The History of Antiquity, Vol. 6 (of 6)

More serious for the future of the kingdom than any splendour or magnificence on the part of eminent Persians, was the influence, which in the composition of the court was unavoidable, of his personal servants on the king and on his resolutions – and the danger that court intrigues might override the interest of the empire; above all, the still more unavoidable influence of the harem. If the position of the queen-mother, who, in accordance with the doctrines of Zarathrustra, enjoyed a position of great respect at court, and her relations to the queen or first wife gave occasion for jealous rivalry, each secondary wife had still stronger motives to seek or maintain influence with the king, to disparage the queen and the other wives before him, and make provision for her sons if she could not aspire to gain the succession to the throne. Thus a door was opened to ambition and intrigue, and the eunuchs of the wives found in this occupation only too good an opportunity for gaining importance and weight. If such evils were a little matter under a ruler of the determination and wisdom of Darius, it was impossible to count on the fact that he would be followed by a series of kings like himself, and equally great. But if the court outgrew the state, and the fortunes of the empire were decided in the seraglio, the empire itself might be thrown into danger with a change in the succession. The education given to the princes, and especially to the heir to the throne, has been mentioned already, as well as their instruction in the wisdom of the Magi. The crown descended to the eldest son of the legitimate wife or queen. Whenever the king took the field, in order to prevent contention he nominated his successor. Even about the successor of Darius a difficulty might arise. His first wife, the daughter of Gobryas, had borne him three sons before he came to the throne; when king, he had made Atossa his queen, and had four sons by her (p. 394). Which was the legitimate heir, the eldest of the first family, or of the second? – Artabazanes or Xerxes?

At the death of the king, as Diodorus tells us, the sacred fire in the royal palace, and in all the houses of the Persians, was put out.507 We remember the prescript of the Avesta that the fire of the hearth must be removed from the house of the dead, together with all the sacred vessels, the pestle, the cup, the bundle of rods and the Haoma, and that the fire could not be kindled again till the ninth or thirtieth day after the death (V. 215). The heir to the throne repaired to Pasargadae, to receive consecration from the Magi there. "In that city," says Plutarch, "there is the shrine of a warlike goddess who may, perhaps, be compared with Athene; to this the prince who is to be consecrated goes, and there lays his robe aside, in order to put on the garment which Cyrus wore before he became king: then he eats a cake of dried figs, bites a terebinth, and drinks a cup of sour milk (no doubt in remembrance of the old life of the Persians). Whether he has anything to do beyond this is unknown."508 We are told elsewhere that the new king put the royal kidaris on his head; and no doubt the act would be accompanied with invocations by the Magi. The shrine of the goddess mentioned by Plutarch must have been a place of sacrifice to Anahita; the heroes and kings of the Avesta sacrifice to this goddess in order to attain the splendour of majesty, the supreme dominion.509

The Arian tribes of the table-land of Iran have preserved the original character of their family more truly than their kinsmen who settled on the Indus and the Ganges, and filled the Deccan with their civilization. Placed in a less tempestuous region, in a land where there were sharp contrasts of climate, of hill and plain, of fertility and desolation, of snow and sand storms, the life of the Arians in Iran was more vigorous and manly than life in India. The tribes in the north-east attained to civic life and intellectual progress before the tribes of west Iran. The contrast in which the former stood to the hordes of the neighbouring steppes, and the repulsion of their attacks, led the Bactrians to a larger state, and the formation of a military monarchy, which arose from the midst of an armed nobility, while the weight of the ancient and powerful states of the Semites in the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, repressed the independent development of the tribes of western Iran. The foundations of the religious views of the Arians were the same to the east and west of the Indus. With the Arians of the Panjab, the Arians of Iran shared the belief in the power of the spirits of light which gave life and blessing, in the destructive power of the black spirits, and the struggle of the spirits of light against the spirits of darkness. The peculiar intensity of the contrasts in nature and in the conditions of life in the north-east, gave an impulse to the development of religious views there, which led to the systematic opposition of the hosts of heaven and of hell, and the union of these groups under two supreme spirits, and to deeper ideas of their nature. It was a transformation of the old conceptions which at the same time carried with it a change and increase in the ethical demands made upon men. While the development of conceptions beyond the Indus tended to set man free from all sensuality, and sought to bring him back to his divine origin, by crushing the body and quenching the individuality, the doctrine of Zarathrustra excludes only the harmful side of nature, and demands the increase of the useful side; it pledges every man to take a part in the conflict of the good spirits against the evil, demands that by his work, his activity, and the purity of his soul, he enlarge the kingdom of the good and light spirits to the best of his ability, and thus forms sound and practical aims for the conduct of men. When this doctrine had penetrated to the nations of west Iran, and struck deep roots among them, the Medes succeeded in combining their tribes, and repelling the supremacy of the Assyrians. In no long time the borders of their dominion extended, in the west to the Halys, and in the east over the whole table-land of Iran; in union with Babylon they overthrew the remnant of Assyria, and shared with that city the empire over Hither Asia. What the Medes had begun, the Persians finished, when they had taken the place of the Medes. One after another the ancient kingdoms of Hither Asia fell before them – the Lydian empire, which had finally united under its sway the tribes and cities of the western half of Asia Minor, ancient Babylon, which had once more united the valley of the two streams, the states of Syria, and the cities of the Phenicians, and at length even primeval Egypt.

