the Massagetse, by whom he was defeated and killed in B.C. 529. Cyrus, the greatest King among all the Persian monarchs, had spread the Persian THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 73 sway from the Hellespont on the west to the Indus on the east. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who reigned from B.C. 529-522, and is distinguished by his conquest of Egypt in 525. According to the common ac- count he was guilty of ferocious and wanton cruelty toward the Egyptians and his own family and subjects. He stabbed with his own dagger the sacred calf Apis, to the horror of the Egyptians; murdered his own brother Smerdis, and in several acts displayed something like in- sanity. Recent researches, however, have shown that the character and acts of Cambyses have been greatly misrep- resented ; and instead of outraging the religious feelings of the Egyptians he was himself initiated into their religion and buried the sacred calf with the usual honors. He died in 522, on his march from Egypt against a Magian pretender to the throne, who declared himself to be the Smerdis put to death by Cambyses. The usurper reigned for a few months, and was then dethroned and slain in an insurrection headed by Darius Hystaspis, one of the royal line of the Achsemenidae. Darius Hystaspis, or Darius I, who reigned from B. C. 521 to 485, finished the work which Cyrus had begun, by setting in order the affairs of the vast Empire which Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered. The whole terri- tory was divided into twenty satrapies or governments, and a fixed payment was the contribution of each province to the expenses of administration. The satrap, or gover- nor, represented the royal authority, and was charged to remit to the King the fixed tribute of the province which he ruled. Justice was administered by independent officers, called Royal Judges, and a watch was kept upon the conduct of the viceroys (satraps) by officials appointed for the purpose. The Governors, however, often 74 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY oppressed the provinces and intrigued against each other. The "Great King," as the Persian monarch was called, was held to be the lord of all the land and the water. Thus Darius Hystaspis and Xerxes demanded "earth and water," in token of submission, from the Greeks. Tyran- nical Governors were extortionate in money-matters, but there was a general tolerance of all religious faiths, and no systematic or outrageous oppression. Darius I is credited with the establishment of high- roads and swift postal communication between the prov- inces and the court. The Kings of Persia resided in the winter at Susa, a warm place in the plain east of the lower Tigris ; in the summer at Ecbatana, in Media, by the moun- tains ; and Babylon was a third capital of occasional resi- dence in winter. From these different centers of power the Persian monarchs watched, and, according to their measure of energy and resolution, controlled the conduct of the satraps in every quarter of their wide-spread dominions. About B. C. 508 Darius invaded Scythia, and, crossing the Danube, marched far into the territory which is now European Russia, but the expedition ended in a retreat without encountering the enemy, and with great loss of men from famine. On his return his generals subdued Thrace and Macedonia, north of Greece, and added them to the Persian Empire. His famous war with the Greeks arose out of the revolt of the Ionian Greek cities in Asia Minor in 501, and the burning of the city of Sardis by their Athenian allies. An expedition sent against Greece under the General Mardonius in B. C. 492 was defeated by the Thracians on land, and frustrated by a storm in the ^gean Sea. In 490 a great armament was sent by Darius under Datis and Artaphernes and then was fought the decisive battle of Marathon. Darius' proposed and long- THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 75 prepared revenge upon the Greeks was baffled by a rebel- lion in Egypt, and he died in 485, leaving the task to his son and successor, Xerxes. Xerxes reigned from B. C. 485 to 465, and he began with the suppression of the Egyptian revolt in 484, devot- ing the next four years to preparations against Greece. The grand effort was made in 480, and has been ever fam- ous in history for the magnitude of the host of men and ships employed, for the insane display of vanity and pageantry by Xerxes, for the heroism of the resistance on the one side and the completeness of the final disaster on the other. Xerxes himself returned to Sardis, after the destruction of his fleet at Salamis, toward the end of the year 480. The defeat of his General Mardonius at Plataea in 479 ended the war in Greece, and in 478 the Persians lost their last foothold in Europe by the capture of Sestos on the Hellespont. Of Xerxes little more is known; he was assassinated in 465, and left behind him a reputation that is proverbial for Oriental vanity and the total failure of prodigious efforts. After a short usurpation by Artabanus, the assassin of Xerxes, the Persian throne was filled by Xerxes' son, Artaxerxes I, stirnamed Longimanus, who reigned B. C. 464-425. The only notable matters in his reign are a revolt in Egypt, in which the Athenians assisted the Egyptians, and Athenian defeats of the Persians by land and sea in and off Cyprus. Darius II, surnamed Nothus, son of Artaxerxes I, who reigned B. C. 424-405, was a weak personage, who was subjected to constant insurrec- tions by his satraps, and lost Egypt in 414. His son, Artaxerxes II, surnamed Mnemon, reigned 405-359. The period of his rule was eventful. At the