http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027764996
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND THE CAREER OF EARLY MAN
BY
JAMES HENRY BREASTED, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY; CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGE 7 I.' ' V. ' T,'‘ VERSITY OF CHICAGO; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF BERLIN
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON * NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED ENTERED AT STATIONERS* HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
OUTLINES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, PART I
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON AND JAMES HENRY BREASTED ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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GINN AND COMPANY ♦ PROPRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.
In the selection of subject matter as well as in style and diction, it has been the purpose of the author to make this book sufficiently simple to be put into the hands of first-year high-school pupils. A great deal of labor has been devoted to the mere task of clear and simple statement and arrangement. While simple enough for first-year high-school work, it nevertheless is planned to interest and stimulate all students of high-school age. In dealing with each civilization a sufficient Iramework of political organization and of historical events has been laid down; but the bulk of the space has been devoted, to the life of man in all its manifestations—society, industry, commerce, religion, art, literature. These things are so presented as to make it clear how one age grows out of another, and how each civilization profits by that which has preceded it.
The story of each great race or nation is thus clearly disengaged and presented in period after period; but, nevertheless, the book purposes to present the career of man as a whole, in a connected story of expanding life and civilization from the days of the rudest stone hatchet to the Christian cathedrals of Europe, without a serious gap. A symmetrical presentation of the career of man requires adequate space for the origins of civilization and the history of the Orient, as these two subjects have been revealed by the excavations and discoveries of the last two generations, especially the last twenty-five years. The reasons for devoting more than the customary space to these subjects in this book may therefore be briefly noted.
' The length of the career of man discernible by us has been enormously increased at the present day by archaeological
VI
Ancient Times
Furthermore, the value of the early oriental monuments as teaching material has as yet hardly been discerned. The highly graphic pictorial monuments and records of the East, when accompanied by proper explanations, may be made to convey to the young student the meaning and character of a contemporary historical source more vividly than any body of ancient records surviving elsewhere. When adequately explained, such records also serve to dispel that sense of complete unreality which besets the young person in studying the career of ancient man. These materials have not been employed in our schools, because they have not been available to the teacher in the current textbooks.
Finally, when we recall that the leading religion of the world — the one which still dominates Western civilization to-day — came to us out of the Orient; when we further remember that before it fell the Roman Empire was completely orientalized, it would appear to be only fair to our schools to give them books furnishing an adequate treatment of pre-Greek civilization. This does not mean to question for a moment the undeniable supremacy of Greek culture, or to give it any less space than before. The author believes that no one who reads the chapters on Greece in this survey will gain the impression that Hellas has been sacrificed to Moloch in other words, to her oriental predecessors.
The author is convinced that the surviving monuments of the entire ancient world can be so visualized as to render ancient history a very real story even to young students, and that these monuments may be made to tell their own story with <*reat vividness. This method he has already introduced into the ancient-history chapters of Outlines of European History, Part / where it has demonstrated its availability. The same method has been employed in illustrating this ancient history. The result has been a book somewhat larger than the current text books on ancient history; but the excess is due to the series of illustrations. The book actually contains a text of about five hundred pages, with a " picture book ” of about two hundred
Preface
vii
and fifteen pages. Teachers will do well to make the illustrations and accompanying descriptive matter part of each lesson. The references in the text to the illustrations, and the references to the text in the descriptive matter under the illustrations, if noted and used, will be found to -merge text and illustrations into a unified whole. It should be noted that all references to the text are by paragraph (§) except a few references by " Section.”
An elaborate system of maps has been arranged by the author for the purpose of bringing the successive epochs of history before the pupil in terms of geography. The underlying principle is the arrangement on the( same plate of from two to four maps representing successive historical epochs. It is believed that these composite maps, called by the author sequence maps, will prove a powerful aid to the teacher.
The author has not found it an easy task to turn from twenty-five years of research in a laboratory of ancient history, extending from g. university post in America to the frontiers of the oriental lands, and endeavor to summarize for youthful readers the facts now discernible in the career of ancient man. Under these circumstances the experience of my friend Professor James Harvey Robinson, who has done so much for the study of history in the schools of America, has been invaluable. The book owes a great deal to the inspiration of his unflagging interest and the helpfulness of his long experience in the art of simplification. It may be mentioned here that Professor Robinson’s Medieval and Modern Times forms the continuation of this volume on ancient history. To my colleague Professor C. F. Huth also I am indebted for careful reading of the proofs, accompanied by unfailingly valuable counsel. To him, furthermore, I owe the excellent bibliography of Greece and Rome at the end of the volume. Mr. Robert I. Adriance, head of the history department of the East Orange high schools, has kindly read all the proofs. His discerning criticisms and wide knowledge have proved very valuable to the book, and his unfailing interest has been a great encouragement.
viii Ancient Times
It will be noticed that some of the author’s treatment of the ancient world in Outlines of European History, Part /, has been retained here. These portions had already been looked over by Mr. A. F. Barnard of the University High Schoo of Chicago, and he has also very kindly read the proofs of the remainder of the volume. The chapters on the Babylonians and Assyrians have been read by Brofessor D. D. Luckenbill, and that on the Hebrews by Brofessor J. M. Bowis Smith, and to their kindness I am indebted for several suggestions. The sections on early Christianity and the Church have likewise been looked * over by my colleague Brofessor S. J. Case. To all these friends and colleagues the author would here express his sincere thanks.
It has been very gratifying to the author to be able to include in a book of this character the six charming etchings made expressly for the volume by Mr. George 1. Blowman. To Mrs. William T. Brewster he is also indebted for the beautiful water color of the Blain of Argos (Blate III). Besides photographs furnished by the Egyptian Expedition of The University of Chicago, many illustrations have been contributed by foreign scholars, to whom the author would here express his thanks, especially to Bissing (Munich), Borchardt (Cairo), Dechelette now alas! a sacrifice of the great war (Roanne), Dorpfeld (Athens and Berlin), Hoemes (Vienna), Koldewey (Babylon), Montelius (Stockholm), Schaefer (Berlin), Schubart (Berlin), Steindorff (Leipzig),-and some others, who have kindly furnished photographs and sketches. The author is also especially indebted to Messrs. Underwood & Underwood, for permission to use their unrivaled series of Egyptian, oriental, and Mediterranean photographs as the basis for a number of sketches: Figs. 23, 122, 128, 153, 159, 163, 171, 174, I75) 176, 177, 178, 179, 189, 190, 203, 221, 260. No more vivid impressions of the places and scenes where the men of the early world lived and wrought can be obtained than by the use of these photographs in stereoscopic form. Teachers who make the Underwood stereographs a part of their equipment will
Preface
ix
find that their teaching gains enormously in effectiveness. The author desires to thank also Mr. E. K. Robinson of Ginn and Company, without whose experienced assistance and unfailing patience it would have been impossible to complete the unusual and elaborate illustrative scheme of this book. To the publishers, who have unhesitatingly supported this expensive and laborious illustrative equipment and to the remarkably skillful and efficient proofreaders and printers who have solved the numerous and extraordinary typographical difficulties involved in so large an illustrative scheme, the author would also offer his hearty thanks.
JAMES HENRY BREASTED
PART I. THE EARLIEST EUROPEANS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Early Mankind in Europe
1. Earliest Man’s Ignorance and Progress . ..........i
2. The Early Stone Age . ..... 5
3. The Middle Stone Age .... . . . . g
4. The Late Stone Age .... . . . 14
PART II. THE ORIENT
II. The Story of Egypt: the Earliest Nile-Dwellers and the Pyramid Age
5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants .......35
6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 n.c.) ... .49
7. Art and Architecture in the Pyramid Age . . .68
III. The Story of Egypt : the Feudal Age and the Empire
8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age . 74
9. The Founding of the Empire . . ......80
\ 10. The Higher Life of the Empire ... . 86
11. The Decline and Fall of the Egyptian Empire . 93
12. The Decipherment of Egyptian Writing by Champollion 97
IV. Western Asia : Babylonia
13. The Lands and Races of Western Asia . . . 100
14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and Early Struggle of
Sumerian and Semite ... . . ... 107
15. The First Semitic Triumph :i the Age of Sargon . 122
16. Union of Sumerians and Semites: the Kings of Sumer
and Akkad ... ... .... . . 126
17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the Age of Hammurapi
and After......................... . 128
V. The Assyrians and Chaldeans
18. Early Assyria and her Rivals........ . . 140
19. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.).....151
20. The Chaldean Empire : the Last Semitic Empire . . . 164
xi
xii
Ancient Times
CHAPTER
VI. The Medo-Persian Empire
21. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion .
22. The Aiyan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster
23. Rise of the Persian Empire : Cyrus . . ...
24. The Civilization of the Persian Empire (about 530
tO 330 B.C.) ...................
25. Persian Documents and the Decipherment of Cuneiform w 26. The Results of Persian Rule and its Religious Influence
VII. The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient
27. Palestine and the Predecessors of the Hebrews there
28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine and the
United Hebrew Kingdom...........
29. The Two Hebrew Kingdoms...... ...
30. The Destruction of the Hebrew Kingdoms by Assyria
and Chaldea........... ....
31. The Hebrews in Exile and their Deliverance by the
Persians..............
32. Decline of Oriental Leadership; Estimate of Oriental
Civilization . . ... ........
PART III. THE GREEKS
VIII. The Dawn of European Civilization and the Rise
of the Eastern Mediterranean World
33. The Dawn of Civilization in Europe . . .
34. The iEgean World: the Islands . . . . .
35. The JEgean World : the Mainland . . #
36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and
the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World . .
IX. The Greek Conquest of ti-ie vEgean World
37. The Coming of the Greeks .... .
38. The Nomad Greeks make the Transition to the Settled
Life ... ... . . . , #
X. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings
39. The JEgean Inheritance and the Spread of Phoenician
Commerce...............
40. The Phoenicians bring the First Alphabet to Europe
41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs.....
42. The Beginnings and Early Development of Greek
Religion.................
PAGE
171
176
179
182
189
194
197
200
206
210
213
217
221
225
236
-44
252
259.
263
270
273
276
Contents xiii
CHAPTER PAGE
XI. The Age of the Nobles and Greek Expansion in the Mediterranean
43. The Disappearance of the Kings and the Leadership .
of the Nobles..............282
44. Greek Expansion in the Age of the Nobles .... 287
45. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Nobles . . 290
XII. The Industrial Revolution and the Age of the Tyrants
46. The Industrial and Commercial Revolution .... 295
47. Rise of the Democracy and the Age of the Tyrants . 301
48. Civilization of the Age of the Tyrants......307
XIII. The Repulse of Persia
49. The Coming of the Persians..........322
50. The Greek Repulse of Persians and Phoenicians . 328
/
XIV. The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta,
and the Rise of the Athenian Empire
51. The Beginnings of the Rivalry between Athens and
Sparta...................... 336
52. The Rise of the Athenian Empire and the Triumph
of Democracy . . ..........339
53. Commercial Development and the Opening of the
Struggle between Athens and Sparta......344
XV. Athens in the Age of Pericles
54. Society, the Home, Education and Training of Young
Citizens.................35°
55. Higher Education, Science, and the Training gained
by State Service.............357
56. Art and Literature..............3^2
XVI. The Struggle between Athens and Sparta and the Fall of the Athenian Empire
57. The Tyranny of Athens and the Second Peloponne
sian War.................3,78
58. Third Peloponnesian War and Destruction of the
Athenian Empire.............3^5
XVII. The Final Conflicts among the Greek States
59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline of Democracy 394
60. The Fall of Sparta and the Leadership of Thebes . 402
xiv
Ancient Times
CHAPTER PAt-c-
XVIII. The Higher Life of the Greeks from the Death of Pericles to the Fall of the Greek States . 61. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting . . - 4°6
62. Religion, Literature, and Thought............4*3
XIX. Alexander the Great
63. The Rise of Macedonia........_ . . . 425
64. Campaigns of Alexander the Great......429
65. International Policy of Alexander: its Personal Con
sequences . . . . . . .... 438
PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
XX. The Heirs of Alexander •
66. The Heirs of Alexander’s Empire . . . 445
67. The Decline of Greece ... . . . . . . 450
XXI. The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age
68. Cities, Architecture, and Art..... . 453
69. Inventions and Science; Libraries and Literature . 466
70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion . . . 475
71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of Hellenic-Oriental
Civilization; Decline ofCitizenship and the City-State 481
XXII. The Western Mediterranean World and the Roman Conquest of Italy
72. The Western Mediterranean World . . . 484
73. Earliest Rome ...... _ ^2
74. The Early Republic: its Progress and Government . 499
75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic and the Con
quest of Italy . ... .
511
XXIII. The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy
and the Rivalry with Carthage
76. Italy under the Early Roman Republic . . ,
77. Rome and Carthage as Commercial Rivals .
XXIV. The Roman Conquest of the Western Mediter
ranean World
78. The Struggle with Carthage: the Sicilian War, or
First Punic War...... . . . .
79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic War) and the
Destruction of Carthage.........
520
524
533
535
Contents
xv
CHAPTER PAGE
^ XXV. World Dominion and Degeneracy
80. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean
World ...... . . . . . 549
81. Roman Government and Civilization in the Age of
Conquest. ...... . . 553
82. Degeneration in City and Country . . . . 563
XXVI. A Century of Revolution and the End of the Republic .
83. The Land Situation and the' Beginning • of the
Struggle between Senate and People . . . 574
84. The Rise .of One-Man Power: Marius and Sulla . 578
85. The Overthrow of the Republic: Pompey and
Caesar . . ... .......584
86. The Triumph of Augustus and the End of the
Civil War . . . .....596
PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
XXVII. The First of Two Centuries of Peace: the Age of Augustus and the Successors of his Line
87. The Rule of Augustus and the Beginning of Two
Centuries of Peace (30 B.C.-14 a.d.).....601
88. The Civilization of the Augustan Age .... 607
89. The Line of Augustus and the End of the First
Century of Peace (14 A.D.-68 a.d.)..... 617
XXVIII. The Second Century of Peace and the Civilization of the Early Roman Empire
90. The Emperors of the Second Century of Peace (be
ginning 69 a.d.) ......... . . 625
91. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire: the
Provinces . ..... 636
92. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire: Rome 649
93. Popularity of Oriental Religions and the Spread of
' Early Christianity . ........ 659
94. The End of the Second Century of Peace .... 664
XXIX. A Century of Revolution and the Division of the Empire
95. Internal Decline of the Roman Empire . . 667
96. A Century of Resolution........ 673
xvi
Ancient Times
CHAPTER PAGE
97. The Roman Empire an Oriental Despotism . . ■ • 677
98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of
Christianity ... .......682
XXX. The Triumph of the Barbarians and the End of the Ancient World
99. The Barbarian Invasions and the Fall of the Western
Empire . . .........688’
100. The Triumph of the Roman Church and its Power
over the Western Nations . . . . 698
101. The Final Revival of the Orient and the Forerunners
of the Nations of Modern Europe .... . 705
102. Retrospect..............V . 713
BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX . . .
PLATE PAGE
I., i Restoration of an Egyptian Vase of the
&P'A n,
Pyramid Age Frontispiece
II. Glazed Brick Lion from the Wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace........164
III. The Plain of Argos and the Sea viewed
from the Castle of Tiryns.....276
IV. A Corner of the Parthenon.....380
V. The Temples and Palms of Phil/f. .... 444
VI. Greeks and Persians hunting Lions with
Alexander the Great.......468
VII. The Greek Theater at Taormina, with its
Roman Additions.........560
VIII. One of the Oldest Surviving Portrait
Paintings............654
xvii
PAGES
Q
Map of Europe in the Ice Age .... . . . . * *
Egypt and the Nile Valley to the Second Cataract . 3^“37
Egyptian Thebes . . . . ... • • . . 87
The Ancient Oriental World and Neighboring Europe before the Rise of the Greeks . . . ... .... 100-101
Map of Sumer and Akkad, later called Babylonia.......106
Map of'■Nineveh...... .... . . .... 154
Map of Babylon in the Chaldean Age........165
Sequence Map showing Expansion of the Oriental Empires for a Thousand Years {from about 1500 to 500 B.C.).....188-189
I. Egyptian Empire (Fifteenth Century B.C.)
11. Assyrian Empire (Seventh Century b.c.)
III. Median and Chaldean Empires (Sixth Century B.C.)
IV. Persian Empire (500 B.C.)
Palestine the Land of the Hebrews ... ......196-197
Sequence Map of the Eastern Mediterranean World from the Grand Age of Cretan Civilization (about 1500 B.C.) to the Conquest of the ^Egean by the Greeks . . . . 252-253
I. Pre-Greek Civilization in the Eastern Mediterranean World till 1500 B.C.
II. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Greek Conquest of the JEgean World (1500-1000 B.C.) and the Spread of Phoenician Commerce
after 1200 B.C. _
Greece in the Fifth Century B.C. ... .... 264-265
Colonial Expansion of the Greeks and Phcenicians down to the
Sixth Century B.c........ . .....288-289
Map of the World by Hecatseus (517 B.C.)............
Sequence Map showing Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States from the Persian Wars (beginning 490 B.C.) to the Beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) ■ • ... . . 344
I. Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States in the Persian Wars (490-479 B.C.)