Arian life and Arian culture were now dominant through the whole breadth of Asia, from the pearl-banks and coral-reefs of the Indian Ocean to the Hellespont. At the time when the first Arian settlers were landing far in the east on Tamraparni (Ceylon) the cities of the Hellenes on the western coast of Anatolia and the strand of the Aegean were compelled to bow before the arms of Cyrus. The world had never seen before such an empire as that of Darius, the borders of which reached from the Libyans, the plateau of Barca, the Nubians and negroes beyond Egypt, the tribes of the Arabian desert to the summits of the Caucasus, the remote city of Cyrus on the Jaxartes, and the gold-land of the Daradas in the lofty Himalayas. And not contented with this range Darius aspired to extend yet further the limits of his empire.

Beyond the Aegean Sea a branch of the Arian stock had developed an independent civilization and civic life in small mountain cantons surrounded by the sea. The eye of the potentate of Asia looked no doubt with contempt on these unimportant communities, whose colonies in Asia and Africa had long been subject to him; on states of which each could put in the field no more than a few thousand warriors. The sea, which separated the Persian kingdom from the cantons of the Greeks, had already been crossed; the Persians had seen the mouths of the Danube; the straits of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont were in the power of Darius, the coasts of Thrace and the Greek states were subject to him; he had already planted a firm foot at the mouths of the Hebrus and the Strymon, and the prince of Macedonia paid him tribute. At his command Phenicians and Persians had investigated the coasts of the Aegean Sea, and of Hellas.

Was it possible that these small cantons, without political union or common interests, living in perpetual strife and feud, excited and torn by internal party contests in which there were almost as many views as men, whose exiles made their way to the lofty gates of the Persian monarch, whose princes were at pains to secure their dominions by vassalage to the great king, and join in leagues with him against their countrymen – was it possible that these cantons, in this position, would maintain their independence against Persia, and resist the attack of this universal empire, – the onset of Asia? Would the Greeks be bold enough to venture on such a hopeless struggle, to oppose the Persians, whose name was a terror to all their neighbours, and even to the Hellenes? Few, Herodotus tells us, could even bear the sight of the Persian cavalry, and Plato remarks that the minds of the Greeks were already enslaved to the Persians.

It was a question of decisive importance for the civilization and development of humanity; whether the new principle of communal government, which had been carried out in the Hellenic cantons, should be maintained, or pass into the vast limits of the Persian empire, and succumb to the authority of the king: state power and civic life, absolute authority and the will of the majority, abject obedience and conscious self-control, the masses and the individual – these were ranged opposite each other, and the balance was already turning in favour of overwhelming material force.

THE END

1

Herod. 1, 74, 79, 155; Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 7, 2, 11.

2

Herod. 1, 71; and equally from the Persian point of view, Xenophon, "Cyri inst." 6, 2, 22.

3

Ctes. "Pers." 4; Fragm. 31, ed. Müller.

4

Polyaen. "Strateg." 7, 6, 3, 19; 7, 8, [Woelfflin].

5

"Cyri inst." 1, 5, 3.

6

"Cyri inst." 2, 1, 5, 6.

7

Xenoph. "Anab." 5, 5, 17. Vol. I. 257.

8

"Cyri inst." 2, 1, 5; 6, 2, 8, 9; 7, 2, 15 ff.