beginning occurred the revolt of his younger brother Cyrus, satrap in Western Asia, who marched against Babylon, and fell 76 ANCIENT AND MEDLEVAL HISTORY in the battle of Cunaxa, B. C. 401. He was supported by a body of Greek mercenaries, whose retiring march to the Black Sea over the mountains of Kurdistan has been immortalized by Xenophon's description in his Anabasis, and is known as the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks." After many conflicts between the Persians and Greeks, the peace of Antalcidas, concluded in B. C. 387, gave to the Persians all the Greek cities in Asia Minor. The Persian Empire, however, was now going to decay. Artaxerxes failed to recover revolted Egypt, and was con- stantly at war with tributary Princes and satraps. The want of cohesion in the unwieldy ill-assorted aggregate of "peoples, nations, and languages" was being severely felt. Artaxerxes III, son of the former, succeeded in B. C. 359, and reigned till 338. He was a cruel tyrant, who did nothing himself for his Empire; but Greek troops and generals in his pay reconquered Egypt and other lost territories. In B. C. 336 the last King of the Persian Empire, Darius III, surnamed Codomannus, succeeded to power. His struggle with the Greeks is given in the notice of Alexander the Great. With the great battle in the plains of Gaugamela, in Assyria, known as the battle of Arbela, from a town fifty miles distant, where Darius had his head- quarters before the struggle, the Persian Empire came to an end in October, B. C. 331. The defeat of Darius was decisive; and in 330 he was murdered in Parthia by one of his satraps named Bessus. Asiatic Aryans had suc- cumbed at last to their kinsmen of Europe, who, after repelling Oriental assaults upon the home of a new civiliza- tion, had carried the arms of avenging ambition into Asia, and struck a blow to the heart of the older system of polity, culture and power. In the doctrine of Zoroaster, pure spirit was worshiped THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 77 under the form of light. There was no adoration of indi- vidual natural objects, but of the universe itself. Light is the form of the good and the true; it enables man to exercise choice, which he can only do when he has emerged from darkness. Light involves its opposite darkness, as evil is opposite to good. Among the Persians, Ormuzd (called also Auramazda and Oromasdes) and Ahriman were the two opposed principles. Ormuzd was the lord of the kingdom of light, or good ; Ahriman, king of the realm of darkness, or evil. Ormuzd is represented as to be finally conqueror in contest with Ahriman. Ormuzd, as lord of light, created all in the world that is beautiful and noble, the world being a kingdom of the sun. He is the excellent, the positive, in all natural and spiritual existence. Light is the body, or essence, of Ormuzd, and hence came the worship of fire, because Ormuzd is present in all light ; but he is not represented as being the sun or moon itself, and this shows the spiritual- ity of the Persian belief. In the sun or moon the Persians worshipped only the light, which is Ormuzd. He was held to be the ground and center of all good existence the highest wisdom and knowledge the destroyer of the ills of the world, and the maintainer of the universe. On the contrary, the body of Ahriman is darkness, and the per- petual fire was burned to banish him from the temples. The chief end of every man's existence was held to be to keep himself pure, and to spread this purity around him. The sacrifices offered were the flesh of clean animals, flow- ers, fruits, milk, perfumes. Such was the interesting and spiritual form of belief held by the best of the ancient Persians who extended their sway over so many nations of divers faiths and degrees of civilization. The popular creed throughout the Empire appears to have been the 78 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY religious system of the Magians, referred to in the account of the Medes. The priests, or Magi, had great power, from the reverence of the people for them. The great objects of worship were the heavenly bodies. This national priesthood, like the Chaldaeans in the Babylonian Empire, formed a caste to whom belonged all mental cul- ture, and all knowledge of art, science and legislation. The modern term of reproach "magic," in its superstitious sense, is connected with their professions of divination and pretence at acquirement of hidden knowledge by the rais- ing of the dead and by juggling with cups and water. In science, art and learning the Persians developed lit- tle or nothing that was new, except in architecture. In the conquest of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians, the Persian King and nobles came into pos- session alike of the scientific acquirements and learning of those peoples, and of the products of the mechanical arts which are concerned in the luxuries and comforts of life. The Persians were soldiers, and not craftsmen, and had no need to be producers, when they could be purchasers, of the carpets and muslins of Babylon and Sardis, the fine linen of Egypt, and the rich variety of wares that Phoeni- cian commerce spread throughout the Empire. In archi- tecture they were at first pupils of the Assyrians and Baby- lonians. The splendid palaces and temples of Nineveh and Babylon had existed for centuries before the Persians were anything more than a hardy tribe of warriors, and it was only after the acquirement of Imperial sway that they began to erect great and elegant buildings for themselves. When that time came, the Persians showed that they could produce, by adaptation of