11. The Athenian Empire and the Greek States at the Opening of the Second Peloponnesian War (431 b.c.)
xviii
List of Maps xix
PAGES
Central Greece and Athens................. 352-353
I. Attica and Neighboring States
II. Athens
Map of the World according to Herodotus....... . 360
Plan of the Siege of Syracuse . ..... .....386
Plan of the Battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.) ... ......403
Empire of Alexander the Great......... . . 436-437
Sequence Map showing the Three Empires of Alexander’s Successors from the Third Century B.C. to their Decline at the Coming of the Romans after 200 B. c.........448-449
I. The Three Empires of Alexander’s Successors in the Third Cen
tury B.C.
II. The Three Empires of Alexander’s Successors Early in the Second
Century B.C.
Map of the World according to Eratosthenes (200 B.C.) . . 472
Italy and Adjacent Lands before the Supremacy of Rome 484-485 Sketch Map showing Four Rival Peoples of the Western Mediterranean: Etruscans, Italic Tribes, Greeks, and Carthaginians Early Latium ... . ... . ... .
Map of Early Rome showing the Successive Stages of its Growth Four Sketch Maps showing Expansion of Roman Power in Italy
I. Italy at the Beginning of the Roman Republic (about 500 B.C.)
II. Roman Power during the Samnite Wars (down to 300 B.C.)
III. Roman Power after the Samnite Wars (290 B.C.)
IV. Roman Power after the War with Pyrrhus (275 B.C.)
The Route and Marches of Hannibal, from 218 to 203 B.C. . . .
Plan of the Battle of Cannae .... . . . Sequence Map showing the Expansion of the Roman Power from the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 B.C.) to the Death of Caesar (44 b. c.) . ..........5S-—553
I. Roman Power at the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 B.C.)
II. Expansion of Roman Power between the Sicilian and Hannibalian Wars with Carthage (241-218 B.C.)
III. Expansion of Roman Power from the End of the Hannibalian Wars
to the Beginning of the Revolution (201-133 B.C.)
IV. Expansion of Roman Power from the Beginning of the Revolu
tion to the Death of Csesar (133-44 B-c0
Plan of the Battle of Pharsalus .
Map of Rome under the Emperors
• 593 622
489
493
500
516
538
540
XX
Ancient Times
PAGES
Sequence Map showing Territorial Gains and Losses of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar (44 B.C.) to the Death of Diocletian (305 A. D.) ..... • • 636-637
I. Expansion of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar to the End of the Two Centuries of Peace (44 B.C.-167 a.d.)
II. The Roman Empire under Diocletian (284-305 a.d.) showing the Four Prefectures
Map of the World by the Astronomer and Geographer Ptolemy
(Second Century a.d.) ... . ... 657 The Roman Empire as organized by Diocletian and Constantine . ............. 676-677
Migrations of the Germans . . ..........692-693
Europe in the Time of Charlemagne . . . . . . 700—701 Mohammedan Conquests at their Greatest Extent ...... 709
EARLY MANKIND IN EUROPE
Section i. Earliest Man,’s Ignorance and Progress
We all know that our fathers and mothers never saw an aeroplane when they were children, and very few of them had ever seen an automobile. Their fathers lived during most of their lives without electric lights or telephones in their houses. Their grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, were obliged to make all long journeys in stagecoaches drawn by horses, and some of them died without ever having seen a locomotive. One after another, as they have been invented, such things have come and continue to come into the lives of men.
Each device grew out of earlier inventions, and each would have been impossible without the inventions which came in before it. Thus, if we went back far enough, we would reach a point where no one could build a stagecoach or a wagon, because no one had invented a wheel or tamed a wild horse.- Earlier still there were no ships and no travel or commerce by sea. There were no metal tools, for no one had ever seen any metal. Without metal tools for cutting the stone there could be no fine buildings or stone structures. It was impossible to write, for no one had invented writing, and so there were no books nor any knowledge of science. At the same time there were no schools or hospitals or churches, and no laws or government. This book is intended to tell the story of how
I. Man’s gradual invention and acquirement of the posses sions of life
2. Ancient history" a story of similar achievement! followed by national rivalries
2
Ancient Times
3. Man began with nothing and with no one to teach him
4. Savages of to-day show us the life of earliest man; the Tasmanians and what they had failed to learn
5. The
Tasmanians and what they had learned
mankind gained all these things and built up great nations which struggled among themselves for leadership, and then weakened and fell. This story forms what we call ancient history.
If we go back far enough in the story of man, we reach a time when he possessed nothing whatever but his hands with which to protect himself, satisfy his hunger, and meet all his other needs. He must have been without speech and unable even to build a fire. There was no one to teach him anything. The earliest men who began in this situation had to learn everything for themselves by slow experience and long effort, and every tool, however simple, had to be invented.
People so completely uncivilized as the earliest men must have been, no longer exist on earth. Nevertheless, the lowest savage tribes found by explorers at the present day are still leading a life very much like that of our early ancestors. For example, the Tasmanians, the people whom the English found on the island of Tasmania a century or so ago, wore no clothing; they had not learned how to build a roofed hut; they did not know how to make a bow and arrows, nor even to fish. They had no goats, sheep, or cows; no horses, not even a dog. They had never heard of sowing seed nor raising a crop of any kind. They did not know that clay would harden in the fire, and so they had no pottery jars, jugs, or dishes for food.
Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy only a very few of man’s needs. Yet that which they had learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest men. They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in cold weather, and over it they cooked their meat. They had learned to construct very good wooden spears, though without metal tips, for they had never heard of metal. These spears, tipped with stone, they could throw with great accuracy, and thus bring down the game they needed for food, or drive away their human enemies. They would take a flat stone and, by chipping off the edges to thin them, they could make a rude
Early Mankitid in Etirope
3
knife with which to skin and cut up the game they killed. They were also very deft in weaving cups, vessels, and baskets of bark fiber. Above all, they had a simple language, with words for all the ordinary things they used and did every day.
It was only after several hundred thousand years of savage life and slow progress that the earliest prehistoric men of Europe reached and passed beyond a stage of savagery like that of the Tasmanians just described. The Europe which formed the home of these earliest men was very different from what it is today. In the shadow of the lofty primeval forests which fringed the streams and clothed the wide plains, the ponderous hippopotamus wallowed along the shores of the European rivers. The fierce rhinoceros, with a horn three feet in length, charged through the heavy tropical growth on their banks, and vast elephants, with shaggy hair two feet long (Fig. 10,7), wandered through the jungles behind. Myriads of bison and wild horses grazed on the uplands, and the broken glades sheltered numerous herds of deer.', A moist atmosphere, warm and enervating, vibrant with
Fig. i. Fire-making without Matches, by Modern Natives or Australia
The outfit is very simple, consisting merely of a round, dry stick placed upright with the lower end in a hole in a dry tree-trunk lying on the ground. By turning the stick rapidly between both hands the friction finally generates sufficient heat to produce flame (§ 8)
6. Prehistoric Europe its climate and animals
4
And cut Times
7. Life and haunts of the earliest European ; his wooden weapons and tools
-------V
the notes of many tropical birds, pervaded this prehistoric
European wilderness stretching far across Europe.
With nothing to
■i cover his naked
ness, the early savage of Europe roamed stealthily through these tropical forests, seeking his daily food among the roots, seeds, and wild fruits wherever he could find them, and listening with keen and eager ear for the sound of small game which he might be able to lay low with his rough wooden club. Doubtless he often fled in terror as he felt the thunderous tread of the giant animals of the forest or caught dim glimpses of colossal elephants plunging through the deep vistas of the jungle. At night the hunter
Fig. 2. A Group of North American Indians making Flint Weapons. (After Holmes)
The farthest Indian is prying loose a large flint stone. This is the raw material, which is then taken by the middle Indian, who crashes it down upon a rock and shatters it into fragments. One of these fragments is then taken by the nearest Indian, who holds it in his left hand while he strikes it with a stone in his right hand. These blows flake off pieces of flint, and the Indian is so skillful that he can thus shape a flint hatchet. This process of shaping the flint by blows (that is, by percussion) Was the earliest and rudest method and produced the roughest stone tools. In the course of thousands of years two improvements followed— chipping the edge by pressure (Fig. 5) and sharpening the edge by grinding(Fig. 16,_y)
slept wherever the game had led him, after cutting up the flesh of his prey with a wooden knife and devouring it raw. Not knowing how to
Early Mankind in Europe
5
make a fire to ward off the savage beasts, he lay trembling in the darkness at the roar of the mighty saber-tooth tiger.
At length, however, he learned to know fire, perhaps finding it in his jungle haunts when the lightning kindled a forest fire, or fearing it from afar as he viewed the terrible volcanoes along the Mediterranean. It was a great step forward when he at last learned to produce it himself with his whirl-stick (Fig. i). He could then cook his food, warm his body, and harden the tip of his wooden spear in the fire. But his dull wooden knife he could not harden, and he sometimes found a broken stone and used its ragged edge. When he learned to shape the stone to suit his needs (Fig. 2), and thus to produce a rude tool or weapon, he entered what we now call the Stone Age, more than fifty thousand years ago.
From this point on we can hold in our hands the very stone tools and implements with which early men maintained themselves in their_ long struggle to survive. By the long trail of stone implements which they left behind them we can follow them and tell just how far they had advanced in the successive stages of their upward career; for these stages are revealed to us by their increasing skill in working stone and in other industries which they gradually learned. We can distinguish, in the examples of their handiwork which still survive, three successive ages, which we may call the Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Late Stone Age. Let us now observe man’s progress through these three ages, one after the other.
Section 2. The Early Stone Age
Until a short time ago it was supposed that human history was comparatively brief. Moreover, everyone took it for granted that the earlier period of man’s past had left no surviving traces. An old letter written in London two hundred years ago (1714) tells how a certain apothecary discovered the bones of an elephant in a gravel-pit near London, and, near
8. Man
learns to kindle fire and use sto
9. Career c early man ‘ traceable ir surviving stone impk ments and other work of his hand
10. Moder ignorance i man’s vast age until fifty years ago
6
Ancicut Times
ii. The Early Stone Age hunter FlG. 3. A FLINT FlST-and his fist- „
hatchet HATCHET OF THE EARLY
Stone Age
Rough flint flakes older than the fist-hatchet still survive to show us man’s earliest efforts at shaping stone. But the fist-hatchet is the earliest well-finished type of tool produced by man. The original is about 9 inches long, and the drawing reduces it to less than one third. Either end might be used as the cutting edge, but it was usually grasped in the fist by the narrower part, and never had any handle. Handles of wood or horn do not appear until much later (cf. Fig. 16,4-5) ■ Traces of use and wear are sometimes found on such fist-hatchets
by, the flint head of a spear. A though this letter was soon after ward published, with a drawing of the spearhead, no attention was paid to it and it was quickly forgotten. For over a centuiy similar discoveries. both in England and on the Continent, met with the same fate. It was not until some fifty years ago, after the evidence had been available for a century and a half, that the eyes of scientific men were at last opened to the fact of the enormously long sojourn of man upon the earth.
Long-continued excavations, especially in France, have furnished thousands of stone tools which reveal to us the progress of the Early Stone Age hunter after he had found that he could chip stones. By studying the collections of such stone tools now in the museums of Europe we can see how the early man gradually outgrew a variety of rudely chipped stones and finally produced a successful stone implement (Fig. 3). This he used for almost everything. It was from eight to ten inches long, narrow above and wider below, and sufficiently sharp to enable him to cut the roots and branches which he used for food, to shape his wooden fire-kindling outfit (Fig. j), and hew out his heavy wooden club
Early Mankind in Eit rope
7
This stone implement we call a " fist-hatchet,” because it was grasped in the fist, usually by the narrow end, for the hunter had not yet discovered how to attach a handle. These fist-hatchets have been found in many places in Europe as well as in other parts of the world. It is the earliest widely made and used human device which has survived to our day.
Perishing probably in great numbers, as his hazardous life went on, this savage hunter of prehistoric Europe continued for thousands of years the uncertain struggle for survival. He slowly improved his rough stone fist-hatchet, and he probably learned to make additional implements of wood, but these have of course rotted and perished, so that we know nothing of them. Of all the later possessions of man he had not yet one. The wide grainfields and the populous and prosperous communities of later Europe were still many thousands of years distant, in a future which it was even more impossible for him to foresee than our own now is for us. Single-handed he waged war upon all animals. There was not a beast which was not his foe. There was as yet no dog, no sheep or fowl, to which he might stretch out a kindly hand. The ancestor of the modern dog .was then either the jackal or the fierce wolf of the forest, leaping upon the primitive hunter unawares, and those beasts which were the ancestors of our modern domestic animals were either not yet in existence in Europe or, like the horse, still wandered the forests in a wild state (cf. Fig. x 2).
At length the Early Stone Age hunter began to notice that the air of his forest home was losing its tropical warmth. Geologists have not yet found out why, but the climate grew colder, and, as the ages passed, the ice, which all the year round still overlies the region of the North Pole and the summits of the Alps, began to descend. The northern ice crept farther and farther southward until it covered England as far south as the Thames. The glaciers of the Alps moved down the Rhone valley as far as the spot where now the city of Lyons stands (see map, p. 8). On our own continent of North America
12. Limits tions of Early Stoi Age man
13. Comir of the ice
First _. Second
, Descent /'lst\ Descent Z'2d of the / Warm \ the / Warm , '■^£5*/ Interval Interval
Human bones found as deep as 80feet below the surface of the earth
3d X Descent f 4th of the / Warm \ °^ / Warm Interval Interval
Not less than 50,000 years
Sketch Map of Europe in the Ice Age and Diagram showing Four Successive Descents of the Ice
During the Ice Age the ice advanced and retreated four times; that is, there were four periods of cold, each followed by a long interval of warmth. These periods of cold and warmth are indicated hy the falling (cold) and the rising (warmth) of the wavy line in the diagram. We are now living in the fourth warm interval. It is clear that prehistoric men began to make fist-hatchets in one of the warm intervals; but it has been very difficult for geologists and archaeologists to find out tvhich warm interval. Some think that it was the second, and if so, then men began making stone tools at least two hundred thousand years ago. Most investigators, however, now believe that stone toolmaking began early in the third warm interval; that is, the warm interval preceding the last advance of the ice. In this case stone toolmaking may have begun as late as fifty thousand years before Christ. But Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, in his valuable volume II fen of the Old Stone Age accepts a date over one hundred and twenty-five thousand years ago for the earliest stone tools, which he also places in the third warm interval
Early Mankind in Europe 9
the southern edge of the ice is marked by lines of bowlders ^carried and left there by the ice. Such lines of bowlders are found, for example, as far south as Long Island, and westward along the valleys of the Ohio and Missouri.
The hunter saw the glittering blue masses of glacier ice, with their crown of snow, pushing through the green of his forest abode and crushing down vast trees in many a sheltered glen or favorite hunting-ground. Many of the animals familiar to him retreated to the warmer South, and he was forced gradually to accustom himself to a cold climate. This change ended the Early Stone Age, but the rude fist-hatchet of its hunters, and the bones of the huge animals they slew, were sometimes left lying side by side in the sand and gravel far up on the valley slopes where in these prehistoric ages the rivers of France once flowed, before their deep modem beds had been eroded. And as these long-buried relics are brought forth to-day, they tell us the fascinating story of man’s earliest progress in gaining control of the world about him. The coming of the ice, strange as it may seem, brought with it a new period of progress, which we call the Middle Stone Age.
Section 3. The Middle Stone Age
Unable to build himself a shelter from the cold, the hunter took refuge in the limestone cave% (Fig. 4), where he and his descendants continued to live for thousands of years. We can imagine him at the door of his cave, carefully chipping off the edge of his flint tools. He has left the rude old fist-hatchet far behind, for the hunter has finally discovered that by pressure with a hard piece of bone he can chip off a line of fine flakes along the edge of his flint tool and thus produce a much finer cutting edge (Fig. 5) than by chipping $ith blows (or percussion), as he formerly did. This discovery enabled "him to produce a considerable variety of flint tools — chisels, drills and hammers, polishers and scrapers (Fig. 5). The new pressure-chipped edges
14. The ei
of the Ear! Stone Age
15. The in dustries of' Middle Sto Age man; t new pressu chipped edge, and i troduction bone and ivory imple ments
IO
Ancient Times
16. The Middle Stone Age hunter’s new weapons and skin clothing
were sharp enough to cut and shape even bone, ivory, and especially reindeer horn. The mammoth (Fig. 10, 7) furnished the hunter with ivory, and when he needed horn he found great herds of reindeer,1 driven southward by the ice, grazing before the entrance of his cavern (Fig. 10,3-5).