9

I draw this conclusion from the story of Eurybatus, which was told by Ephorus; Fragm. 100, ed. Müller.

10

Excerpt. Vatic, p. 26; "De virtute et vitiis," p. 553. [=9, 31 ff.]

11

Justin, 1, 7. Lucian ("Contemplat." 9) represents Cyrus as conquering Babylonia and then marching against Lydia.

12

[Nic. Damasc. Frag. 68, ed. Müller.]

13

"Cyri inst." 7, 2, 20.

14

Strabo, p. 575, 587.

15

Pausan. 7, 17, 9. 10.

16

Herod. 1, 131; 3, 16.

17

Marmor Parnium, ep. 41.

18

Boeckh, "Staatshaushaltung" 1. 10, 11; H. Stein on Herod. 1, 50.

19

Aristot. "Rhetor." 3, 5; Diod. Exc. Vatic. p. 25, 26[=9, 31].

20

Herod. 1, 69.

21

"Cyri inst." 6, 2, 10, 11.

22

The Parian marble mentions a mission of Crœsus to Delphi in the year 556. The date of the year for the capture of Sardis is destroyed, and cannot be even approximately restored, as the nearest dates are either mutilated or destroyed. The dates in Eusebius are derived from Apollodorus, who in turn draws from Eratosthenes. Eusebius puts the testing of the oracles in Olymp. 57,3 = 550 B.C., the march of Cyrus against Crœsus in Ol. 57,4 = 549 B.C., the capture of Crœsus in Ol. 58,3 = 546 B.C. Jerome represents Crœsus as beginning the war in Ol. 57,3 = 550 B.C. and puts his capture in Ol. 58,1 = 548 B.C. According to the statement of Syncellus (1,455, ed. Bonn.), Crœsus was defeated in the 14th year of Cyrus, which would give 547 B.C., if with Eusebius, who allows Cyrus to reign 31 years, we put his accession in 560 B.C. (V. p. 381 n.). The interval of three years which Eusebius (549-546) and two years which Jerome (550-548) places between the beginning of the war and the capture of Crœsus, appears to be due to the three years for which, according to Herodotus, Apollo delayed the overthrow of Crœsus; the presents came to Delphi three years before the fall (Herod. 1, 91). According to Herodotus the campaign occupies only one summer and autumn. The temple of Delphi was burned down in 548 B.C. (Ol. 58,1; Pausan. 10, 5, 13), and as Herodotus represents the temple as intact at the time when Crœsus sent to Delphi after his fall, this must have taken place before 548 B.C., and therefore Crœsus must have been conquered by Cyrus in 549 B.C. If the justification of the oracle in Herodotus is merely an invention of the priests, yet in things so well known the existing circumstances could not be left out of sight. It is certain that if the presents of Crœsus had been injured by the burning of the temple before his fall, this evil omen would not have been left out of sight by the legend, or by Herodotus, who himself saw and mentions the lion of Crœsus at Delphi which had been injured by the fire (1, 50). I have therefore no scruple in putting the fall of the Lydian kingdom in the year 549 B.C. Though the reign given by Herodotus for Crœsus, fourteen years and fourteen days, may have arisen out of the fourteen Lydian boys who wished to be sacrificed with their king (p. 12), yet Eusebius, Jerome, and Syncellus put the reign of Crœsus at 15 years. It may therefore be regarded as an established fact that his reign ended in the fifteenth year. According to Herodotus (1, 64, 65), it might seem as though he were of opinion that Crœsus sought allies in Hellas at the time when Pisistratus was tyrant for the third time over Athens. But this would be an error due to Herodotus' habit of anticipation. We can only be concerned with the second tyranny of Pisistratus, which belongs to the years 550 and 549 B.C. Against the argument here used – that the priests could not leave out of sight the actual circumstances in things so widely known, even in their inventions, Büdinger objects: "The chronological relations in Lydian-Persian history were neither various nor generally known, when Herodotus visited Delphi." The objection would be pertinent if the legend of the priests had only been manufactured during Herodotus' stay at Delphi, and for his use. This is not tenable. The fall of Crœsus was an event which deeply moved the Hellenic world, and created the most lively astonishment; the responses of Delphi had allured him to war; the oracle must at once justify itself if it were not to lose considerably in its authority. The justification must, therefore, have been invented at once; in the cities of Anatolia it would be best known at that time how and when the Mede came into the land with the fall of Crœsus (πηλίκος ἦσθ’ ὅθ’ ὁ Μῆδος ἀφίκετο; Xenophanes in Athenaeus, p. 54), and it was also known everywhere how long before the great presents of Crœsus had come to Miletus and Delphi. This must be noticed by the Delphian priests. But, as I have expressly said, I have not laid any great stress on this fact, but on the burning of the temple in 548 B.C., for that is the only certain point which can be gained. It does not seem possible to me to make Xenophon's account of the Lydian and Babylonian wars of Cyrus in the Cyropaedia a reason for placing the overthrow of Crœsus in 541 B.C. and putting back the beginning of the third tyranny of Pisistratus to that date in order to suit this account. There are also reasons of fact against such a date, which are given elsewhere.