older models, an architectural style of their own. This style was one that comes between the sombre, massive grandeur of Assyrian and Egyptian THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 79 edifices and the perfect symmetry and beauty of the achievements of Greek art. Palaces and tombs, not tem- ples, were the masterpieces of Persian building, as the out- door worship of the sun, or of the sacred fire kindled on some lofty spot, required no gorgeous "temples made with hands" for the indwelling of the God who was adored either in spirit or in the luminous manifestations of his power in the heavens above. The ruins of the city of Persepolis, in the province of Persia, are the most famous remains of Persian architecture. Here, on a terraced plat- form, stood vast and splendid palaces, "with noble portals and sweeping staircases, elegant fretted work for decora- tion, rows of massive pillars, and sumptuous halls." The doorways are adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs, and the great double staircase leading up to the "Palace of Forty Pillars" is especially rich in sculptured human figures. The columns are beautiful in form, sixty feet in total height, with the shaft finely fluted, and the pedestal in the form of the cup and leaves of a pendent lotus. Through- out the ruins a love of ornament and display is visible. In the bas-reliefs are profuse decorations of fretwork fringes, borders of sculptured bulls and lions, and stone- work of carved roses. The ruins, as a whole, present a complicated spectacle of fallen magnificence. Ecbatana, formerly the capital of the Median Empire, called Achmetha in the book of Ezra, and supposed to be the modern Hamadon, was a very ancient city, surrounded by seven walls, each overtopping the one outside it, and surmounted by battlements painted in five different colors, the innermost two being overlaid with silver and with gold. The strong citadel inside all was used as the royal treasury. Susa, called Shushan by the Hebrew writers Daniel and Nehemiah, was a square-built city unprotected So ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY by walls, but having a strongly fortified citadel, containing a royal palace and treasury. The only remains of the place are extensive mounds, on which are found fragments of bricks and broken pottery with cuneiform inscriptions. Persepolis was one of the two burial-places of the Persian Kings, and also a royal treasury. Darius I and Xerxes greatly enlarged and adorned the place, and it retained its splendor till it was partially burned by Alexander the Great. Pasargada, the other royal place of burial, its site having still the tomb of Cyrus and a colossal bas-relief sculpture of the great founder of the monarchy, was either southeast or northeast of Persepolis, the tomb of Cyrus appearing to settle the site as at Murghab, in the north- eastern position. Sardis, in western Asia Minor, once the capital of the Lydian monarchy, was the residence of the satrap of Lydia, and often occurs in history in con- nection with the presence of the Persian Kings. It had an almost impregnable citadel placed on a lofty precipitous rock. Of ancient Persian literature there are scarcely any remains except the sacred books in the collection called the Zendavesta. The splendor of Persian life at court and abroad is known to us from many sources. The sculptures of Persepolis show something of the state and ceremony attendant on a Persian King. In the book of Esther we read of King Ahasuerus (who is identified as Xerxes) entertaining all "the nobles and Princes of the provinces" for "a hundred and fourscore days," of his making a feast for seven days "in the court of the garden of the King's palace" for all the people of Susa ; of pillars of marble, sil- ver curtain-rings, beds of gold and silver, pavements of marble that was red, and blue, and white, and black; of drink in vessels of gold diverse in shape and size, and THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 81 "royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the King ;" of garments of purple and fine linen ; and of the absolute power of a Persian despot in his caprices and his wrath, with his "seven chamberlains that served in his presence," and with the lives of men and women of all ranks held in the hollow of his hand. Voi,. i 6 HISTORY OF GREECE The part played by Greece in the great drama of Uni- versal History makes her a connecting link between East and West, the Asiatic and the European, the enslaved and the free. Grecian history is one of the greatest phases of the question between East and West, alive in the politics of the present day, when the recovery of Constantinople for Europe is a great matter for European diplomacy. A review of Greek history from the earliest times, including a period legendary in detail, but having a basis of fact, will enable us to judge of the place of Greece in history, and the vital connection existing between the ancient and modern worlds. The story of the war of Troy, embellished by poetry with marvels, is a legendary version of some part of the contest between East and West. After this comes the colonial period, when the Greek makes inroads on the commercial dominion of Phoenicia and a part of Asia practically becomes Europe by the settling of Greek cities on the coasts of Asia Minor. Then the powers of the East, embattled by Persia, advance in their turn. Asiatic Greece is conquered, European Greece is threatened, and at last has to fight for life on her own soil. By sea and by land Greece is triumphant, and the future of cilivilization is settled. Whatever the fate of Europe is to be she is not