Fig. 4. Cliffs in the South of France containing Caverns
INHABITED BY MIDDLE STONE AGE MAN
This district is filled with remains of Middle Stone Age man. The dark opening at A is the entrance to a famous cavern (called Fonl-de-Gaume) containing the finest wall paintings (§ 18) of the Middle Stone Age surviving in France. They are surpassed only by those of Altamira, Spain. On the floor are layers *of rubbish containing human remains, as in Fig. 9. (Drawn from a photograph by Professor Osborn)
Equipped with his new and keener tools, the hunter worked out barbed ivory spear-points, which he mounted with long wooden shafts. He also discovered the bow and arrows, and he carried at his girdle a sharp flint dagger. For straightening his wooden spear-shafts and arrows he invented an ingenious shaft-straightener of reindeer horn. Another clgver device of
1 The reindeer was so plentiful in this age that French archaeologists often call it the " Reindeer Age.”
Early Mankind in Europe 11
horn or ivory was his new throwing-stick, by which he could hurl his long spear much farther and with greater power (Figs. 6 and 7) . than he could before. Fine ivory needles (Fig. 8) show that the hunter now protected himself from cold,, and from the brambles of the forest wilderness with clothing made by sewing together the skins of the animals he slew.
Thus equipped, the hunter of the Middle Stone Age was a much more dangerous foe of the wild creatures than were his ancestors of the Early Stone Age. In a single cavern in Sicily modem archaeologists have dug out the bones of no less than two thousand hippopotamuses which these Middle Stone Age hunters killed. In France one group of such men slew so many wild horses (Fig. 10, 6) for food that the bones which they tossed about their camp fires gathered
■Fig. 5. Flint Tools and Weapons of the Middle Stone Age
From right to left they include knives, spear-and arrow-points, scrapers, drills, and various edged tools. They show great skill and precision in flaking. The fine edges have all been produced by chipping off a line of flakes along the margin, seen especially in the long piece at the right. This chipping is done by pressure. The brittleness of flint is such that if a hard piece of bone is pressed firmly against a flint edge, a flake of flint, often reaching far back from the edge, will snap off in response to increasing pressure. This was a great improvement over the earliest method by striking (percussion, Figs. 2 and 3)
17. Life oi the Middle Stone Age hunter
12
Ancient Times
18. Discovery of Middle Stone Age art — carvings, drawings, and paintings
in masses forming a layer in some places six feet thick an^ covering a space about equal to four modem city l°ts 0 fifty by two hundred feet. Among such deposits excavators have found even the bone whistle with which the returning hunter announced his coming to the hungry family waiting in the cave (Fig. 4). On his arrival there he found his home surrounded by revolting piles of garbage. Amid foul odors
Fig. 6. Modern Eskimo Native hurling a Spear with a Throwing-Stick
The spear lies in a channel in the throwing-stick (a), which the hunter grasps at one end. At the outer end (<5) of the throwing-stick is a hook (cf. Fig. 7, B) against which the butt of the'spear lies, and as the hunter throws forward his arm, retaining the throwing-stick in his hand and allowing the spear tol go, the throwing-stick acts like an elongation of his arm, giving great sweep and propelling power as the spear is discharged. Modern schoolboys would not find it hard to make and use such a throwing-stick (see § 16)
of decaying flesh this savage European crept into his cave-dwelling at night, little realizing that, many feet beneath the cavern floor on which he slept, lay the remains of his ancestors in layer upon layer, the accumulations of thousands of years (Fig- 9)-
It is not a little astonishing to find that these Middle Stone Age hunters could already carve (Fig. 7), draw (Fig. 10), and even paint with considerable skill. A Spanish nobleman investigating a cavern on his estate in Northern Spain, was at one time digging among the accumulations on the floor of the
Early Mankind in Europe
13
cave, where he found flint and bone implements, when his little daughter, who was playing about in the gloom of the cavern, suddenly shouted, " Toros 1 toros ! ” (" Bulls 1 bulls ! ”). At the same time she pointed to the ceiling. The startled father, looking up, beheld a never-to-be-forgotten sight which at once interrupted his flint-digging. In a long line stretching far across the ceiling of the cavern was a vast procession of bison bulls painted in well-preserved colors on the rock. For at least ten thousand years no human eye had beheld these cave paintings of a vanished race of prehistoric men, till the eye of a child rediscovered them.
. Other evidences of higher life among these early men are few indeed. Nevertheless, even these ancient men of the Middle Stone Age believed in divine beings; they already had a crude idea of the life of the soul, or of the departed person after death. Dressed in his customary ornaments, equipped at least with a few flint implements, and protected by a rough circle of stones, the departed hunter was buried in the cave beneath the hearth where he had so often shared the results of the hunt with his family. Here the bodies of these primitive men are found at the present day, lying in successive strata of refuse which continued to collect for ages, the lowest bodies sometimes far
I
ft A
A B Fig. 7. AThrowing-Stick once used by a Hunter of the Middle Stone Age
Two views of the same stick, seen from front (A) and side (B). It is carved of reindeer horn to represent the head and forelegs of an ibex. Observe hook at the top of B for holding the butt of the spear-shaft, as in Fig. 6. The throwing-stick and the bow were man’s earliest devices for propelling his weapons with speed
19. Relig and life h after, in t Middle Si Age
14
Ancient Times
20. Retreat of the ice; dawn of the Late Stone Age
21. Distribution of surviving remains of Late Stone Age man in Europe
down at the bottom of the deep accumulations which gathered over them (Fig. 9).
The signs left by the ice, and still observable in Europe, would lead us to think that it slowly withdrew northward to its present latitude probably not less than some ten thousand years ago. The retreat of the ice was due to the fact that the climate again grew warmer and became what it is to-day. At this point, therefore, the men of the Middle Stone Age, whose story
we have been following in France, entered upon natural conditions in Europe like those of to-day. They had, meantime, maintained steady progress in the production of tools and implements with which to carry on their struggle for existence and to wring subsistence from the world around them. That progress now carried man into the third great period of the Stone Age, which we may call the Late Stone Age.1
Section 4. The Late Stone Age
The Late Stone Age remains of man’s life are discovered widely distributed throughout a large part of Europe. In our study of such remains we must regard Europe as a whole, and not confine ourselves to France and its vicinity, as heretofore. Especially beside watercourses, lakes, and inlets of the
1 The Stone Age periods are as follows:
Early Stone Age (stone edge made by striking, or percussion) 1 Called Paleolithie Age Middle Stone Age (chipped stone edge made by pressure) ) by archaeologists.
Late Stone Age (stone edge made by grinding) j ^chs^logist^
— ~ ____Q>
Fig. 8. Ivory Needle of the Middle Stone Age
Such needles are found still surviving in the rubbish in the French caverns, where the wives of the prehistoric hunters lost them and failed to find them again twenty thousand years ago. They show that these women were already sewing together the skins of wild animals as clothing
Fig. 9. A Cross Section showing the Layers of Rubbish and the Human Remains in a Middle Stone Age Cavern (After D£chelette)
This cavern is at Grimaldi on the Italian coast of the Mediterranean, just ontside of France. The entrance is at the left and the back wall at the right. We see the original rock floor at the bottom, and above A it the layers of accumulations, 30 feet deep (§ 17). The black lines A
to / represent layers of ashes, etc., the remains of nine successive hearth-fires, each of which must have been kept going by the natives for many years. The thicker (lightly shaded) layers consisted of bones of animals, rubbish, and rocks which had fallen from the roof of the cavern in the course of ages. The lowermost layers (below I) contained bones of the rhinoceros (representing a warm climate), while the uppermost layers contained bones of the reindeer (indicating a cold climate). Two periods, the Early and the Middle Stone Age, are thus represented; the Early Stone Age below, the Middle Stone Age (or Reindeer Age, § 15) above. Five burials were found by the excavators in the layers B, C, H\ and /; layer C contained the bodies of two children, The lowermost burial (in /) was 25 feet below the surface of the accumulations in the cave
Fig. io. Carvings in Ivory (i and 3-7) and in Stone of Cavern Walls (2), made by the Hunters of the Middle Stone Age
The oldest works of art by man, made ten or fifteen thousand years ago. /, reindeer and salmon — hunter’s and fisherman’s talisman ; 2, bison bull at bay; 3, grazing reindeer; 4, running reindeer; 5, head of woman, front view and profile ; 6, head of wild horse whinnying; 7, mammoth' showing huge tusks and long hair — an animal long since extinct
16
Early Mankind in Europe
11
Age settlements are found on the shores of Denmark, where the wattle huts (Fig. 11) of the prehistoric Norsemen stretched in straggling lines far along the sea beach. We do not know the race of these earliest Norsemen, but we can see that they were both fishermen and hunters. They already possessed rude boats from which they were able to secure myriads of oysters near the shore, or even to push timidly out into deep water for other shellfish. On shore the hunter followed the wild boar and the wild bull (Fig. 12) in the neighboring forests, and brought down the waterfowl in the marshes. The air was keen — possibly a little colder than now. ■ On their return at twilight the hunters and fishermen, crouching about the fire, devoured their prey, tossing aside the oyster shells and the bones of deer and wild boar, which formed a circle of very ill-smelling food refuse about the fire.
This refuse gathered in ridges and hundreds of feet long (Fig. fires which once gleamed along
Fig. 11. Plan of Remains of a Late Stone Age Hut
The circle of stones surrounded the base of the walls. Beside the door (at the left) is a rough stone hearth, placed there in order to allow the smoke to escape through the door, chimneys having not yet been devised. The walls were of wattle (interwoven reeds), made tight by daubing with clay. The rubbish found in the circle sometimes contains patches of burned clay, bearing on one side the indented pattern of the basketlike wattle and on the other the impression of the human fingers which pressed the clay on the walls thousands of years ago. The fire which destroyed the hut baked the clay plaster to pottery
parallel with the shore-line 13), marking the line of the shores of prehistoric
sea these early communities throughout most of Europe located their settlements. It is, however, impossible to determine the different races and peoples in various parts of Europe in the Late Stone Age.
The earliest of such Late Stone
22. Earlif settlemen of the Lai Stone Ag' found in Denmark
Fig. 12. Skeleton of a Wild Bull bearing the Marks of the Late Stone Age Hunters’ Arrows which killed him in the Danish Forests some Ten Thousand Years ago
A Late Stone Age hunter (§ 22) shot him in the back near the spine (see upper white ring on skeleton). The wound healed, leaving a scar on the rib (A, above). Another hunter later shot him, and this time several arrows pierced his vitals. One of them, however, struck a rib (see lower white ring on skeleton) and broke off. Both sides of this wound, still unhealed, with the broken flint arrowhead still filling it, are shown above in B and C. While the wounded bull was trying to swim across a neighboring lake he died and his body sank to the bottom, and the pursuing hunter, on reaching the lake, found no trace of him. In the course of thousands of years the lake slowly filled up, and water 10 feet deep was followed by dry peat of the same depth, covering the skeleton of the bull. Here he was found some years ago (T905), and with him were the flint arrowheads that had killed him. His skeleton, still bear ing the marks of the flint arrowheads (.4, B, C), was removed and set up in the Museum at Copenhagen 18
Early Mankind in Europe
19
Denmark. Each of these sbell-heaps is to-day a storehouse of remains from the life of these earliest Norsemen. The shells and bones reveal how extensive was their control over the wild life about them. The marks of animal teeth on many a bone show us how the jackals of the neighboring forest crept up to gnaw the bones along the margin of the heap; and, slowly growing more and more familiar with their human neighbors,
Fig. 13. Ridge composed of the Food Refuse of Late Stone Age Man on the Coast of Denmark
The ridge on the top of the hill at the right stretches along the margin of a depression (at the left), which was once a shallow inlet of the sea but is now filled up and has become a hayfield (notice the hay wagon). Such a ridge made up chiefly of oyster shells is sometimes over half a mile long and over thirty paces wide and may contain a hundred thousand stone tools, weapons, and fragments of pottery
these wild beasts at last remained by the fireside, to become the loyal companions of man, the earliest domestic animal, which to-day we call the dog.
Bits of burned clay and broken pots, still lying in these shell-heaps, show us that these early Norsemen had already gained knowledge, probably from the South, of the hardening quality of clay when exposed to fire, and they were now able to make rude kettles of burned clay, which we call pottery, the earliest in Europe.1 This is one of the most important
1 Pottery was probably invented independently in many different regions of the world. The endeavor to make a water-tight, fireproof kettle by smearing a basket with clay would result in potteiy when the attempt was made to heat water in it over a fire.
23. The shell-heaps of Denmark and their revelations
24. Industries revealed by the shell-heaps of Denmark: earliest potteiy in Europe; ground stone tools
25. Tools of the Late Stone Age man
26. Effectiveness of stone tools
27. Swiss
lake-villages of the Late Stone Age
20 Ancient Times
■ nrtciflt achieve-
innovations of the Late Stone Age. Another impo1 ^ ^jgcoyejy ment marked the beginning of this age. This was whetstone that the edge of a stone tool might be ground upon ^
precisely as we grind a steel tool at the present y shell-heaps we find the earliest heavy stone axes wit a groun edge (Fig. 16,5). They made the man of the Late tone ge vastly more successful in his control of the world about him.
His list of tools as he went about his work was now almost as complete as that of the modern carpenter. It included, besides the ax, likewise chisels, knives, drills, saws, and whetstones, made mostly of flint but sometimes of other hard stones. Our ancient craftsman had now learned also to attach a wooden handle by lashings around the ax-head, or even to bore a hole in the ax-head and insert the handle (Fig. 16,5). These tools as found to-day often display a polish due to the wear which they have undergone in the hands of the user.
It is a mistake to suppose that such stone tools were wholly crude and ineffective. A recent experiment in Denmark has shown that a modern mechanic with a stone ax, although unaccustomed to the use of stone tools, was able, in ten working hours, to cut down and convert into logs twenty-six pine trees eight inches in thickness. Indeed, the entire work of getting out the timber and building a house was done by one mechanic with stone tools m eighty-one days. It was therefore qu te possible for the men of the Late Stone Age to build
a w'th !6 '!WeUinss and t0 a«ain a degree of civilization far aDove mat 01 savages.
shell-heaps Pofh0DenmarlTe The "mo ^
earliest wooden houses are to be fou d^' ent^ traces of the we must now go. Here the house-buildin^11^1^’ whlther Late Stone Age, desiring to make themseWesTed^°f thS by man and beast, built their villages out over thT Sw™ attaC^C They erected their dwellings upon platforms supported^65’
Early Mankind in Europe 21
the water by piles which they drove into the lake bottom. In long lines such lake-villages, or groups of pile-dwellings, as they are called, fringed the shores of the Swiss lakes (Fig. 14). In a few cases they grew to a considerable size. At Wangen not
Fig. 14. Restoration of a Swiss Lake-Dwellers’ Settlement
The lake-dwellers felled trees with their stone axes (Fig. 16, 5) and cut them into piles some 20 feet long, sharpened at the lower end. These they drove several feet into the bottom of the lake, in water 8 or 10 feet deep. On a platform supported by these piles they then built their houses. The platform was connected with the shore by a bridge, which may be seen here on the right. A section of it could be removed at night for protection. The fish nets seen drying at the rail, the " dug-out ” boat of the hunters who bring in the deer, and many other things have been found on the lake bottom in recent times
less than fifty thousand piles were driven into the bottom of the lake for the support of the village (see remains of such piles in Fig. 15).
In so far as we can judge, these lake-dwellers lived a life of enviable peace and prosperity. Their houses were comfortable shelters, and they were furnished with plentiful wooden
28. Life of
the Swiss lake-dwellers
22
Ancient Times
29. Domestication of wild grains ^nd beginning of agriculture; flax and weaving
furniture and implements, wooden pitchers and spoons, besi es pottery dishes, bowls, and jars (Fig. 16,1,2,3)• Althoug^ roughly made without the use of the potter’s wheel (§ 83), an unevenly burned without an oven (Fig. 4^)> pottery vesse s added much to the convenience of the house. The waters under the settlement teemed with fish, which were caught
Fig. 15. Surviving Remains of a Swiss Lake-Village
After an unusually dry season the Swiss lakes fell to a very low level in 1854, exposing the lake bottom with the remains of the piles which once supported the lake villages along the shores. They were thus discovered for the first time. On the old lake bottom, among the projecting piles, were found great quantities of implements, tools, and furniture, like those in Fig. 16, including the dugouts and nets of Fig. 14, wheat, barley, bones of domestic animals, woven flax, etc. (§ 29). There they had been lying some five thousand years. Sometimes the objects were found in two distinct layers, the lower (earlier) containing only stone tools, and the upper (later) containing bronze tools, which came into the lake-village at a later age and fell into the water on top of the layer of old stone tools already lying on the bottom of the lake (see § 329)
with a bone hook through a trapdoor in the floor of the house, or snared in nets which the possession of flax as we shall see, enabled them to make.
While he had thus not ceased to be a fisherman and hunter the lake-dweller now discovered other sources of food p ' thousands of years the women of these early ages had gath ered the seeds of wild grasses to be crushed between tw stones and made into rude cakes. They now gradually learned
Early Mankind in Europe
23
that the growth of such wild grasses on the margins of the forest and the shores of the lake might be artificially aided.