23

Herod. 1, 153.

24

Plat. "Protagoras," p. 327. Demosth. "De Corona," 24; Aesch. "in Ctesiph." 137, and the Scholia.

25

Polyb. 7, 15; 8, 22.

26

Raoul Rochette, "Mémoires de l'institut," 17, 2, p. 278 ff.

27

Herod. 1, 87.

28

Büdinger objects to this view that the Lydian tradition, which would be favourable to Crœsus, could not possibly convert the merit of such a sacrifice into an execution. Whether the tradition of the Lydians was favourable or not to Crœsus is not handed down; that the Greeks were favourable to him we know for certain. It is the tradition of the Greek cities – favourable to Crœsus and unfavourable to Cyrus – which we have in the account of Herodotus. The rescue of Crœsus and the wisdom of Solon were the points of view given in the Greek tradition and guiding it. If Nicolaus of Damascus has used Xanthus, and his account rests on a combination of the Greek and Lydian tradition – it is precisely in his account that the sacrifice, and the prevention of it by rain, comes out more clearly than in Herodotus.

29

Steph. Byzant. Βαρήνη. The Barce of Justin (1, 7) must be the same city. [Barene in Jeep's ed.] Ptolem. 6, 2, 8; "Vend." 1, 68.

30

Aesch. "Pers." 770; Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 7, 4, 2; 8, 6, 8.

31

Herodotus, 9, 107, remarks that Xerxes gave the satrapy of Cilicia to Xenagoras of Halicarnassus; yet even after this date we find a Syennesis at the head of that country, which in the list of Herodotus formed the fourth satrapy.

32

Herod. 1, 141, 142, 151, 169.

33

Herod. 1, 152; Diod. Exc. Vatic. p. 27 = 9, 36, 1.

34

Herod. 1, 153. In 1, 157, on the other hand, we find "to the Persians;" cf. 1, 177.

35

H. Stein on Herod. 1, 153.

36

Herod. 1, 161. What is brought forward in the treatise "on the unfairness of Herodotus" from Charon of Lampsacus against the historian's statement about the surrender of Pactyas is limited to the naked fact that he came from Chios into the power of Cyrus.

37

Thucyd. 1, 12, 14.

38

Herod. 1, 164, 165; Plutarch, "Aristid." c. 25; Pausan. 7, 5, 4.

39

A party of the emigrant Teians is said to have founded Phanagoria; Scymn. Ch. 886; "Corp. inscrip. Graec." 2, 98.

40

Herod. 1, 174.

41

Herod. loc. cit.

42

The subsequent inhabitants of Xanthus are explained by Herodotus to be foreigners, except eighty families, who were absent at the time. He also mentions Caunians about the year 500 B.C. The name of the city occurs at a later date. On the continuance of the league of the Lycians, vol. I. p. 575.

43

Herod. 1, 143, 160.

44

The year 548 B.C. no doubt passed before the revolt of Pactyas. The Greek cities had time to build or strengthen their walls before they were attacked. Phocaea entered into negotiations for this object with the prince of Tartessus after the fall of Crœsus (Herod. 1, 163), and the great wall of the city was finished, with the assistance of money furnished by him owing to the approach of the Medes, when Harpagus attacked it. This attack cannot therefore have taken place before 547 B.C. The sieges of the Ionian and Aeolian cities occupied at least a year; the campaign against the Dorian cities, the Carians and Lycians, must therefore have taken place in 546 B.C., if not a year later. Hieronymus puts the battle of Harpagus against Ionia in Olymp. 58, 3 = 546 B.C.

45

Oroetes resided at Sardis in the reign of Cambyses and Mithrobates at Dascyleum; Herod. 3, 120.