to be handed over to the grasp of Oriental despotism, but is to be left to struggle forward in a career uninfluenced by Eastern control. Then Greece, after reaching the highest point of culture in art and litera- ture, is weakened by internal dissensions, and loses ground both in East and West. Her old foe, Persia, regains some fa HISTORY OF GREECE 83 of her former power on the seaboard of Asia Minor; in the West, Greek dominion is lessened by the rising power of Carthage and Rome, and the last effort of Greece for political dominion there fails when the phalanx of Pyrrhus succumbs to the Roman legion. Then the Macedonian King, Alexander the Great, reconquers the East and spreads Greek culture and an artificial Greek nationality over a large part of the world. Into this new Greek world Rome forces her way, and at once secures political suprem- acy. Rome, however, never supplants the tongue and cul- ture of Greece, but largely accepts them herself until much of her own power is transferred to a Greek city, Constanti- nople. Hence, at the revival of learning, the products of the old Greek mind come forth to transform the Western world. The interest of the great story of ancient Greece is really inexhaustible. It has been well said that "of all histories of which we know so much, this is the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The true ancestors of the European nations are not those from whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods. The Greeks are also the most remarkable people who have yet existed." This high claim is justly made on the grounds of the power and efforts that were required for them to achieve what they did for themselves and for mankind. With the ex- ception of Christianity, they were the beginners of nearly everything of which the modern world can boast. By their own unaided exertions they, alone among the nations of the earth, emerged from barbarism. It was they who 84 ANCIENT AND MEDLEY AL HISTORY originated political freedom and first produced an histori- cal literature, and that a perfect one of its kind. The same wonderful race rose to the height of excellence in oratory, poetry, sculpture, architecture. They were the founders of mathematics, of physical science, of true political science, of the philosophy of human nature and life. In each of these departments of skilled and systematic acquirement they made for themselves those first steps on which all the rest depend. Freedom of thought they be- stowed on the world, a heritage for all ages to come. Unfettered by pedantries or superstitions, they looked the universe in the face, and questioned nature in that free, bold spirit of speculation which has worked with so power- ful an effect in modern Europe. All these things the Greeks achieved in two centuries of national existence, and the twenty Centuries that have passed away since the Greeks were the most gifted of the nations of the world have added little, in comparison, to human attainments and human development on the intellectual side of our nature. Such, in its extreme form, is the claim advanced for the Greeks of old. What is certain is, that, even if they received the rudiments of art and literature, and the germs of political and social organization, from Eastern nations from Asia Minor, Egypt and Phoenicia they impressed a new and original character on that which they received. The Greeks would not endure absolute monarchy; from constitutional Kings they passed to republican insti- tutions in an infinite variety of forms as compounded in various degrees of democratic or oligarchic elements. 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 HISTORY OF GREECE 85 self-confident, they presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals. Such was the people whose history we are now to deal with in a rapid summary of their rise, their fortunes, their institutions, and their political decline and fall. We pass from the Oriental history of dynasties and barren conquests to the history of a free nation exercising, through her intel- lectual triumphs, an enduring dominion over Europe and the \vhole civilized world. The Greeks belonged to the great Aryan branch of the Caucasian race to the stock that includes all the historic nations of Europe, the Latins, Teutons or Germans, Celts, and Slavonians, as well as the Persians and Hindoos of Asia. The Aryan migration from Asia into Europe, brought the forefathers of the Greeks into the farthest east of the three Mediterranean peninsulas. It is in the south- ern part of this peninsula, in the Peloponnesus, called in modern geography the Morea, and in the territory immedi- ately north of the Peloponnesus, that we are to look, in ancient history, for the people who were strictly and truly Greeks, apart from the colonies which were settled on vari- ous parts of the islands and coasts of the east and central Mediterranean, and of the neighboring seas, the Propontis (Sea of Marmora), and the Euxine (now Black) Sea. The name Greece was almost unknown by the people whom we call Greeks, and was never used by them for their own country. It has come to us from the Romans, being really the name of a tribe in Epirus, northwest of Greece, the part of the country first known to them. The Greek writers and people called their land Hellas, the term meaning, however, all territory in which their own people, whom they called Hellenes, were settled. Hellas, therefore, included not only the Greek peninsula, but many of the islands of the uEgean Sea, and the coast settlement and 86 ANCIENT AND MH.DLEVAL HISTORY colonies above referred to. Hellas was originally the name of a district in Thessaly, in