From such beginnings it was but a step to drop the seed 30. Cultiva-into the soil at the proper season, to cultivate it, and to harvest barley^ and'64’
wheat in the Stone
Fig. 16. Part of the Equipment of a Lat£ Stone Age Lake-Dweller
This group contains the evidence for three important inventions made or received by the men of the Late Stone Age: firsts pottery jars, like
2 and j, with rude decorations, the oldest baked clay in Europe, and i, a large kettle in which the lake-dwellers’ food was cooked; second\ ground-edged tools like 4, a stone chisel with ground edge (§ 24), mounted in a deerhorn handle like a hatchet, or 5, stone ax with a ground edge, and pierced with a hole for the ax handle (the houses of Fig. 14 were built with such tools); and thirds weaving, as shown by 6, a. spinning ” whorl ” of baked clay, the earliest spinning wheel. When suspended by a rough thread of flax 18 to 20 inches long, it was given a whirl which made it spin in the air like a top, thus rapidly twisting the thread by which it was hanging. The thread when sufficiently twisted was wound up, and another length of 18 to 20 inches was drawn out from the unspun flax to be similarly twisted. One of these earliest spinning wheels has been found in the Swiss lakes with a spool of flaxen thread still attached. (From photograph loaned by Professor Hoernes)
the yield. When they had learned to do this, the women of these lake-dwellers were already agriculturists. The grains which they planted were barley, wheat, and some millet.1 This
1 Oats and rye, however, were still unknown, and came in much later.
31. Social effects of agriculture
32. Domestication of sheep, goats, and cattle
24 Ancient Times
new source of food was a plentiful one; more than a .hundred bushels of grain were found by the excavators on the lake bottom under the vanished lake-village of Wangen. Up the hillside now stretched also the lake-dweller’s little field of flax beside the growing grain. His women sat spinning flax (Fig. 16, (5) before the door, and the rough skin clothing of their ancestors (Fig. 8) had given way to garments of woven stuff.
These fields were an additional reason for the permanency of the lake-dweller’s home. It was necessary for him to remain near the little plantation for which his women had hoed the ground, that they might care for it and gather the grain when it ripened. As each household gradually gained an habitual right to cultivate a particular field, they came to set up a perpetual claim to it, and thus arose the ownership of land. It was to be a frequent source of trouble in the future career of man, and the chief cause of the long struggle between the rich and the poor — a struggle which was earlier unknown, when land was free to all.
' On the green Swiss uplands above the lake-villages .were now feeding the descendants of the wild creatures which the Middle Stone Age hunters had pursued through the forests and mountains ; for the mountain sheep and goats and the wild catde (Fig. 12), like the dog on the shores of Denmark (§ 23), had slowly learned to dwell near man and submit to his control.1 For a long time, however, the Late Stone Age man in Europe was still without any beast of burden. For thousands of years his ancestors of the Middle Stone Age had pursued the wild horse for food (§ 17), but had made no effort to tame and subdue the animal.2
1 Domestication of these animals, like the cultivation of grain and flax was much older m the Onent than ln the Late Stone Age in Europe; but it is 7Z a question just how the early Europeans received these things from the Ori Y (See §49). orient.
2 The draft horse, one of the most important influences in the historv t civilization, came in comparatively late, from the Northern Orient as we v, °n see (§247). ’ sha11
Early Mankind in Europe
25
The strong limbs of the once wijd ox (Fig. 12), however, made him well adapted to draw the hoe of Late Stone Age man across the field — a hoe, to be sure, equipped with two handles (Fig. 44), which thus became the earliest plow, while the ox which was tamed to draw it became the earliest draft animal of Europe. Thus " plow culture ” slowly replaced the cruder and more limited " hoe culture ”1 carried on by the women. It was at this point, therefore, that the early European passed far beyond our own North American Indians, who remained until the discovery of America entirely without draft animals, and hence practiced only " hoe culture.’'
Agriculture, requiring as it now did the driving and control of large draft animals, exceeded the strength of the primitive woman, and the primitive man was obliged to give up more and more of his hunting freedom and devote himself to the field. Thus the hunter of thousands of years became an agriculturist, a farmer. By this time a large part of the Late Stone Age Europeans had adopted fixed abodes, following the settled agricultural life in and around villages (§ 38).
On the other hand, the domestication of grass-eating animals, feeding on the grasslands, created not only a new industry but also a second class of men who might still follow a roving life, leading their flocks about and pasturing them where the grasslands were too poor for agriculture. Such shepherd people we call nomads, and they still exist to-day. Without any fixed dwelling places, accompanied by their wives and children, they lead a wandering life, driving their flocks from pasture to pasture. These nomad peoples took possession of the eastern grasslands stretching from the Danube eastward along the north side of the Black Sea and thence far over into Asia. Their life always remained ruder and less civilized than that of the agriculturalists and townsmen (see § 136).
1 " Hoe culture ” is the term applied to agriculture carried on by hand, without any draft animals; that is, entirely with the hoe, as contrasted with cultivation by the plow drawn by an animal.
33. Earlie draft anima " plow culture ”
34. Social effects of " plow culture t settled agri cultural fife
35. Flocks and herds; the wandering, nomad life of the shepherd
36. Age-long
conflict between
nomads and townsmen
37. Buildings and architecture in Late Stone Age Europe
38. The earliest toWns in Europe; rise of government
26 Ancient Times
Thus developed side by .side two methods of life—the settled, agricultural life and the wandering, nomad life. The importance of understanding these will be evident when we realize that the grasslands became the home of a numerous unsettled population. Thus such grasslands have become like overfilled reservoirs of nomad peoples, who have periodically overflowed and overwhelmed the towns and the agricultural settlements. Many epochs of human history can be understood only as we bear these facts in mind, especially as we shall see later Europe invaded over and over again by the hordes of intruding nomads from the eastern grasslands (§§ 370-373 and Section 99).
The settled communities of the Late Stone Age at last began to leave behind them more impressive monuments than pottery and stone tools. In all Europe before this there had existed only fragile houses and huts. But toward the close of the Late Stone Age the more powerful chiefs in the large settlements learned to erect great tombs, built of enormous blocks of stone. They fringe the western coast of Europe from Spain to the southern Scandinavian shores. There are at the present day no less than thirty-four hundred stone tombs of this age, some of considerable size, on the Danish island of Seeland alone. .In France (Fig. 17) they exist in vast numbers and imposing size, and likewise in England. The often enormous blocks in these structures (Figs. 18, 20, and 21) were mostly left in the rough, but if cut at all, it was done with stone chisels. Such structures are not of masonry, that is, of smoothly cut stone laid with mortar. They can hardly be called works of great architecture, which did not yet exist in Europe. We shall first meet it in the Orient (§ 95).
When we look at such buildings of the Late Stone Age still surviving, they prove to us the existence of the earliest towns in Europe. For near every great group of stone tombs there must have been a town where the people lived who built the tombs The remains of some of these towns have been discovered and they have been dug out from the earth covering them. Almost
Early Mankind in Europe
2 7
all traces of them had disappeared, but enough remained to show that they had been surrounded by walls of earth, with a ditch on the outside and probably with a wooden stockade along the top of the earth wall. They show us that men were learning to live together in considerable numbers and to work together on
Fig. 17. Late Stone Age Tomb in France
It was in such tombs that dead chiefs of the Late Stone Age were buried. The stones, weighing even as much as 40 tons apiece, were sometimes dragged many miles from the nearest quarry; but much heavier ones were also used (see Fig. 18). These blocks were not smoothed but left rough as they came from the mountain side
a large scale. It required organization and successful management of men to raise the earth walls of such a town, to drive the fifty thousand piles supporting the lake settlement at Wangen (Switzerland), or to move the enormous blocks of stone for building the chieftain’s tomb (Figs. 17, 18, 20, and 21). In such achievements we see the beginnings of government,
28
Ancient Times
39. Festivals and athletic contests shown by the stone buildings of Late Stone Age Europe
organized under a leader. Many little states, each consisting of a fortified town with its surrounding fields, and each under a chieftain, must have grown up in Late Stone Age Europe. Out of such beginnings nations were yet to grow.
Furthermore, these stone buildings furnish us very interesting glimpses into the life of the Late Stone Age towns. Some of them suggest to us pictures of whole communities issuing from the towns on feast days and marching to such places as the
Fig. 18. Fallen Memorial Stone of the Late Stone Age in Northern France
This vast block once stood upright, having been erected by the men of the Late Stone Age as a tombstone. It is almost 65 feet long and weighs some 300 tons. The fall has broken it into three pieces
huge stone circles at Stonehenge (Fig. 20). Here they held memorial contests, chariot races, and athletic games in honor of the dead chief buried within the stone circles. The domestic horse had now reached western Europe, and the straight chariot course, nearly two miles long, still to be seen at Stonehenge, must have resounded with the shouts of the multitudes as the competing chariots thundered down the course.1 The long processional avenues, marked out by mighty stones, in northwest France (Fig. 21) must have been alive with festival processions and happy multitudes every season for centuries. To-d silent and solitary, they stretch for miles across the fields of
1 One of the chariots later used on such a course may be seen in Fie
*33*
Early Mankind in Europe
29
the French peasants, a kind of voiceless echo of forgotten human joys, of ancient customs and beliefs long revered by the vanished races of prehistoric Europe.
While such monuments show us the Late Stone Age communities at play, other remains reveal them at their work. Each town was largely a home manufacturer and produced what it needed for itself. Men were beginning to adopt trades; for example, some men were probably woodworkers, others were potters, and still others were already miners.
These early miners burrowed far into the earth in order to reach the finest deposits of flint for their stone tools. In the underground tunnels of the ancient flint mines at Brandon, England, eighty worn picks of deerhom were found in recent times. At one place the roof had caved in, cutting off an ancient gallery of the mine. In this gallery, behind the fallen rocks, modern archaeologists found two more deerhom picks. These picks bore a coat of chalk dust in which were still visible the marks of the workmen’s fingers, left there as they last laid down the implements, many thousands of years ago. In Belgium even the skeleton of one of these ancient miners, who had been crushed by falling rocks, was found in the mine with his deerhorn pick still lying between his hands (Fig. 22).
Fig. 19. Vertebra of a Late Stone Age Man with a Flint Arrowhead
STICKING IN IT
The arrowhead (A) struck the victim full in the back. It must have been driven by a heavy bow with full force, for it is deeply embedded and doubtless killed the man at once. (Photograph furnished by the great French archaeologist Dechelette, who himself fell in battle not long after sending this photograph to the author)
40. Rise, of trades in thi outgoing Late Stone Age; minir as a trade
Fig. 20. Great Stone Circle inclosing a Tomb, Or Group of Tombs, of the Late Stone Age
Chieftains at Stonehenge, England
The circle is about 100 feet across, and a long avenue connecting it with the neighboring Late Stone Age town is still traceable. Not far away is the Late Stone Age race course, nearly 2 miles long. Western Europe produced nothing more than this rude architecture in stone until the coming of the Romans (§ 1047)
Early Mankitid in Europe
31
Exchange and traffic between the communities already existed. This primitive commerce carried far and wide an especially fine variety of French flint, recognizable to-day by its color. The amber gathered on the shores of the Baltic was already passing from hand to hand and thus found its way southward. Stone implements found on the islands around Europe show that men of this age lived on such islands, and they must have had boats sufficiently strong to carry them thither. Several of the
Fig. 21. Avenues of the Late Stone Age in Northern France (Carnac, Brittany)
The tall stones mark out avenues nearly 2£ miles long, containing nearly three thousand stones. These avenues were used for festival processions or for races, as on the course at Stonehenge (Fig. 20 and § 39), at the religious celebrations of the Late Stone Age communities
dugouts (Fig. 14) of the lake-dwellers have been found lying on the lake bottom among the piles, but vessels with sails had not yet been devised in Europe.
The business of such an age was of course very primitive. There were no metals and no money. Buying and selling were only exchange of one kind of wares for another kind. In all Europe there was no writing, nor did the continent of Europe ever devise a system of writing. If credit was given, the transaction might be recorded in a few strokes scratched in the mud plaster of the wattle house wall (Fig. 11) to aid the memory as to the number of fish or jars of grain to be paid for later.
41. Commerce and intercourse in the Late Stone Age
42. Primitive busines methods of Late Stone Age Europ
32
Ancient Times
43. Wars of the Late Stone Age
44. Late Stone Age Europe and the Orient
But the intercourse between these prehistoric communities was not always peaceful. The earthen walls and wooden stockades with which such towns were protected (§ 38) show us that the chieftain’s war-horn must often have summoned these people from feasts and athletic games, or from the fields' and mines, to expel the invader. Grim evidence of these earliest wars of Europe still survives. A skull taken out of a tomb of this age in Sweden contains a flint arrowhead still sticking in
Fig. 22. Skeleton of a Miner of the Late Stone Age
The skeleton of this ancient miner was found lying on the floor of a flint mine in Belgium, under the rocks which had caved in and crushed him. Before him, just as it dropped from his hands at the instant of the cave-in, lies the double-pointed pick of deerhorn (§ 40) with which he was loosening the lumps of flint from their chalk bed, when the rock ceiling fell upon^him and he was killed
one eyehole, while in France more than one human vertebra has been found with a flint arrowhead driven deep into it (Fig. 19). A stone coffin found in a Scottish cairn contained the body of a man of huge size, with one arm almost severed from the shoulder by the stroke of a stone ax. A fragment of stone broken out of the ax blade still remained in the gashed arm bone.
After fifty thousand years of progress carried on by their own efforts, the men of Stone Age Europe seemed now (about 3000 B.C.) to have reached a point where they could advance
Early Mankind in Europe
33
no farther. They were still without writing, for making the records of business, government, and tradition; they were still without metals1 with which to make tools and to develop industries and manufactures ; and they had no sailing ships in which to carry on commerce. Without these things they could go no farther. All these and many other possessions of civilization came to early Europe from the nearer Orient,2 the lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean (see map, p. 100). In order to understand the further course of European history, we must therefore turn to the Orient, whence came these indispensable things which made it possible for our European ancestors to gain the civilization we have inherited.
As we go to the Orient let us remember that we have been following man’s prehistoric progress as it went on for some fifty l thousand years after he began making stone implements. In the Orient, during the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 B.C. (see diagram, Fig. 38), men slowly built up a high civilization, forming the beginning of the Historic Epoch? Civilization thus began in the Orient, and it is between five and six thousand years old. There it long flourished and produced great and
1 Metal was introduced in southeastern Europe about 3000 b. c. and passed like a slow wave, moving gradually westward and northward across Europe. It probably did not reach Britain until about 2000 B. c. Hence we have included the great stone monuments of western Europe (like Stonehenge) in onr survey of Stone Age Europe. They were erected long after southeastern Europe had received metal, but before metal came into common use in western Europe.
2 The word " Orient” is used to-day to include Japan, China, and India. These lands make up a farther Orient. There is also a nearer Orient, consisting of the lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, that is, Egypt and Western Asia, including Asia Minor. We shall use the word "Orient”*in this book to designate the nearer Orient.
8 We may best describe the Historic Epoch by saying that it is the epoch beginning when written documents were first produced by man — documents which tell us in written words something of man’s life and career. All that we know of man in the age previous to the appearance of writing has to be learned from weapons, tools, implements, buildings, and other things (bearing no writing) which he has left behind. These are the things from which we have been learning something of the story of prehistoric Europe in Chapter I. The transition from the Prehistoric to the Historic Epoch was everywhere a slow and gradual one. In the Orient this transition took place in the thousand years between 4000 and 3000 B.C.
45. Histori cal summai
34
Ancient Times
powerful nations, while the men of Late Stone Age Europe continued to live without metals or writing. As they gradually acquired these things, civilized leadership both in peace and war shifted slowly from the Orient to Europe. As we turn to watch civilization emerging in the East, with metals, government, writing, great ships, and many other creations of civilization, let us realize that its later movement will steadily carry us from east to west as we follow it from the Orient to Europe.
QUESTIONS
Section i . What progress in invention have you noticed in your own lifetime? Has every device or convenience man now possesses had to be invented in the same way? Was there a time when man possessed none of these things ? Did he have anyone to teach him ? Describe the life of the Tasmanians in recent times. Describe prehistoric Europe and the life of the earliest men there. What three ages ensued?
Section 2. Give examples of the discovery of man’s great age on the earth. Describe the earliest stone weapon. About when did the Early Stone Age begin ? (See map, p. 8, and read description.) What age did it introduce? Describe the life of the Early Stone Age hunter. What great change ended this age? Describe it.
Section 3. Where did the Middle Stone Age hunters take refuge? What improvement did they make in their stone tools (Fig. 5)? What new materials came in? What new inventions? Describe the results. Discuss Middle Stone Age art. Draw cross section of a cave with contents and describe (Fig. 9). What great change ended the Middle Stone Age, and when ?
Section 4. Where were the earliest settlements of the Late Stone Age known to us? Describe them and their remains. What new inventions came in ? Discuss carpentry with ground stone tools Describe the lake-villages and life in them. Describe the domestication -of gram and its social results. Describe the domestication of animals and the two resulting methods of life. Discuss stone structures and the life they reveal-industries, traffic, and war. What important things did the Late Stone Age in Europe still lack? Is civilization possible without these things? Where did these things first appear?
CHAPTER II
THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE EARLIEST NILE-DWELLERS AND THE PYRAMID AGE
Section 5. Egypt and its Earliest Inhabitants
We are to begin our study of the early Orient in Egypt. 46. Egypt The traveler who visits Egypt at the present day lands in a today very modern-looking harbor at Alexandria (see map, p. 36).
He is presently seated in a comfortable railway car in which we may accompany him as he is carried rapidly across a low, flat country stretching far away to the sunlit horizon. The wide expanse is dotted with little villages of dark mud-brick huts, and here and there rise groves of graceful date palms.