46

Herod. 1, 168; Miletus and Samos contended in 440 B.C. for the possession of Priene.

47

Herod. 5, 37, 38; Heracl. Pont. fragm. 11, 5, ed. Müller.

48

Justin. 1, 7.

49

Excerpt. Vatic. p. 27 = 9, 35, 1.

50

Herod. 1, 153.

51

Diod. Excerpt. Vatic. p. 27 = 9, 36, 1.

52

Herod. 1, 155, 156; Polyaen. "Strateg." 7, 6, 4.

53

The reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Evilmerodach, Neriglissar, and the accession of Nabonetus in 555 B.C., are now fixed not only by the canon of Ptolemy but also by the Babylonian tablets, which give forty-three years for Nebuchadnezzar (604-561), two years for Evilmerodach (561-559), four years for Neriglissar (559-555), seventeen years for Nabonetus, (555-538); "Transactions Bibl. Society," 6, p. 47-53. Oppert (l. c. p. 262) also mentions a tablet of Labasi-marduk (Labasoarchad), who sat on the throne for nine months. Boscawen reads Lakhabasi-Kudur, l. c. p. 78. On the elevation of Hiram in Tyre, vol. III. 394.

54

Ps. and Isa. xxi. 2.

55

Fragm. 14, ed. Müller.

56

Ps. cxxxvii.

57

Ps. liii., liv.

58

Jer. 1. 17-19.

59

Jer. 1. 2; li. 44.

60

Jer. li. 13, 53, 58.

61

Jer. 1. 14, 29; li. 27.

62

V. 314 n.

63

Deut. Isa. xiii. 17-22; xiv. 4, 11-14. [Cf. Cheyne, "Isaiah," Vol. II., Essay xi.]

64

Deut. Isa. xli. 2, 3; xli. 25; xliv. 28. Kohut, "Antiparsismus in Deut. Yesaias, Z. D. M. G." 1876, 3, 711 ff.

65

Deut. Isa. xlv. 1, 2, 3. Vol. III. 369.

66

Deut. Isa. xlvii. 1-13.

67

Deut. Isa. xlix. 14-16.

68

Deut. Isa. li. 17. Vol. III. 326.

69

Deut. Isa. xlix. 13.

70

Deut. Isa. xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15.

71

Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 7, 5.

72

Jer. li. 31, 32, 39; Deut. Isa. xiv. 7-9; xxi. 4-9.

73

Dan. v. 1-31.

74

Beros. fragm. 14; Euseb. "Chron." 1. 42, ed. Schöne.

75

On the site of Borsippa, Vol. I. 291, and on Nebuchadnezzar's buildings at the temple of Nebo, at Borsippa, III. 385.

76

Pliny, "H. N." 6, 30.

77

Sir Henry Rawlinson spoke in the Asiatic Society on Nov. 17, 1879, of a Babylonian cylinder brought home by Rassam, which, though broken, is said to give an account in thirty-seven legible lines of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, and to contain a genealogical tree of Cyrus. As yet I have not been able to learn anything further. [Cf. Cheyne, "Isaiah," Vol. II., Essay xi.]

78

"Pol." 3, 1, 12.

79

Oppert et Ménant, "Docum. Juridiq." p. 266.

80

Herod. 3, 159.

81

"Cyri inst." 7, 5, 34, 69, 70.

82

Xenoph. "Anab." 2, 4. Vol. III. 366.

83

Xenoph. "Cyri inst." 1, 1, 4; 7, 4, 1. On Hiram, above, p. 67; Joseph. "c. Apion," 1, 21; Polybius, 16, 40. The statement of Polybius might be referred to the campaign of Cambyses against Egypt, if the supremacy of Cyrus in Syria were not proved by other evidence, as Ezra iii. 7, and the return of the Jews. Herodotus also would not have omitted the siege of Gaza in his detailed description of the march of Cambyses against Egypt, if it had not taken place until then. The general expression in Herodotus (3, 34) cannot outweigh all these proofs; it only says with the exaggerated tone of flattery that Cambyses first placed a fleet on the sea, and claims the subjugation of Cyprus for him. As a fact Cyrus left the islands of Anatolia, except Chios and Lesbos, which voluntarily submitted, uninjured, and did not call on them for a fleet, for which there were many good reasons from the point of view of a Persian king.