northern Greece, the people of which gradually spread over the neighboring ter- ritory, and the name was in time adopted by the other tribes. Greece consisted, geographically, of many islands, and of a peninsula much indented by bays. It was thus broken up into many small divisions, connected by the sea. There were numerous mountains in ridges, off-shoots, and groups; there were plains, valleys, and small rivers. All was diversified ; there was no great feature. The position and conformation of the country undoubtedly helped to render the Greeks the earliest civilized people in Europe, both by developing, in a life of struggle with nature on land and sea, their special and innate character, and by bringing them into contact with the older civilizations, in Egypt and Phoenicia, on the eastern shores of the Medi- terranean. The mountains that divided the country into small isolated districts had a great political importance in giving rise to many separate and independent states, the rivalries and conflicts of which favored the working out of political problems and the growth of political freedom. Greece naturally divides itself into Northern, Central and Southern. Northern Greece extends from the northern boundary line in about 40 degrees north latitude to a line drawn from the Ambracian Gulf on the west to Ther- mopylae on the east. Central Greece stretches from this point to the isthmus of Corinth. Southern Greece in- cludes the Peloponnesus and adjacent islands. Northern Greece contained two principal countries, Thessalia and Epirus, though the Greeks themselves did not regard the inhabitants of Epirus as being of real Hellenic race. It was only in later times that Macedonia, north of Thessalia, was considered a part of Hellas. Central Greece had nine HISTORY OF GREECE 87 separate states Acarnania, yEtolia, Doris, Eastern Locris, Western Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, Attica and Meg- aris. The most important of these was Attica, the penin- sula jutting out southeastward from Bceotia, and re- nowned for evermore through its possession of the city of Athens. Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, meaning "island of Pelops," a mythical King of Pisa, in Elis, con- tained seven principal states Corinth, Achaia, Elis, Arca- dia, Messenia, Argolis, and Laconia. Of these the most important was Laconia, equally famous as Attica for Athens in containing the city of Sparta, capital of the state called Lacedaemon, forming the southern part of Laconia. Islands formed a considerable and famous part of ancient Hellas. The largest of the islands on the coast was Eubcea, about ninety miles in length, noted for good pas- turage and corn. On the west coast was the group known to modern geography as "the Ionian Isles." To the south lay Crete, 160 miles in length, noted for the skill of its archers. In the ^Egean Sea were the two groups called the Cyclades and Sporades. The Cyclades, or "circling isles," as lying round the chief one, Delos, are clearly shown upon the map. The Sporades, or "scattered isles," lay to the east, off the southwest coast of Asia Minor, northward in the JEgean, in mid-sea, or on the Asiatic coast, were Lemnos, Scyros, Lesbos, Chios, and Samos. Of the date when the Aryan tribes first made their way into the Greek peninsula and islands we know nothing, from the lack of records. As a prehistoric people in that region, we hear of the Pelasgi, akin to the Greeks in lan- guage and in race, so far as we can judge, and said to have known agriculture and other useful arts. The Aryans, before they set out on their migrations into Europe from their primeval home in Asia, possessed a certain degree of culture, and the Pelasgi, being Aryans, would have car- 88 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY . ried those acquirements with them to their new abodes. The Pelasgians formed the basis of the older population both in Italy and Greece, according to the evidence of lan- guage and the researches of scholars. The so-called Pelasgic, or Cyclopean, remains at Mycenae and at Tiryns, both in Argolis, consisting of huge rude masses of stone, piled on each other in tiers, without cement, resemble the Stonehenge in the mystery existing as to their real author- ship and age. As with the Pelasgi, so with the Hellenes of the date when, and means by which, they became pre- dominant in the land which they called Hellas, we know nothing. The safest conjecture is that the Hellenes were the flower for enterprise, ability, and courage, of some section of the Aryan immigrants into Europe, just as the Normans were the choicest specimens of Scandinavian tribes in mediaeval Europe. These superior qualities gave the Hellenes possession, at an early date, of the territory in which they found established the Pelasgians, really akin in blood and language to themselves, but men whom the Hellenes, innocent of ethnology and comparative phil- ology, called "barbarians," or men of different language to themselves. It is certain that, as far back as tyistory or even legend can carry us, we find the land of Greece in the occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. Of these Hellenes, then, who occupied the land, and made it famous for all time, there were four chief divi- sions, the Dorians, ^Eolians, Achaeans and lonians. At a date probably as early as 1200 B. C, the Dorians are found in the northern part of Central Greece, in and about Doris, on the southern slope of Mount CEta ; the ^olians mainly in Thessalia; the Achaeans in the west, south and east of Peloponnesus, where the Arcadians, probably descendants of the Pelasgi, occupied the center of the territory; and