The landscape is carpeted with stretches of bright and vivid green as far as the eye can see, and wandering through this verdure is a network of irrigation canals (Fig. 23). Brown-1 skinned men of slender build, with dark hair, are seen at inter-i vals along the banks of these canals, swaying up and down as they rhythmically lift an irrigation bucket attached to a simple
Note. The tiara, or diadem, at the top of this page was found resting on the head of an Egyptian princess of the Feudal Age as she lay in her coffin. The diadem had been placed there nearly four thousand years ago. It is in the form of a chaplet, or wreath, of star flowers wrought of gold and set with bright-colored precious stones, and is one of the best examples of the work of the Egyptian goldsmiths and jewelers (Fig. 47 and § 82). It is shown here lying on a cushion.
35
36
Ancient Times
47. Its soil, shape, and area
Fig. 23. An Egyptian Shadoof, the Oldest of Well Sweeps, irrigating the Fields
The man below stands in the water, holding his leather bucket (A). The pole (B) of the sweep is above him, with large ball of dried Nile mud on its lower end (C) as a lifting weight, or counterpoise, seen just behind the supporting post (D). This man lifts the water into a mud basin {E). A second man (in the middle) lifts it from this first-basin (E) to a second basin (F) into which he is just emptying his bucket; while a third man (G) lifts the water from the middle hasin (F\ to the uppermost basin (H\ on the top of the bank, where it runs off to the left into trenches spreading over the fields. The low water makes necessary three successive lifts (to E, to F, to H) without ceasing night and day for one hundred days
device (Fig. 23) exactly like the well sweep of our grandfathers in New England. The irrigation trenches are thus kept full of water until the grain ripens. This shows us that Egypt enjoys no rain.
The black soil we see from the train is unexcelled in fertility, and it is enriched each year by the overflow of the river, whose turbid waters rise above its banks every summer, spread far over the flats (Fig. 24), and stand there long enough to deposit a very thin layer of rich earthy sediment. This sediment has built up the Nile Delta which we are now crossing. The Delta and the valley above, as far as the First Cataract, contain together over ten thousand square miles of cultivable soil, or somewhat more than the state of Vermont.
As our train approaches the southern
The Story of Egypt
37
point of the Delta we begin to see the heights on either side of the valley into which the narrow end of the Delta merges. These heights (Figs. 2 4 and 69) are the plateau of the Sahara Desert, through which the Nile has cut a vast, deep trench as it winds its way northward from inner Africa. This trench, or valley, is seldom more than thirty miles wide, while the strip of soil on each
Fig. 24. The Inundation seen from the Road to the Pyramids of Gizeh
On the right is the road leading to the pyramids; at the left the waters of the inundation cover the level floor of the Nile valley. In the distance is the desert plateau on which the pyramids stand. The trees and the small modern village just in front of the pyramids occupy part of the ground where once the royal city of the pyramid-builders stood (§ 75)
side of the river rarely exceeds ten miles in width. On either edge of the soil strip one steps out of the green fields into the sand of the desert, which has drifted down into the trench; or if one climbs the cliffs, forming the walls of the trench, he stands looking out over a vast waste of rocky hills and stretches of sand trembling in the heat of the blazing sunshine.
48. The lov valley and tl high desert plateau
3§
Ancient Times
49. The "
Stone Age Egyptians
As we journey on let us realize that this valley can tell us an unbroken story of human progress such as we can find nowhere else. We look out upon the sandy margin of the desert, where there are thousands of low, undulating mounds covering the graves of the earliest ancestors of the brown men we see in the Delta fields. When wfe have dug out such a grave to the bottom, we find lying there the ancient Nile peasant, surrounded by pottery jars and stone implements (Fig. 25). There he has been lying for over six thousand years, and these stone t tools,. which he used so long ago, tell us that he lived all his life like the Late Stone Age men of Europe, without having known anything about metal. Barley and split wheat1 are sometimes found in the jars around the body (Fig. 25), for the dead were supplied with food by those who buried them. These and fragments of linen found in such graves show us from what country the first grain and flax came into Europe. These ancient Nile peasants were therefore watering their fields of flax and grain over six thousand years ago, just as the brown men whom the traveler sees from the car windows to-day are still doing.
1 This split wheat is a variety which differs from our common wheat. The kernel is split into halves. When threshed, the two halves are still held together by the hull, and a second threshing or hard rubbing is necessary to break off this hull and get out the two half kernels. Split wheat is still raised in parts of Europe, especially for use in making starch, and is often called starch wheat. This was the earliest variety of wheat cultivated by man. It has recently been rediscovered growing in a wild state in Palestine. Barley and split wheat were the two leading grains used by early man in the oriental world.
Fig. 25. Looking down into the Grave of a Late Stone Age Egyptian
An oval pit 4 or 5 feet deep, excavated on the margin of the desert (cf. Fig. 38, /). The body is surrounded by pottery jars once containing food and drink for the life hereafter. Implements of stone placed with the body are also found still lying in the grave
The Story of Egypt
39
The villages of low, mud-brick huts which flash by the car windows furnish us also with an exact picture of those vanished prehistoric villages, the homes of the early Nile-dwellers who are still lying in yonder cemeteries on the desert margin. In each such village, six to seven thousand years ago, lived a local chieftain who controlled the irrigation trenches of the district. To him the peasants were obliged to carry every season a share of the grain and flax which they gathered from their fields; otherwise the supply of water for ' their crops would be stopped, and they would receive an unpleasant visit from the chieftain, demanding instant payment.
These were the earliest taxes.
Such transactions led to scratching a rude picture of the basket grain-measure and a number of strokes on the mud wall of the peasant’s hut, indicating the number of measures of grain he had paid (cf. § 42).
The use of these purely pictorial signs formed the earliest stage in the process of learning to write. Such pictorial writing is still in use among the uncivilized peoples in our own land. Thus, the Alaskan natives send messages in pictorial form, scratched on a piece of wood (Fig. 26). The exact words of the message are not represented. Fig. 26 might be read by one man, " No food in the tent,” while another might read, " Lack of meat in the wigwam.” Such pictorial signs thus conveyed ideas without expressing the exact words. Among our own Indians the desire of a brave to record his personal exploits also led to pictorial records of them (Fig. 27). It should be noticed again that the exact words are not indicated by this record
A frA
Fig. 26. Pictorial Message scratched on Wood by Alaskan Indians
A figure with empty hands hanging down helplessly, palms down, as an Indian gesture for uncertainty, ignorance, emptiness, or nothing, means " no.” A figure with one hand on its mouth means " eating ” or ” food.” It points toward the tent, and this means ” in the tent.” The whole is a message stating, " (There is) no food in the tent” (§51)
50. Earliest government and taxes
51. Pictoris records
52. First step leading from the pictorial to the phonetic stage
53. Second step leading from the pictorial to the phonetic stage
40
Ancient Times
(Fig. 27), but the exploit is merely so suggested tha^e™^riy
be
Egyptian kings
put into words in a number of different ways. . .
rotian kings of six thousand years ago prepare
similar picture records
(Fig. 28).
But this pictorial stage, which native
beyond American records never passed, was not real_ writing. Two steps had to be taken before the picture records could become phonetic writing. First, each object drawn had to gain a fixed form, always the same and always recognized as the sign for a particular word denoting that object. Thus, it would become a habit that the drawing of a loaf should always be read "loaf,” not "bread” or " food ” ; the sign for a leaf would always be read "leaf,” not "foliage.” 1
The second step then
Fig. 27. Pictorial Record of the Victory of a Dakota Chief named Running Antelope
This Dakota Indian prepared his autobiography in a series of eleven drawings, of which Fig. 27 is but one. It records how he slew five hostile braves in a single day. The hero, Running Antelope, with rifle in hand, is mounted upon a horse. His shield bears a falcon, the animal emblem of his family, while beneath the horse is a running antelope, which is of course intended to inform you of the hero’s name. We see the trail of his horse as he swept round the copse at the left, in which were concealed the five hostile braves whom he slew. Of these, one figure bearing a rifle represents all five, while four other rifles in the act of being discharged indicate the number of braves in the copse
naturally followed; that is, the leaf. for example, became the sign for the syllable "leaf” wherever it might occur. By the same process ^
1 The author is of course obliged to use English words and svll hi and consequently also signs not existing in Egyptian but devised fS laerf’ demonstration. 0r ^is
The Story/ of Egypt
41
might become the sign for the syllable " bee ” wherever found. Having thus a means of writing the syllables " bee ” and " leaf,” the next step was to put them together, thus, ^ and they would then represent the word " belief.” Notice, however, that in the word "belief” the sign ^ has ceased to suggest the .idea of an insect. It now represents only the syllable "be:” That is to say, has become a phonetic sign.
If the writing of the Egyptian had remained merely a series of pictures, such words as " belief,” " hate,” " love,”
" beauty,” and the like could never have been written.1 But when a large number of his pictures had become phonetic signs, each representing a syllable, it was possible for the Egyptian to write any word he knew, whether the word meant a thing of which he could draw a picture or not. This possession of phonetic signs was what made real writing for the first time.
It arose among these Nile-dwellers earlier than anywhere else in the ancient world.
Egyptian writing contained at last over six hundred signs, many of them representing whole syllables, lika The Egyptian scribe gradually learned many groups of such syllable signs. Each group, like represented a word. Writing thus became to him a large number of sign-being a word; and a series of such groups
Fig. 28. Example of Egyptian Writing ly the Pictorial Stage
Interpretation: Above is the falcon, symbol of a king (cf. the falcon on the shield of Running Antelope in Fig. 27), leading a human head by a cord ; behind thehead aresix lotus leaves (each the sign for 1000) growing out of the ground to which the head is attached; below is a single-barbed harpoon head and a little rectangle (the sign of a lake). The whole tells the picture story that the falcon king led captive six thousand men of the land of the Harpoon Lake (§51)
■groups, each group formed a sentence.
1 See the word " beauty,” the last three signs in the inscription over the ship (Fig. 41).
54. Advantage of phonetic signs
55. Syllable signs and sign-groups
%
56. Alphabetic signs, or letters
42 Ancient Times
Nevertheless, the Egyptian went still farther, for he finally possessed a series of signs, each representing only a letter \ that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt
= smooth breathing, like ; h in "honor.” As vowel, see below y (in Greek times it was used as vowel) 1 = guttural, pronounced in back of throat; not used in English — w (later O was also ' used; 0 I both signs as vowels, see below)
= b
□ =P
= m (later ^-was also
i used for m)
= 1 in late times (originally r or rwj
ra -h
a -
= ch (like ch in German "ich ”)
= kh (like ch in Scotch “loch” or German " Bach ”)
- s (originally of slightly
different sound from the preceding)
- sh
= q (in Greek times also used for k)
- k Z
'T
-t - th
= d
= dh or dsh (like j in
"jug”)
Fig. 29. The Egyptian Alphabet
Each of these letters represents a consonant. The Egyptians of course pronounced their words with vowels as we do, but they did not write the vowels. This will be clear by a study of Fig. 30. Just as the consonants w and y are sometimes used as vowels in English, so three of the Egyptian consonants came to be employed as vowels in Greek times The first letter (smooth breathing) was thus used asaor*; the second" letter (y) as i; and the fourth (w) as u or o (cf. Fig. 76)
long before 3000 B.C. It was thus the'earliest alphabet known. The Egyptian might then have written his language with twenty-four alphabetic letters (Fig. 29) if the jz^-group habit had not been too strong for the scribe, just as the letter-group habit is
The Story of Egypt
43
strong enough with us to-day to prevent the introduction of a simplified phonetic system of spelling English. If we smile at the Egyptian's cumbrous sign-groups, future generations may as justly smile at our often absurd letter-groups.
The Egyptian soon devised a convenient equipment for writing. He found out that he could make an excellent paint or ink by thickening water with a little vegetable gum and then
ABC
Fig. 30. An Egyptian Word (A) and Two English Words (B) and (C) written in Hieroglyphic
The first three signs in word A are ch-q-r (see Fig. 29); we do not know the vowels. The word means "pauper” (literally, "hungry”); as it denotes a person, the Egyptian adds a little kneeling man at the end. Before him is another man with hand on mouth, an indication of hunger, thirst, or speech. These two are old pictorial signs surviving from the pictorial stage. Such pictorial signs at the end of a word have no phonetic value and are called determinatives. B is an English word spelled for illustration in hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the letters p-n-d (see Fig. 29), while the three wavy lines form the determinative for "water”; hence p-n-d spells "pond.” C is another English word in hieroglyphic. The first three signs indicate the letters f-m-n (see Fig.29), and the last sign is the determinative for " hunger ” (see Fig. 30, A); hence f-m-n spells "famine.” With the alphabet (Fig. 29) and the above determinatives the student can put a tiumber of English words into hieroglyphic; for example, " man ” (m-n and determinative of kneeling man, Fig. 30, A), " drink ” (d-r-n—k and determinative of kneeling man with hand on mouth, Fig. 30, C), "speak” (s-p-k and same determinative), or "brook” (b-r-k and determinative for "water,” as in " pond,” Fig. 30, B)
mixing in soot from the blackened pots over his fire. Dipping a pointed reed into this mixture, he found he could write very well.
He also learned that he could split a kind of river reed, called papyrus, into thin strips, and that he could write on them much better than on bits of pottery, bone, and wood. Desiring a larger sheet, he hit upon the idea of pasting his
57. Invention of writing materials: ink and pen
58. Invention of writing materials: paper
44
Ancient Times
papyrus strips together with overlapping edges. This gave him a very thin sheet, but by pasting two such sheets together, back to back with the grain crossing at right angles, he produced a smooth, tough, pale-yellow paper (Fig. 58). The Egyptian had thus made the discovery that a thin vegetable membrane offers the most practical surface on which to write, and the world has
AWW
Fig. 31. An Example of Egyptian Hieroglyphic (Upper Line) and its Equivalent in the Rapid Running Hand (Lower Line) written with Pen and Ink on Papyrus and called Hieratic, the Writing of All Ordinary Business
The daily business of an Egyptian community of course required much writing and thousands of records. Such writing, after it began to be done with pen and ink on papyrus (Fig. 40), soon became veiy rapid. In course of time therefore there arose a rapid or running hand in which each hieroglyphic sign was much abbreviated. This running hand is called hieratic. It corresponds to our handwriting, while hieroglyphic corresponds to our print. In the above example the signs in the lower row show clearly that they are the result of an effort to make quickly the signs in the hieroglyphic row above (compare sign for sign). We must notice also that the Egyptian wrote from right to left, for this line begins at the right and reads to the left. Vertical lines, that is, downward reading, was also employed (Fig. 58). A third still more rapid and abbreviated hand, corresponding in some ways to our shorthand, arose still later (eighth century B.C.). It was called demotic, and one of the versions on the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207) is written in demotic
since discovered nothing better. In this way arose pen, ink, and paper (see Fig. 40). All three of these .devices have descended to us from the Egyptians, and paper still bears its ancient name, " papyros,”1 but slightly changed.
os i1sI'1erelv0ZerrOT " papyros” t0 "paper” is really a very slight one. For
• . ree grammatical ending, which must be omitted in English.
This leaves us fapyr as the ancestor of our word " paper,” from which it differs by only one letter. On the other Greek word for '-papyrusfrom which ca™ our word « Bible,” see § 405. On the rapid or running handwAting which resulted from using a pen on paper, see Fig. 31. "resulted
The Story of Egypt
45
The invention of writing and of a convenient system of 59. unrecords on paper has had a greater influence in uplifting the portance'of
human race than any other intellectual achievement in the introduction J of writing
career of man. It was more important than all the battles
ever fought and all the constitutions ever devised.
The Egyptians early found it necessary to measure time. 60. Begin-Like all other early peoples, they used the time from new "ahfndar3 moon to new moon as a very convenient rough measure. If a man had agreed to pay back some borrowed grain at the end of nine moons, and eight of them had passed, he knew that he had one more moon in which to make the payment. But the moon-month varies in length from twenty-nine to thirty days, and it does not evenly divide the year. The Egyptian soon showed himself much more practical in removing this inconvenience than his neighbors in other lands.
He decided to use the moon no longer for dividing his year. 61. Egyptia He would have twelve months, and he would make his months o^Tcalendar all of the same length, that is, thirty days each ; then he would ’
celebrate five feast days, a kind of holiday week five days long, fixed date at the end of the year. This gave him a year of three hundred m hist0ly and sixty-five days. He was not yet enough of an astronomer . to know that every four years he ought to have a leap year of three hundred and sixty-six days, although he discovered this fact later (§ 741). This convenient Egyptian calendar was devised in 4241 B.C., and its introduction is the earliest dated event in history. Furthermore, this calendar is the very one which has descended to us, after more than six thousand years — unfortunately with awkward alterations in the lengths of the months, but for these alterations the Egyptians were not responsible (see § 968).
At the same time, as documents dated by this convenient 62. Lack of calendar accumulated through many years, it was found that identifying a document like a lease or a note, signed in a certain month, “vention of' was not sufficiently dated, unless the year was also included, year-names The system of numbering years from some great event, like
4 6
Ancient Times
63. Lists of year-names, the earliest chronicles; and lists of kings with numbered years
our method of numbering them from the birth of Christ, was still unknown. In order to have some means of identifying a year when it was long past, each year was given a name after some prominent event which had happened in it. This method is still in use among our own North American Indians (Fig. 32),
and even among ourselves, as people in Chicago say " the year of the great fire.” We find the earliest written monuments of Egypt dated by means of named years (Fig. 33).
Lists of year-names then began to be kept. As each year-name usually mentioned some great event (cf. Fig. 33), such lists of year-names were thus lists of great- events, like historic chronicles. The earliest such year-list in human history now surviving, called the Palermo Stone (because it is preserved in the museum at Palermo,
Fig. 32. Part of a Dakota Chief’s List of Seventy-one Named Years
Lone Dog, a Dakota chief, had a buffalo robe with seventy-one named years recorded on it, beginning in 1800, when he was a child of four. A year when whooping cough was very bad was called the "Whooping-cough Year”; its sign shows a human head violently coughing! (/)
Another year, very plentiful in meteors, was called the Meteor Year, and its sign was a rude drawing of a falling meteor (2). A third year saw the arrangement of peace between the Dakotas and the Crows; its sign was therefore two Indians, with differing style of hair, indicating the two different tribes, exchanging pipes of peace (3). Thus, instead of saying, as we do, that a thing happened in the year 1813, the Indian said it happened in the Whooping-cough Year, and by examining his table of years he could tell how far back that year was
Sic%)> begins about 3400 B.C., and contained when complete the names of some seven hundred years, ending about 2700 b.c. Later the E tians found it more convenient to number the years of each king’s reign, and then to date events in the first year of K' So-and-so or the tenth year of King So-and-so. They finall had lists of past kings, covering many centuries.
The Story of Egypt
47
Meantime the Egyptians were making great progress in other matters. It was probably in the peninsula of Sinai (see map, p. 36) that some Egyptian, wandering thither, once happened to bank his camp fire with pieces of copper ore lying on the ground about the camp. The charcoal of his wood fire mingled with the hot fragments of ore piled around to shield the fire, and thus the ore was " reduced,” as the miner says; that is, the copper in metallic form was released from the lumps of ore. Next morning, as the Egyptian stirred the embers, he discovered a few glittering globules, now hardened into beads of metal. He drew them forth and turned them admiringly as they, glittered in the morning sunshine. Before long, as the experience was repeated, he discovered whence these strange shining beads had come. He produced more of them, at first only to be worn as ornaments by the women. Then he learned to cast the metal into a blade, to replace the flint knife which he carried in his girdle.
Without knowing it this man stood at the dawning of a new
era, the Age of Metal; and the little bead of shining copper which he drew from the ashes, if this Egyptian wanderer could have seen it, might have reflected to him a vision of steel
Fig. 33. Early Egyptian Date by the Name of the Year
This large alabaster jar, now in the Philadelphia Museum, was presented by a primitive king of Egypt to a Sun-temple and bears the date of the presentation in the words, "Year of Fighting and Smiting the Northland,” which is the name of the year, given to it because of the victory over the Northland (the Delta) gained in that year. A long series of such year-names furnishes us a valuable record of great events, by which the years were named (§ 63)
64. Discovery of metal (at least
4000 B.C.)
65. The
dawning of the Age of Metal
48
Ancient Times
66. The Nile
a vast historical volume
67. The first glimpse of the pyramids
buildings, Brooklyn bridges, huge factories roaring with the noise of thousands of machines of metal, and vast stretches of steel roads along which thunder hosts of rushing locomotives. For these things of our modern world, and all they signify, would never have come to pass but for the little bead of metal which the wondering Egyptian held in his hand for the first time on that eventful day so long ago. Since the discovery of fire over fifty thousand years earlier (§ 8), man had made no conquest of the things of the earth which could compare in importance with this discovery of metal.
At this point we realize that we have followed early man out of the Stone Age (where we left him in Europe) into a civilization possessed of metal, writing, and government. We also begin to see that dry and rainless Egypt furnishes the conditions for the preservation of such plentiful remains of early man as to make this valley an enormous storehouse of his ancient works and records. These remains are the -only link connecting prehistoric man with the historic age of written documents, which we are now to study as we make the voyage up the Nile. We shall read the monuments along the great river like a vast historical volume, whose pages will tell us, age after age, the fascinating story of ancient man and all that he achieved here so many thousands of years ago, after his discovery of metals and his invention of writing.
Such are the thoughts which occupy the mind of the well-informed traveler as his train carries him southward across the Delta. Perhaps he is pondering on the possible results which the Egyptians were to achieve as he sees them in imagination throwing away their flint chisels and replacing them with those of copper. The train rounds a bend, and through an opening in the palms he is fairly blinded by a burst of blazing sunshine from the western desert, in the midst of which he discovers a group of noble pyramids rising above the glare of the sands. It is his first glimpse of the great pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 24) and it tells him better than any printed page what the Egyptian
The Story of Egypt
49
builders with the copper chisel in their hands could do. A few minutes later his train is moving among the modem buildings of Cairo, and the very next day will surely find him taking the seven-mile drive from Cairo out to Gizeh.
Section 6. The Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B.C.)
No traveler ever forgets the first drive from Cairo to the 68. The pyra-
w n r y'-i ■ 1 1 1 ■ ■ r ••i-i m'ds as ™yal
pyramids of Gizeh, as he sees their giant forms rising higher tombs and higher above the crest of the western desert (Fig. 24).
A thousand questions arise in the visitor’s mind. He has read that these vast buildings he is approaching are tombs, in which
Fig. 34. Winged Sun-Disk, a Symbol of the Sun-god
In this form the Sun-god was believed to be a falcon flying across the sky. We shall later see how the other nations of the Orient in Asia also adopted this Egyptian symbol (see Figs. 102, 141, and 148)
the kings of Egypt were buried. Such mighty buildings reveal many things about the men who built them. In the first place, these tombs show that the Egyptians believed in a life after death, and that to obtain such life it was necessary to preserve the body from destruction. They built these tombs to shelter and protect the body after death. From this belief came also the practice of embalmment, by which the body was preserved as a mummy (Fig. 72). It was then placed in the great tomb, in a small room deep under the pyramid masonry. Other tombs of masonry, much smaller in size, cluster about the pyramids in great numbers (Figs. 39 and 42). Here were buried the relatives of the king, and the great men of his court, who assisted him in the government of the land.
Ancient Times
69. The gods of Egypt: Re and Osiris
70. The progress of the Egyptians before they built stone masonry
QQQQQom
(JOOOOOOQQQQOQPQQQQQ
The Egyptians had many gods, but there were two whom they worshiped above all others. The sun, which shines so gloriously in the cloudless Egyptian sky, was their greatest god, and their most splendid temples were erected for his worship. Indeed, the pyramid is a symbol sacred to the Sun-god. (See another symbol in Fig. 34.) They called him Re (pronounced ray). The other great power which they revered was the shining Nile. The great river and the fertile soil he refreshes, and the green life which he brings forth — all these the Egyptian thought of together as a single god, Osiris, the imperishable life of the
earth, which revives and fades every year with the changes of the seasons (see Fig. 35). It .was a beautiful thought to the Egyptian that this same life-giving power which furnished him his food in this world would care for him also in the next, when _his body lay out yonder in the great cemetery of Gizeh, which we are approaching.1
But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things besides the religion of the Egyptians. As we look up at the colossal pyramids behind the Sphinx (Fig. 54) we can hardly grasp the fact of the enormous forward stride taken by the Egyptians since the days when they used to be buried with their flint knives in a pit scooped out on the margin of the desert (Fig. 25). It was the use of metal which since then had carried them so far. That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the first bit of metal (§ 65) lived over a thousand years before
1 There were many other Egyptian gods whose earthly symbols we ■ , but the animal worship usually attributed to Egypt was a degeneration b ’
to the latest age. The animals were not gods in this early time but , onSln6 of the divine beings, just as the winged sun-disk was a symbol of tvJJymiols (Fig. 34). Sun-god
Fig. 35. The Dead Osiris
EMBALMED
From the body of the god stalks of grain have sprouted, a symbol suggesting the imperishable life of the god, by means of which he survived death (§ 69)
The Story of Egypt
SI
these pyramids were built. He was buried in a pit like that of the earliest Egyptian peasant (Figs. 25 and 38, /).
It was a long time before the possession of metal resulted in copper tools which made possible great architecture in stone. Not more than a hundred and fifty years before the Great
Fig. 36. The Oldest Surviving Building of Stone Masonry (not long after 3000 b.c.)
This terraced building, often called the step-pyramid, was the tomb of King Zoser (early thirtieth century B.C.). It is about 200 feet high, and is composed of a series of buildings like those in Fig. 42, placed one on top of the other. It thus formed a tapering building (Fig. 38,j), out of which developed the pyramid form at the close of the thirtieth century (on the architect see Fig. 37 and § 71)
•
Pyramid of Gizeh, the Egyptians were still building the tombs of their kings out of sun-baked brick. Such a royal tomb was at first merely a chamber in the ground, roofed with wood and covered with a mound of sand and gravel (Fig. 38, 2).
Then some skillful workman among them found out that he could use his copper tools to cut square blocks of limestone and line the chamber with these blocks in place of the soft
52
Ancient Times
71. The
earliest stone building, and Imhotep, the first architect in stone
72. From the earliest stone masonry to the Great Pyramid —a century and a half
bricks. So far as we know, this was the first piece of stone masonry ever put together (Fig. 38,3). It can hardly be called a building, for, like a cellar wall, it was all below ground.
The next step, a real building aboveground, was still of brick (Fig. 38,4). It was soon followed by a terraced structure of stone for the king s tomb, the earliest surviving building of stone masonry ever erected. We know the name of the royal architect, Imhotep, the earliest architect to put up a building of stone masonry. He flourished just after 3000 B.C., and his name deserves far greater fame and respect than those of the early kings or conquerors themselves (Fig. 37).
The erection of Imhotep’s terraced building was but a step toward the construction of a pyramid. A generation later, so rapid was the progress, the king’s architects were building the Great'Pyramid of Gizeh (2900 B.C.). From the earliest piece of stone masonry (Fig. 38,3) to the construction of the Great Pyramid (Fig. 38, 7), less than a century and a half elapsed. Most of this advance was made during the thirtieth century B.C., that is, between 3000 and 2900 B.C. (Fig. 38). Such rapid progress in control of mechanical power can be found in no other period of the world’s history until the nineteenth century.
Fig. 37. Imhotep the Wise, the Earliest Architect of Stone Buildings (NEARLY 3000 B.C.)
This architect of the earliest surviving building of stone (Fig. 36) was grand vizier at the court of King Zoser. He was also a great physician and wise man, and later on he was thought to be a god, until he was finally regarded as Asclepius (^Escu-lapius), the god of medicine among the Greeks and Romans. This little portrait of him is a bronze statuette, now in the Berlin Museum, and shows him reading from a papyrus roll
The Story of Egypt
S3
It helps us to realize this progress when we know that the Great Pyramid covers thirteen acres. It is a solid mass of masonry containing 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each weighing on an average two and a half tons; that is, each block is as heavy as a large wagonload of coal. The sides of the pyramid at the base are 755 feet long,1 that is, about a block and three quarters (counting twelve city blocks to a mile), and the building was nearly 500 feet high. An ancient story tells us that a hundred thousand men were working on this royal tomb for twenty years, and we can well believe it (Fig. 39).
We perceive at once that it must have required a very skillful ruler and a great body of officials to manage and to feed a hundred thousand workmen around this great building. The king who controlled such vast undertakings was no longer a local chieftain (§ 50), but he now ruled a united Egypt, the earliest great unified nation, comprising several millions of people. The king was so reverenced that the people did not mention him by name, but instead they spoke of the palace in which he lived, that is, the " Great House^’ or, in Egyptian, " Pharaoh.” He had his local officials collecting taxes all over Egypt (Fig. 40). It was also their business'to ti^. the la^v cases which arose, and every judge had before -him the written law,2 which bade him judge justly..
The king’s huge central offices, occup^hg low, sun-baked-brick buildings, sheltered an army of clerks with their reed pens and their rolls of papyrus-^(Eig. '40), keeping the king’s records and accounts. The taxe6~ received from the people here were not in mon£y, for <jpined. money did not yet exist. Payments were made in’produce—grain, live stock, wine, honey, linen, and the like. Witji the exception of the cattle, these had to be stored in granaries' and storehouses, a vast group of which formed the treasury of the king.
1 It should be remembered that the pyramid is solid. Compare the length of the Colosseum (about 600 feet), which is built around a hollow inclosure.
2 This Egyptian code of laws has unfortunately been lost. '
73. The vast size of the Great Pyramid
74. Government in the Pyramid Age
Transition from Barbarism to Civilization
4000 B C
E)ARB4rism
3000
B.C.
v I L I
Metal Earliest discovered government Late about controlling Stone 4000, several mil- Beginning Age B.C. lions of people of stone
*- Writing 3400, B.C. masonry
in use aisf
J 3500,B.C.
Sand -
Gmvd.Heep
Sand
JGravel fkBrick ...
Slone* ■ y f Vails M
Earliest sea-going
ships cross- 200ft "iMoviny ingMeaiter- y—K 31st cent., ranean, 30th / \ B.C. century, B.C./- —\ £ ±
1
Sand heap surrounded by circle of desert stones over grave dug jn desert gravel (see Fig. 25). (From 5000, B.C. onward)
Sand heap and enlarged grave, both surrounded by walls of sun-dried brick. (About 3400, B.C.)
Same as No. 2, only wall of grave has become stone — the earliest stone masonry.
(About 3050, B.C.)
4
Sand heap covered and surrounded by stone masonry (see Fig. 42).
(Thirtieth
century,
B.C.)
Terraced royal tomb made by placing a series of tombs like No. one above another (oldest great building of stone masonry shown in Fig. 36). (2980, B.C.)
Royal tomb made like No. 5, but with the terraces filled up with masonry in one slope, producing the first pyramid. (About 2930, B.C.)
First pyramid planned to be such from the beginning. (About 2910, B.C.)
Great Pyramid of King Khufu at Gizeh, the largest of all pyramids and the greatest stone building ever erected by ancient man. (Begun 2900, B.C.)
At most 150 years (from earliest stone masonry to the Great Pyramid)
30th Century, B.C.
29th Century, B.C.
Remarkable
Great progress 325ft organization in industries: /\ of government ■ 214ft in metal, stone. / \ necessary wood, paver,/ \. erect weaving
~ ings
Fig. 38. The Evolution from the Sand Heap to the Pyramid in Two Thousand Years, and the Rise of Stone Architecture in One Hundred and Fifty Years
The body of the Egyptian peasant in Fig. 25 lay at the bottom of a grave above which was a low heap of sand surrounded by a circle of rough desert stones to keep the sand in place. No. /, above, shows this grave, cut down through the middle to expose the inside with the sand heap above it. In Nos. 2,3, and 4. we see the later tombs, also cut down through to expose the inside. They show how the circle of stones around the sand heap was slowly improved till it became real walls, first of brick (No. 2) and then of stone masonry (No. j), enveloping the whole tomb, with the old sand heap still in the inside. Tombs like No. ^ were then placed one above the other, producing a tapering terraced jsuilding (No. 5), which was soon improved until it became a pyramid (No. 6). Thus the sand heap and its circle of stones were the germ out of which the mighty pyramids grew in the course of fifteen or twenty centuries. Notice how this wonderful growth in the art of building began with the sand heap in the barbarism of the Late Stone Age and thus carries us over from barbarism to civilization in the thousand years from 4000 to 3000 B.C. This great art of building was itself one of the things which marked the entrance upon civilization, and architecture passed from the earliest example of stone masonry to the Great Pyramid in only one hundred and fifty years. But incoming civilization was not marked only by progress in the art of building. The remarks inserted above, over the tombs and pyramids, suggest to us some of the other important achievements which helped to bring in and develop civilization, like the discovery of metal and the invention of writing, followed by the earliest government of a large population, the earliest seagoing ships, great progress in industries, and a remarkable development in art. We now see how the pyramids and their predecessors stand like milestones marking the long road by which man passed from barbarism to a highly developed civilization. We learn also what were the visible things which we must understand as making up civilization in the beginning. But there were some necessary things which also reached a high development at the same time and which are not visible. These were the belief in right living, in kindness to others, and that a good life here was the only thing which could bring happiness in the next world
Fig. 39. Restoration of the Great Pyramids and Other Tomb-Monuments in the Ancient Cemetery of Gizeh, Egypt. (After Hoelscher)
These royal tombs (pyramids) belonged to the leading kings of the Fourth Dynasty, the early part (2900-2750 B.C.) of the Pyramid Age (about 3000 to 2500 B.C.). The Great Pyramid, the tomb of King Khufu (Greek, Cheops), is on the right (see § 73). Next in size is that of King Khafre (Greek, Chephren) (Fig. 54), on the left. On the east side (front) of each pyramid is a temple (see also Fig. 56), where the food, drink, and clothing were placed for the use of the dead king. These temples, like the pyramids, were built on the desert plateau above, while the royal town was in the valley below (on the right) (see § 75 and Fig. 24). For convenience, therefore, the temple was connected with the town below by a covered gallery, or corridor, of stone, seen here descending in a straight line from the temple of King Khafre and terminating below, just beside the Sphinx, in a large oblong building of stone, called a valley-temple. It was a splendid structure of granite (Fig. 55), serving not only as a temple but also as the entrance to the great corridor from the royal city. The pyramids are surrounded by the tombs of the queens and the great lords of the age (see Fig. 42). At the lower left-hand corner is an unfinished pyramid, showing the inclined ascents up which the stone blocks were dragged. These ascents (called ramps) were built of sun-baked brick and were removed after the pyramid was finished. (This scene will he found in color in Outlines of Euro-bean History, Part I, Plate I)
56
The Story of Egypt
57
The villas and gardens of the officials who assisted the king in all this business of government formed a large part of the royal city (Fig. 51). The chief quarter of the city, however, was occupied by the palace of the king and the luxurious parks and gardens which surrounded it. Thus the palace and its grounds, the official villas, and offices of the government made up the capital of- Egypt, the royal city which extended along the foot of the pyramid cemetery and stretched far away over the low plain, of which there is a fine view from the summit of the pyramid.