the HISTORY OF GREECE 89 lonians in the northeastern Peloponnesus and in Attica. The Dolopes, ^Enianes, Magnetes, Dryopes and Danai, are the names of tribes, Pelasgic and otherwise in origin, occupying parts of the territory of Greece at the same early date. We are dealing with history, not legend, and therefore with the mythical exploits of the so-called Heroic Age we have nothing to do, except so far as those legends may be considered to embody a real kernel of historical truth. We have space here to allude only to two, and those the most famous, of these legends the Argonautic Expedi- tion and the Siege of Troy. The Argonauts are repre- sented as a body of heroes who went in a ship called the Argo, under the command of a prince named Jason, to fetch from Colchis, a district on the eastern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, a golden fleece hung on an oak tree in the grove of Ares, Greek god of war, and guarded there by a dragon. After many adventures, losses and dangers, the fleece was carried off. The kernel of truth here is that in very early times navigators went to the coasts of the Euxine and there made money by trade with wild inhospitable tribes. The Siege of Troy or Trojan War is known to all the civilized world from Homer's poem called the Iliad. Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy, is represented as having carried off from Greece, Helen, the wife of his entertainer, Menelaus, King of Lacedseman. Helen was the loveliest woman of her time, and all the Grecian princes took up arms and sailed for Troy, under command of Aga- memnon, King of Mycenae, in Argolis. The greatest hero on the Greek side was Achilles, on the Trojan, Hector. After a ten-years' siege and much slaughter Troy is taken by a stratagem and burned, and the remaining princes and their peoples return to Greece. The Iliad deals only with 90 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY the events of the last year of the war, "the wrath of Achilles" and its results, when Achilles, offended by Aga- memnon, for a long time refuses to fight, and leaves the Greeks a prey to the prowess of Hector. When Patroclus, a friend of Achilles, is slain by the Trojan hero, the Greek warrior takes up his spear again, slays Hector, and the story ends, in Homer's poem, with the delivery of his body to the sorrowing father, Priam. How much of this is fact and how much fiction is not known. The matter long has been, and it remains, a battleground of angry and bewildered critics. The truth contained in the Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey is this, that they give a real and valuable picture of the state of civilization in the Grecian world at the time when the poems were writ- ten or otherwise composed and preserved, which we may take to be about 1000 years B. C. The form of government was that of a hereditary King, acting as priest, general, judge, and president of the popular assembly, supported and guided by a council of elders. The tribe or nation appears as more important than the city, which, in historical Greece, is found to be itself the state. We find existing a landed aristocracy, an elementary middle class of bards, priests, prophets, sur- geons, and skilled artisans, a class of hired workmen, and another class of mildly-treated slaves. A state of warfare was almost constant between some two or more of the vari- ous tribes, and military prowess was the virtue most esteemed. There was no polygamy, and woman, and especially the wife, was held in high regard. Care for the young and reverence for the old were practiced. A gen- eral sobriety in drink and bodily indulgence, and a chival- rous feeling of respect for self and others, are found to exist. The belief in various deities, whose attributes were those of a glorified humanity, and in fatalism, was strong. HISTORY OF GREECE 91 Sacrifices of slaughtered animals, and of outpoured wine, were offered to the gods. The artistic works described were not of Grecian exe- cution, but Phoenician chiefly. Men's chief occupations in the Homeric times were in agriculture, as ploughmen, sowers, and reapers; and in pastoral life, as cowherds, shepherds, swineherds, and goatherds. There were wagons drawn by mules, and chariots drawn by horses, as appliances of war. The weapons, defensive and offensive, were the shield, the helmet, the breastplate, and greaves, or metal leggings, from the knee to the ankle; the sword, the spear, the javelin, ax, and huge stones hurled by mighty arms at the oncoming foe. We read of coppersmiths, carpenters, and shipbuilders; eating of beef and mutton, bread and cheese; of spinning and weaving of flax and wool for clothing, carpets, coverlets, and rugs. Such is the state of things represented to us in the poems which enshrine the legend of the tale of Troy that legend which, "set forth in the full blaze of epic poetry, exercised a powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic mind." There is another class of legends concerning the earlier times of Greece, in which we find asserted the recep- tion by the Greeks of foreign immigration from Egypt and Phoenicia. The element of truth contained in these traditions is that early Greece did receive something from Egypt, and much, perhaps, from the Phoenicians, when Greeks began to spread themselves over the isles and coasts to east and south and west of their own land, and thus came into contact with those great traders, the Phoenicians, who preceded Greece in spreading culture and commerce on the coasts of the great inland sea. What rudiments of art, or science, or religion Greece may have got from Egypt is matter of conjecture only; certain