But the city was all built of sunbaked brick and wood, and it has therefore vanished.
It extended far southward from Gizeh and was later called Memphis.
The city of the dead, — the pyramids and the tombs clustering around them (Figs. 39 and 42), — being built of stone, has fortunately proved more durable. Hence it is that from the summit of the Great Pyramid there is a grand view southward, down a straggling but imposing line of pyramids rising dimly as far as one can see on the southern horizon. Each pyramid was a royal tomb, and for us each such tomb means that a king lived, ruled, and died. The line is over sixty miles long, and its oldest pyramids represent the first great age of Egyptian
Fig. 40. Collection of Taxes by Local Treasury Officials in the Pyramid Age
The clerks and scribes are in two rows at the right. All squat, and write on the raised right knee, except the two who have desks. The left hand holds a sheet of papyrus; the right, the pen. The taxpayers are delinquent village officers brought in (at the left) by deputies with staves under their arms. The inscription above reads, " Seizing the town rulers for a reckoning.” The clerks had records of the taxpayers’ names and how much they owed; and they issued receipts when the taxes were paid, just as at the present day. Such arrangements did not arise in Europe until far down in the Roman Empire (§§ 1026-1027)
75. The
royal city
76. Length and date of the Pyramid Age
58
sinciem ± writs
77. Northern commerce and earliest seagoing ships
civilization after the land was united under one king.1 We may call it the Pyramid Age, and it lasted about five hundred years, from 3000 to 2500 B.C.
In the Pyramid Age the Pharaoh was already powerful enough to begin seeking wealth beyond the boundaries of Egypt. We even possess painted reliefs (Fig. 41) showing
Fig. 41. Earliest Representation of a Seagoing Ship (Twenty-eighth Century b. c.)
The scene is carved on the wall of a temple (Fig. 56). The people are all bowing to the king whose figure (now lost) stood on shore (at the left), and they salute him with the words written in a line of hieroglyphs above, meaning: " Hail to thee! O Sahure [the king’s name], thou god of the living I We behold thy beauty.” Some of these men are bearded Phoenician prisoners brought by this Egyptian ship which with seven others, making a fleet of eight vessels, had therefore crossed the east end of the Mediterranean and returned. The big double mast is unshipped and lies on supports rising by the three steering oars in the stern. The model and ornaments of these earliest-known ships spread in later times to ships found in all waters from Italy to India
us the ships which he dared to send beyond the shelter of the Nile mouths far across the end of the Mediterranean to the coast of Phoenicia (see map, p. roo). This was in the
ing the Delta, and the other the valley south of it Th 'n.g "JS — one melud-(see Fig. 33), until they were finally united into orJ ^ together
king. The first king to establish this™ permanentlvwf7' ^
Egypt under his rule about 3400 e.c. But it was not Menes- wh° united
after Menes that the united kingdom became powerful and^M™8 " m°re build these royal pyramid-tombs, marking for us the first grat ofTUgH ‘° civilization. s ge 01 Egyptian
The Story of Egypt
59
middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., and this relief (Fig. 41) contains the oldest known representation of a seagoing ship. Yet at that time the Pharaoh had already been carrying on such over-sea commerce for centuries.
Besides maintaining his copper mines in Sinai, the king was also already sending caravans of donkeys far up the Nile into the Sudan to traffic with the blacks of the south, and to bring back ebony, ivory, ostrich feathers, and fragrant gums. The
Fig. 42. Restoration of a Group of Tombs of the Nobles in the Pyramid Age
These tombs are grouped about the royal pyramids, as seen in Fig. 39. They are sometimes of vast size. The square openings in the top are shafts leading down to the burial chambers in the native rock far below the tomb structures. These structures are of stone, surrounding a heap of sand and gravel inside (Fig. 38, 4). The chapel room is in the east side, of which the door can be seen in the front of each tomb. The
reliefs shown in Figs. 43-48 adorn the inside walls of these chapels
officials who conducted these caravans were the earliest explorers of inner Africa, and in their tombs at the First Cataract they have left interesting records of their exciting adventures among the wild tribes of the south — adventures in which some of them lost their lives.1 The Pharaoh was also sending his ships on expeditions to a land called Punt, at the south end of the' Red Sea (see map, p. 36), to procure the same products and to bring them back by water.
1 The teacher will find it of interest to read these records to the class. See the author’s Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, pp. 325-336, 350-374.
78. Southern commerce and earliest navigation on the Red Sea
60 Ancient Times
79. The A stroll among the tombs clustering so thickly around
o°f^payPr? pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 42) is almost like a walk among the ^ge ftlle busy communities which flourished in this populous va y reveal y the days of the pyramid-builders. We find the door of every tomb standing open (Fig. 42), and there is nothing to prevent
Fig. 43. Relief Scene from the Chapel of a Noble’s Tomb (Fig. 42) in the Pyramid Age
The tall figure of the noble stands at the right. He is inspecting three lines of cattle and a line of fowl brought before him. Note the two scribes who head the two middle rows. Each is writing with pen on a sheet of papyrus, and one carries two pens behind his ear. Such reliefs after being carved were colored in bright hues by the painter (see § 93)
our entrance. We stand in an oblong room with walls of stone masonry. This is a chapel chamber, to which the Egyptian believed the dead man buried beneath the tomb might return every day. Here he would find food and drink left for him daily by his relatives. He would also find the stone walls of
The Story of Egypt
61
this room covered from floor to ceiling with carved scenes, beautifully painted, picturing the daily life on a great estate (Figs. 40, 43-48, and 50). The place is now silent and deserted, or if we hear the voices of the donkey boys talking outside, they are speaking Arabic, for the ancient Egyptian language of the men who built these tombs so many thousand years ago is no longer spoken. But everywhere, in bright and charming colors, we see pictures of the life — the days of toil and pleasure — which these men of nearly five thousand years ago actually lived.
There are two plowmen, one driving the oxen and one holding the plow. This wooden plow was derived from such a wooden hoe as we see in use in front of the oxen. The handle of the hoe, here grasped by the user, was lengthened so that oxen might be yoked to it. The hoe handle thus became the beam of a plow. Two short handles were then attached by which the plowman behind conld guide it {§ 33).
The man with the hoe breaks up the clods left by the plow, and in front of him is the sower, scattering the seed from the curious sack he carries before him. At the left is a scribe of the estate. The hieroglyphs at the top in all such scenes explain what is going on. Scene from the chapel of a noble’s tomb (Fig. 42)
80. Agriculture and cattle raising beasts of burden
Dominating a]l these scenes on the walls is the tall form of the noble (Fig. 43), the lord of the estate, who was buried in this tomb. He stands looking out over his fields and inspecting the work going on there. These fields (Fig. 44) are the oldest scene of agriculture known to us. Here, too, are the herds, long lines of sleek, fat cattle grazing in the pasture, while the milch cows are led up and tied to be milked (Figs. 43 and 45). These cattle are also beasts of burden; we notice the oxen drawing the plow. But we find no horses in these tombs of the
62
Ancient Times
81. The coppersmith
Fig. 45. Peasant milking in the Pyramid Age
The cow is restive and the ancient cowherd has tied her hind legs. Behind her another man is holding her calf, which rears and plunges in the effort to reach the milk. Scene from the chapel of a noble’s tomb (Fig. 42)
Pyramid Age, for the horse was still unknown to the Egyptian. The donkey, however, is everywhere, and it would be impossi e
to harvest the grain without him (Fig. 46)' On the next wall we find again the tall figure of the noble overseeing the booths and yards where the craftsmen of his estate are -working. Yonder is the smith. He has never heard of . his ancestor who picked up the first bead of copper, over a thousand years earlier (§ 65). Much progress has been made since that day. This man could make excellent copper tools of all sorts; but the tool which demanded the greatest skill was the long, flat ripsaw, which the smith knew how to hammer into shape out of a broad strip of copper five or six feet long.
Such a saw may be seen in use in Fig. 50. Besides this he knew how to make one that would saw great blocks of stone for the pyramids.
Moreover, this coppersmith was already able to deliver orders of considerable size.
We know that he could furnish thirteen hundred feet (about a quarter of a mile) of copper drain piping for a pyra mid temple (Fig. 56), where recent excavation has found it — the earliest plumbing known to us.
Fig. 46. Donkey carrying a Load of Grain Sheaves in the Pyramid Age
The foal accompanies its mother while at work. Scene from the chapel of a noble’s tomb (Fig. 42)
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63
On the same wall we see the lapidary holding up for the noble’s admiration splendid stone bowls cut from diorite. Although this kind of stone is as hard as steel, the bowl is ground to such thinness that the sunlight glows through its dark gray sides (Fig. 134)- Other workmen are cutting and grinding tiny pieces of beautiful blue turquoise. These pieces they inlay with remarkable accuracy into recesses in the surface of a magnificent golden vase just made ready by the goldsmith (Plate I).
The booth of the goldsmith is filled with workmen and apprentices (Fig.
47). They hammer and cast, solder and fit together richly wrought jewelry which is hardly surpassed by the work of the best goldsmiths and jewelers of to-day.
In the next space on this wall we find the potter no longer building up his jars and bowls with his fingers alone, as in the Stone Age. He now ' sits before a small horizontal wheel (Fig. 48), upon which he deftly shapes the whirling vessel. When the soft clay vessels are ready, they are no • longer unevenly burned in an open fire, as among the Late Stone Age potters in the Swiss lake-villages (Fig. 16); but here in the Egyptian potter’s yard are long rows of closed furnaces of clay as tall as a man. When the pottery is packed in these furnaces it is burned evenly, because it is protected from the wind (Fig. 48). On the tomb wall we also
82. The lap dary, goldsmith, and jeweler
Fig. 47. Goldsmith’s Workshop in the Pyramid Age
Upper row. At left the chief goldsmith weighs precious stones and a scribe records them; next, six men with blowpipes blow the fire in a small clay furnace; next, a workman pours out molten metal or paste; at the right end four men are beating gold leaf. Middle row. Pieces of finished jewelry and a jewel-box in the middle. Lower row. Workmen seated at low benches i are putting together and engraving pieces of' jewelry. Several of these men are dwarfs. (See the finished work on Plate I, and headpiece, p. 35)
83. The potter’s wheel and furnace; lthe earliest jglass
64
Ancient Times
84. The
weavers and
tapestry-
makers
85. Paper-makers
see the craftsman making glass. This art the Egyptians had discovered centuries earlier. The glass was spread on tiles m gorgeous glazes for adorning house and palace walls (Plate II), and later it was wrought into exquisite many-colored ^glass bottles and vases, which were widely exported (Fig. 49).
Yonder the weaving women draw forth from the loom a gossamer fabric of linen. The picture would naturally give us no idea of its fineness, but fortunately pieces of it have survived, wrapped around the mummy of a king of this age.
Potter’s Wheel and Furnaces
The potter crouches before his horizontal wheel, which is like a flat round plate, on which rests the jar being shaped. The potter keeps the wheel whirling with one hand, and with the other he shapes the soft clay jar as it whirls on the wheel. This wheel is the ancestor of our lathe. Two men (at the right end) are just filling a tall furnace with bowls and jars, and another furnace (at the left) is already very hot, for the man stirring the fire is holding up his hand to shield his face from the heat
These specimens of royal linen are so fine that it requires a magnifying glass to distinguish them from silk, and the best work of the modern machine loom is coarse in comparison with this fabric of the ancient Egyptian hand loom. At one loom a lovely tapestry is being made, for these weavers of Egypt furnished the earliest-known specimens of such work, to be hung on the walls of the Pharaoh’s palace or stretched out to shade the roof garden of the noble’s villa (Fig. 51).
In the next space on the wall we find huge bundles of papyrus reeds, which barelegged men are gathering along the
The Story of Egypt
65
edge of the Nile marsh. These reeds furnish piles of pale yellow paper in long narrow sheets (§ 58). The ships which we have followed on the Mediterranean (Fig. 41) will in course of time add bales of this Nile paper to their cargoes, and carry it to the European world.
We seem almost to hear the hubbub of hammers and mauls as we approach the next section of wall, where we find the shipbuilders and cabinetmakers. Here is a long line of curving hulls, with workmen swarming over them like ants, fitting together the earliest seagoing ships (Fig. 41).
Beside them are the busy cabinetmakers (Fig. 50), fashioning luxurious furniture for the noble’s villa. The finished chairs and couches for the king or the rich are overlaid with gold and silver, inlaid with ebony and ivory, and upholstered with soft leathern cushions (Fig. 73).
As we look back over these painted chapel walls we see that the tombs of Gizeh have told us a very vivid story of how these early men learned to make for themselves the things they needed. We should notice how many more such things these men of the Nile could now make than the Stone Age men, who
ABO Fig. 49. Early Egyptian Glass Bottles
AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION FROM BABYLONIA to Ancient Italy
A, as found in ancient Egypt; B, as found in ancient Babylonia; C, as found in ancient Italy. The shape is in imitation of Egyptian perfume bottles cut out of alabaster. This shape became the common form for perfume and toilet bottles among the Mediterranean peoples in later times (see Fig. 170)
86. Shipbuilders. carpenters, arid cabinetmakers
87. Industrial progress of Egypt revealed by the tomb-chapels
66
Ancient Times
88. River commerce; the market place; traffic in goods; circulation of precious metal
were still living in the lake-villages and other towns of Euiope (Fig. 14) at the very time these tomb-chapels were built.
It is easy to picture the bright, sunny river in those ancient days, alive with boats and barges (often depicted on these walls) moving hither and thither, bearing the products of all these industries, to be carried to the treasury of the Pharaoh as taxes or to the market of the town to be bartered for other goods. Here on the wall is the market place itself. We can watch the cobbler offering the baker a pair of sandals as
Fig. 50. Cabinetmakers in the Pyramid Age
At the left a man is cutting with a chisel which he taps with a mallet; next, a man " rips ” a board with a copper saw; next, two men are finishing off a couch, and at the right a man is drilling a hole with a bow-drill. Scene from the chapel of a noble’s tomb (Fig 42). Compare a finished chair belonging to a wealthy noble of the Empire which was placed in his tomb and thus preserved (Fig. 73)
payment for a cake, or the carpenter’s wife giving the fisherman a little wooden box to pay for a fish; while the potter’s wife proffers the apothecary two bowls fresh from the potter’s furnace in exchange for a jar of fragrant ointment. We see, therefore, that the people have no coined money to use, and that in the market place trade is actual exchange of goods. Such is the business of the common people. If we could see the large transactions in the palace, we would find there heavy rings of gold of a standard weight, which circulated like money. Rings of copper also served the same purpose. Such rings were the forerunners of coin (§ 458).
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67
These people in the gayly painted picture of the market place on the chapel wall were the common folk of Egypt in the Pyramid Age. Some of them were free men, following their own business or industry. Others were slaves, working the fields on the great estates. Neither of these humble classes owned any land. Over them were the landowners, the Pharaoh and his great lords and officials, like the owner of this tomb (Fig. 42). We know many more of them by name, and a walk through this cemetery would enable us to make a directory of the wealthy quarter of the royal city under the kings who were buried in these pyramids of Gizeh. We know the grand viziers and the chief treasurers, the chief judges and the architects, the chamberlains and marshals of the palace, and so on. We can even visit the tomb of the architect who built the Great Pyramid of Gizeh for Khufu.
We can observe with what pleasure these nobles and officials .presided over this busy industrial and social life of the Nile valley in the Pyramid Age. Here on this chapel wall again we see its owner seated at ease in his palanquin, a luxurious wheel-less carriage borne upon the shoulders of slaves, as he returns from the inspection of his estate where we have been following him. His bearers carry him into the shady garden before his house (Fig. 51), where they set down the palanquin and cease their song.1 His wife advances at once to greet him. Her place is always at his side; she is his sole wife, held in all honor, and enjoys every right which belongs to her husband. This garden is the noble’s paradise. Here he may recline for an hour of leisure with his family and friends, playing at draughts, listening to the music of harp, pipe, and lute, watching his women in the slow and stately dances of the time, while his children are sporting about among the arbors, splashing in the pool as they chase the fish, playing with ball, doll, and jumping jack, or teasing the tame monkey which takes refuge under their father’s ivory-legged stool.