it is that Greece owed 92 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY infinitely more to native genius than to any outward sources of civilization. Grecian history may be divided into four periods. From the Dorian migration to the First Olympiad, the beginning of the authentic history of Greece, B. C. 1 104- 776. From B. C. 776 to the beginning of the Persian Wars, B. C. 500. From the beginning of the Persian Wars to the sub- jugation of Greece by Philip of Macedon, B. C. 500-338. From the subjugation of Greece by Philip of Macedon to the Roman conquest, B. C. 338-146. THE GREEK CITY-STATES Leaving the dim twilight of legendary Greece, we come to a period when there took place those movements of tribes that resulted in settling the Hellenes in those parts of Hellas in which we find them during the times of authentic history. The chief of these movements was that known as the Dorian Migration or Return of the Hera- clidae, this latter name following the legend that the de- scendants of the demigod Heracles (Hercules), called Heraclidae, after being driven from the Peloponnesus, re- turned thither in alliance with the Dorians. The event thus referred to is really the Conquest of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians, and the date assigned to it is B. C. 1 104, ' about eighty years after the supposed date of the legend? ry Trojan War. The germ of historical truth in the mat- j ter is that, about B. C. uoo, the Dorians, under various ; leaders, made their way from their abodes in Central Greece into the Peloponnesus, and conquered the greater part of the peninsula after a long and severe contest with the Achseans and others who were established there. All HISTORY OF GREECE 93 Peloponnesus, except Arcadia and the part called after- ward Achaia, became Dorian, including the Kingdoms of Sparta, Argos, and Messenia, Elis being occupied, it is said, by yEtolian allies of the Dorians. This great move- ment led to other changes in the Hellenic world. Of the Achaeans in the Peloponnesus some were subdued and remained in the land as an inferior class, tilling the soil as tenants under Dorian lords. Other Achseans, expelled from the south and east of the peninsula, fell back upon the northern coast, inhabited by the lonians, whom they drove out into Attica and other parts of Central Greece. From this time the Peloponnesus was mainly Dorian, the lonians being dominant in Central Greece and many islands of the ^Egean Sea. The Dorian conquest was succeeded by the planting of numerous colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor and in the neighboring islands of the ^gean Sea. These col- onies were settled by the three races, the yEolians, lonians and Dorians. The ^Eolians colonized the northwestern part, the coast of Mysia, and the island of Lesbos. Of their confederation of twelve cities in that region the chief were Methymna and Mytilene, Cyme and Smyrna, which last was, early in the historical period, taken by the lonians. The lonians settled in the central part, on the coast of Lydia, and in the islands of Chios and Samos. Of their powerful confederation of twelve cities the chief were Phocaea, Miletus and Ephesus. The Dorians occupied the southwest corner of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands. Of the six Dorian states the chief were the islands of Cos, Thera, and Rhodes, and the cities of Cnidus and Hali- carnassus. Of all these confederations by far the most important, wealthy and powerful was the Ionian. Gradually the Greeks spread themselves in settlements along the northern coast of the ^gean Sea and the Pro- 94 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY ponds, in Macedonia and Thrace, so that the whole JEgean became encircled with Greek colonies, and its islands were covered with them. The need of room and the tempta- tions of commerce drew colonists even to the northern and southern shores of the Euxine Sea, the lonians of Miletus being the founders of many settlements in that region, including the greatest of them all, Sinope. The tide of emigration flowed westward also in great strength. The coasts of Southern Italy were occupied by Dorians, Achaeans, and lonians in settlements which grew to such importancce that the region took the name of Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece. The cities of Tarentum, Cro- ton and Sybaris became famous for their wealth, the latter giving rise, to the proverbial name for a luxurious liver. On the southwestern coast of Italy was Rhegium, and further north came Paestum, Cumse and Neapolis, Naples. In Sicily flourishing Greek settlements abounded, the chief being Messana, Syracuse, Leontini, Catana, Gela, Selinus and Agrigentum. Farther west still a colony from Phocaea, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Massilia, known now to all the world as Marseilles. On the south- ern coast of the Mediterranean, westward from Egypt, the Greek colony of Cyrene became the chief town of a flourishing district called Cyrenaica. It must be under- stood that the establishment of the later of these colonies brings us down well within authentic historical times, and that the whole period of Greek colonization extends from about B. C. 1 100 to 600, the colonies being in many cases offshoots of colonies previously established and risen to wealth and over-population. In all these movements and settlements the enterprise and ability of the Greeks made them great commercial rivals to, and, in a measure, suc- cessors of the Phoenicians. The two leading races of Greece were the lonians and HISTORY OF GREECE 95 the Dorians, and they stand to each other in a strong con- trast of character which largely affected Greek political history. These prominent points of difference run through the whole historical career of the two chief states, Ionian Athens and Dorian Sparta, and were the cause of the strong antagonism that we find so often in action between them. The Dorian was distinguished by sever- ity, bluntness, simplicity of life, conservative ways, and oligarchic tendency in politics; the Ionian was equally marked by vivacity, excitability, refinement, love of change, taste in the arts, commercial enterprise, and attachment to democracy. The Dorian, in the best times of his history, reverenced age, ancient usage, and religion; the Ionian, at all periods of his career, loved enjoyment, novelty and enterprise. In the kingly government of the Heroic Age the mon- arch was "the first among his peers, the small rude noble of a small Hellenic town." His power was preserved by respect for his high lineage, traced to the gods in legend- ary song, and by the warlike prowess which he knew how, on occasion, to display. At about 900 B. C. an important change had taken place in the form of government of most of the states. Kingly rule had passed into republican, and the people were gathered into little separate states enjoy- ing various degrees of freedom according to the aristo- cratic or democratic nature of the constitution, though at first these commonwealths were mostly aristocracies, in which "only men of certain families were allowed to fill public offices and to take part in the assemblies by which the city was governed." In the democracies all citizens could hold offices and speak and vote at the assemblies for legislative and executive business. In Sparta alone did the office and title of King remain. The Greeks were, politically, parcelled and divided into 96 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY many different states, but there existed still a national bond of union. All were of Hellenic race lonians, Dorians, yEolians and, in certain dialectic varieties, they had a common speech which distinguished them at once from the "barbarians" of strange and unintelligible tongue, as well as a common literature, religion, rites, temples, and festivals equally open to all. The great feeling of every Greek, however, was for his native city, and the bane of the Hellenic race was the political dissension existing be- tween the rival parties in the same state, and the jealous antagonism rife between different states endowed with different forms of republican constitution. The only sys- tem which can bind together firmly into one great state a number of independent smaller communities of democratic government is that of Federal Union, with which modern times are familiar both in Europe and America. In Greece the principle was discovered and acted on too late to have a chance of saving her from the overwhelming power of Rome. The Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus had made Dorians supreme, in three states of that peninsula Argos, Messenia and Laconia, about 1 100 B. C, and in time the Spartans, or the people of Lacedaemon, properly the south- ern half of Laconica or Laconia, became the dominant nation in that part of Greece. Of Spartan doings and fortunes we know almost nothing until the time of the great legislator Lycurgus, whose date cannot be put later than B. C. 825. The state of things in Laconia established by the Dorian conquest was a very peculiar one. The population included, when Sparta was settled into a regu- lar political community, three distinct classes. There were the Spartiatae or Spartans, the Dorian conquerors residing in Sparta, the chief city of the land ; the Perioeci, "dwellers-round," who were old Achaean inhabitants, trib- HISTORY OF GREECE 97 utary tc the Spartans, forming the free dwellers in the provincial towns, having no political rights or share in the government; and the Helots, who also were a part of the old Achaeans, but such as had been made into slaves, to till the soil for the individual members of the ruling class or Spartiatae, to whom they were allotted, paying a fixed rent to their masters. The Periceci paid a rent to the state for the land which they held, but were, personally, free mem- bers of the community. There was a large number of the Helots, and they were constantly treated by the Spartans with a harshness and a cruelty (extending to the frequent infliction of death) which have made the word "Helot" proverbial for a downtrodden miserable outcast. The Spartans were thus in the position of a powerful garrison in a hostile country, being surrounded, in the Perioeci, by those who had no political interest in the maintenance of Spartan supremacy, and, in the Helots, by those whom fear and force alone restrained from rising to massacre their oppressors. Considering these circumstances, we can well understand the growth in the Spartan citizens of that hard- ness of character and hardihood of temperament for which they became a byword through all ages. Lycurgus, of whom, as a personage, nothing certainly historical is known, was the legislator who, about 850 B. C, organized the existing elements of society into the famous Spartan constitution, though all parts of the sys- tem must not be attributed to a man whose existence has been denied by some historians. The probability is that he altered and reformed existing usages, and that the rever- ence of after-ages ascribed to him the promulgation and establishment of a full-grown brand-new set of institutions which must have been, in many points, of gradual growth. The government was that of an aristocratic republic under the form of a monarchy. Tk/?r