1 Recorded, with other songs, on the tomb-chapel walls.
89. Three classes of society in th Pyramid Ag
90. The noble of the Pyramid Ag in his home
68
Ancient History
91. The
noble’s house
92. The art of its furniture and decoration
Section 7. Art and Architecture in the Pyramid Age
The noble drops one hand idly upon the head of his favorite hound, and with the other beckons to the chief gardener and gives directions regarding the new pomegranates which he wishes to tiy for dinner. The house (Fig. 51) where this dinner awaits him is large and commodious, built of sun-dried brick and wood. Light and aiiy, as suits the climate, we find that it has many latticed windows on all sides. The walls of the living rooms are scarcely more than a frame to support gayly colored hangings (§ 84) which can b,e let down as a protection against winds and sand storms when necessary. These give the house a very bright and cheerful aspect. The house is a work of art, and we discern in it how naturally the Egyptian demanded beauty in his surroundings. This he secured by making all his useful things beatitiful.
Beauty surrounds us on every hand as we follow him in to his dinner. The lotus blossoms on the handle of his carved spoon, and his wine sparkles in the deep blue calyx of the same flower, which forms the bowl of his wineglass. The muscular limbs of the lion or the ox, beautifully carved in ivory, support the chair in which he sits or the couch where he reclines. The painted ceiling over his head is a blue and starry heaven resting upon palm-trunk columns (Fig. 56), each crowned with its graceful tuft of drooping foliage carved in wood and colored in the dark green of the living tree; or columns in the form of lotus stalks rise from the floor as if to support the azure ceiling upon their swaying blossoms. Doves and butterflies, exquisitely painted, flit across this indoor sky. Beneath our feet we find the pavement of the dining hall carpeted in paintings picturing everywhere the deep green of disheveled marsh grasses, with gleaming water between and fish gliding among the swaying reeds. Around the margin, leaping among the rushes, we see the wild ox
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69
Fig. 51. Villa of an Egyptian Noble
The garden is inclosed with a high wall. There are pools on either side as one enters, and a long arbor extends down the middle. The house at the rear, embowered in trees, is crowned by a roof garden shaded with awnings of tapestry (see § 84)
tossing his head at the birds twittering on the nodding rush tops, as they vainly strive to frighten away the stealthy weasel creeping up to plunder their nests.
The Egyptians could not have left us the beautifully painted reliefs in the tomb-chapels we visited unless they had possessed
93- Painting and relief • in tombs and temples
94. Portrait sculpture
95. Architecture : the earliest clerestory
70 Ancient Times
trained artists. Indeed, we can find, in one comer of the wall, the picture of the artist who painted the walls in one of the chapels, where he has represented himself enjoying a plentiful feast among other people of the estate. His drawings all around us show that he has not been able to overcome all the difficult ties of depicting, on a flat surface, objects having thickness and roundness. Animal figures are drawn, however, with great > lifelikeness (Figs. 43-46), but perspective is almost entirely^ unknown to him, and objects in the background or distance are drawn of almost the same size as those in front.
The portrait sculptor was the greatest artist of this age. His statues were carved in stone or wood, and colored in the ,hues of life ; the eyes were inlaid with rock crystal, and they still shine with the gleam of life (Fig. 53). More lifelike portraits have never been produced by any age, although they are the earliest portraits in the history of art. Such statues of the kings are often superb (Fig. 52). They were set up in the Pharaoh’s pyramid temple (Figs. 55 and 56). In size the most remarkable statue of the Pyramid Age is the Great Sphinx, which stands here in this cemetery of Gizeh (Fig. 54). The head is a portrait of Khafre, the king who built the second j pyramid of Gizeh (Fig. 54), and was carved from a promontory of rock which overlooked the royal city. It is the largest 1 portrait ever wrought. ■ '
The massive granite piers and walls (Fig. 55) of Khafre’s valley temple (Fig. 39) beside the Sphinx reveal to us the impressive architecture in stone which the men of the early part of the Pyramid Age were designing. This splendid hall (Fig. SS) was lighted by a series of oblique slits, which are really low roof windows. They occupied the difference in level ' between a higher roof over the middle aisle of the hail and a lower roof on each side of the middle (Fig. 271, A Such an arrangement of roof windows, called a clerestory (clearstory), later passed over to Greece and Rome, and finally suggested the nave of the Christian basilica church or cathedral
I
?
I
s
Fig. 52. Portrait of King Khafre, Builder of the Second Pyramid of Gizeh
Found in his valley-temple (Fig. 39). It is carved in excessively hard stone, called diorite. The falcon with protecting wings outstretched is a symbol of the erreat sod Horus (twentv-ninth centurv B.C.)
Fig. 53. Head of a Royal Statue of Bronze in the Pyramid Age
It represents King Pepi I (nearly 2600 B.C.). It was hammered into shape over a wooden form. The metal is encrusted with rust, but owing to the eyes, of inlaid rock crystal, the portrait is very lifelike (cf. Fig. 220)
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. 54. The Great Sphinx of Gizeh and the Pyramid of Khafre
A sphinx was the portrait head of a king attached to the body of a lion. This famous sphinx was a portrait of King Khafre (Fig. 52 and § 94), before whose pyramid it lies as a sentinel guarding the mighty cemetery of Gizeh. The body is 187 feet long, and the head is 66 feet high
The Story of Egypt
developed in Europe three thousand five hundred years later.
But before a century had passed, such massive grandeur as we find in this great hall of Khafre (Fig. 55) was being transformed by the Egyptian’s growing sense of grace and beauty. Instead of ponderous square piers or pillars the architects now began to erect light and graceful round columns with beautiful capitals; these were ranged in long rows, the earliest colonnades (Fig. 56), dating from the twenty-eighth century b. c. They were peculiar to Egypt, for when our study
The roof of this hall was supported on two rows of huge stone piers (see Fig. 271, /), each a single block of polished granite weighing 22 tons. This view shows only one row of the piers, the other being out of range at the right At the left above, the light streams in obliquely from the very low clerestory windows (§ 95). Compare the cross section (Fig. 271, /). The statues shown here had been thrown by unknown enemies into a well in a connected hall, where they were found -sixty years ago (see head of the finest in Fig. 54)
(Fig. 271). And so this granite hall of Khafre in the Pyramid Age was the ancestor of the leading form of Christian architecture as it
fiG. 55. Restoration of the Clerestory Hall in the Valley-Temple of Khafre (cf. Fig. 39). (After Hoelscher)
96. Earliest colonnades
7 2
Ancient Times
97. Decline of the Pyramid Age
Fig. 56. Colonnades in the Court of a Pyramid-Temple (Twenty-eighth Century b.c.). (After Borchardt)
Notice the pyramid rising behind the temple (just as in Fig. 39 also).
The door in the middle leads to the holy place built against the side of the pyramid, where a false door in the pyramid masonry served as the portal through which the king came forth from the world of the dead into this beautiful temple to enjoy the food and drink placed here for him in magnificent vessels (Plate I) and to share in the splendid feasts celebrated here. The center of the court is open to the sky; the roof of the porch all around is supported on round columns, the earliest known in the history of architecture. Contrast the square piers without any capital which the architects of Khafre put into his temple-hall (Fig. 55) over a century earlier than these columns. Each column reproduces a palm tree, the capital being the crown of foliage The whole place was colored in the bright hues of nature, including the painting on the walls behind the columns. Among these paintings I was the ship in Fig. 41. Thirteen hundred feet of copper piping, the earliest-known plumbing, was installed in this building (§ 81) '
carries us to earliest Asia, we shall find that the colonnade was long unknown there (§ 195). •
The Pyramid cemeteries have shown us the grandeur of the • civilization gained by the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age If time permitted, we might find other records here, showing how
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73
the nobles of the age (just such nobles as the one whose estate and home we have in imagination visited) gained more and more power until the Pharaohs could no longer control them. Then in struggles among themselves they destroyed the Pharaoh’s government, and the last king of the Pyramid Age fell soon after 2500 B.C. It had lasted some five hundred years. Thus ended the first great civilized age of human history— the age which carried men for the first time out of barbarism into civilization (see Fig. 38). But the Pyramid Age was not the end of civilization on the Nile ; other great .periods were to follow. The monuments which these later ages left lie farther up the river, and we must make the voyage up the Nile in order to visit them and to recover the wonderful story which they still tell us.
QUESTIONS
Section 5. Tell something of the life of the earliest Nile men and how we know about them. Trace the steps by which phonetic writing arose. Where did the first alphabet arise ? Write three words in hieroglyphic (Fig. 30). Discuss the importance of the invention of writing. Describe early methods of measuring time. Describe the probable manner of the discovery of metal. Which metal was it?
Section 6. What do the tombs of Egypt tell us of religion ? Describe the effect of the use of metal on architecture. Discuss the first architect in stone. Describe the government of the Pyramid Age. Study Fig. 38 and tell how the Egyptian tombs reveal the transition from barbarism to civilization. Describe the earliest seagoing ships. Make a list of the industries revealed in the tomb-chapel pictures. Discuss trade and commerce.
Section 7. Describe the house and garden of a noble in the Pyramid Age. Discuss painting and portrait sculpture. Make a sketch of the earliest piers or supports (Fig. 55). Were they beautiful ? Draw a later pier (column) a hundred years after the Great Pyramid (Fig. 56). Was it beautiful ? Describe the roof windows called clerestory windows (Figs. 55 and 271, 1) and what they finally came to be. Give the date of the Pyramid Age, and tell why it was important.
CHAPTER III
98. The
Nile voyage begins
THE STORY OF EGYPT: THE FEUDAL AGE AND THE EMPIRE
Section 8. The Nile Voyage and the Feudal Age
As we begin our voyage up the Nile and our steamer moves away from the Cairo dock, we see, stretching far along the western horizon, the long line of pyramids, reminding us again of the splendor and progress of the Pyramid Age which we are now leaving behind. At length they drop down and disappear behind the fringe of palm groves. Other great monuments are before us. Along the palm-fringed shores far away to the south we shall find the buildings, tombs, and monuments
NjTf'- At^.e 'e£t We See enterinS> in white robes, the deceased, a man named Am, and his wife. Before them are the balances of judgment for weighing the human heart, to determine whether it is just or not. A Jackal-headed god adjusts the scales, while an Ibis-headed god stands behind him pen in hand ready to record the verdict of the balances. Behind him is a monster readv to devour the unjust soul, as his heart (symbo&ed by a tinv iart in i *v. ^ scalepan, is weighed over against right and truth (symbolized bv a frath right-hand scalepan. The scene is painted in water colors on papyrus Such^a roll is sometimes as much as 90 feet long and filled from WSrT .py , . ,a
magical charms for the use of the deadln the next™ddHeZ X ** name for the whole roll, the " Book of the Dead.” modem
74
The Story of Egypt
75
Fig. 57. Cliff-Tomb of an Egyptian Noble of the Feudal Age
This tomb is not a masonry structure like the tomb of the Pyramid Age (Fig. 42), but it is cut into the face of the cliff. The chapel entered through this door contains painted reliefs like those of the Pyramid Age (Figs. 43-47) and also many written records. In this chapel the noble tells of his kind treatment of his people; he says: " There was no citizen’s daughter whom I misused; there was no widow whom I oppressed; there was no peasant whom I evicted; there was no shepherd whom I expelled; . . . there was none wretched in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came I plowed all the fields of the Oryx barony [his estate] . . preserving its people alive and furnishing its food so that there was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband; I did not exalt the great above the humble in anything that . I gave99 (§ 100). All this we can read inscribed in this tomb
which will tell us of two more great ages on the Nile — the Feudal Age and the Empire. We steam steadily southward, and soon the river begins to wind from side to side of the deep valley, carrying the steamer at times close under the scarred and weatherworn cliffs (Fig. 69). As we scan the rocks
99- The
tombs of the Feudal Age
ioo. Books on kindness and justice
76 Ancient Times
we look up to many a tomb-door cut in the face of the cliff, and leading to a tomb-chapel excavated in the rock (Fig. 57).
These cliff-tombs looking down upon the river belonged to the Feudal Age of Egyptian history. The men buried in these cliff-tombs looked back across five centuries to their ancestors of the Pyramid Age, as we look back upon our European ancestors before the discovery of America. But the nobles who made these cliff-tombs succeeded in gaining greater power than their ancestors. They were granted lands by the king, under arrangements which in later Europe we call feudal. They were thus powerful barons, living like little kings on their broad estates, made up of the fertile fields upon which these tomb-doors now look down. This Feudal Age lasted for several centuries and was flourishing by 2000 B.C. Fragments from the libraries of these feudal barons — the oldest libraries in the world —• have fortunately been discovered in their tombs. These oldest of all surviving books are in the form of rolls of papyrus, which once were packed in jars, neatly labeled, and ranged in rows on the noble’s library shelves. Here are the most ancient storybooks in the world : tales of wanderings and adventures in Asia; tales of shipwreck at the gate of the unknown ocean beyond the Red Sea — the earliest " Sindbad the Sailor” (Fig. 58); and tales of wonders wrought by ancient wise men and magicians.
Some of these stories set forth the sufferings of the poor and the humble, and seek to stir the rulers to be just and kind in their treatment of the weaker classes. Some describe the wickedness of men and the hopelessness of the future. Others tell of a righteous ruler who is yet to come, a " good shepherd ” they call him, meaning a good king, who shall bring in justice and happiness for all. We notice here a contrast with the Pyramid Age. With the in-coming of the Pyramid builders we saw a tremendous growth in power, in building, and in art; but the Feudal Age reveals progress also in a higher realm^ that of conduct and character (see description under Fig. 57)!
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77
Probably a number of rolls were required to contain the drama of Osiris — a great play in which the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Osiris (§ 69) were pictured at an annual feast in which all the people loved to join. It is our earliest
Fig. 58. A Page from the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor, the Earliest Sindbad, as read by the Boys and Girls of Egypt Four Thousand Years Ago (One Third of Size'of Original)
This page reads : " Those who -were on board perished, and not one of them escaped. Then I was cast upon an island by a wave of the great sea. I-passed three days alone, with (only) my heart as my companion, sleeping in the midst of a shelter of trees, till daylight enveloped me. Then I crept out for aught to fill my mouth. I found figs and grapes there and all fine vegetables etc. . . .” The tale then tells of his seizure by an enormous serpent with a long beard, who proves to be the king of this distant island in' the Red Sea, at the entrance of the Indian Ocean.- He keeps the sailor three months, treats him kindly, and returns him with much treasure to Egypt. In form such a book was a single strip of papyrus paper, 5 or 6 to 10 or 12 inches wide, and often 15 to 30 or 40 feet long. .When not in use this strip was kept rolled up, and thus the earliest books were rolls, looking, when small, like a diploma or, when large, like a roll of wall paper
known drama — a kind of Passion Play; but the rolls containing it have perished. There were also rolls containing songs and poems, like the beautiful morning hymn sung by the nobles of • (he Pharaoh’s court in greeting to t-he sovereign with the
101. Drama and poetry
78
Fig. 59- Ancient Egyptian Astronomical Instrument
Ancient Times
return of each new day. Another song in praise of the Pharaoh was arranged to be sung responsively y two groups at the great court festivals. It was constructed in parallel verses or lines, like the parallel lines of the Hebrew Psalms. It is the oldest surviving example of this form of poetry.
Very few rolls were needed to deal with the science of this time. The largest and the most valuable of all contained what they had learned about medicine and the organs of the human body. This oldest medical book, when unrolled, is today about sixty-six feet long and has recipes for all sorts of ailments. Some of them are still good and call for remedies which, like castor oil, are still in common use; others represent the ailment as due to demons, which were long believed to be the cause of disease. There are also rolls containing the simpler rules of arithmetic, based on the decimal system which we still use; others treat the beginnings of geometry and elementary algebra. Even observations
The oldest surviving astronomical device. It is now in the Berlin Museum.
One part (A) is simply a plumb line with a handle attached at the top. It enabled the observer to hold the other part (B) directly over a given point on the ground while he sighted through the slot at the top toward some star like the North Star. By sighting over a rod between the observer and the North Star until the rod was exactly in line with the North Star, the astronomer could determine his meridian', observe each star that crossed it, measure time, and secure celestial data of value
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79
of the heavenly bodies, with simple instruments, were made (Fig. 59); but these records, like those in geography, have been lost.
Along with this higher progress, the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age much improved the government. Every few years they made census lists to be used in taxation, and a few of these earliest census sheets in the world have survived. They erected huge earthen dikes and made vast basins, to store up the Nile waters for irrigation, thus greatly increasing the yield of the feudal lands and estates. They measured the height of the river from year to year, and their marks of the Nile levels are still to be found cut on the rocks at the Second Cataract. Thus nearly four thousand years ago they were already doing on a large scale what our government has only recently begun to do by its irrigation projects among our own arid lands.
At the same time these rulers of the Feudal Age reached out by sea for the wealth of other lands. Their fleets sailed over among the ^Egean islands and probably controlled the large island of Crete (§§ 335-345). They dug a canal from the north end of the Red Sea westward to the nearest branch of the Nilfe in the eastern Delta, where the river divides into a number of mouths (see map, p. 36). The Pharaoh’s Mediterranean ships could sail up the easternmost mouth of the Nile, then enter the canal and, passing eastward through it, reach the Red Sea. Thus the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea were first connected by this predecessor of the Suez Canal four thousand years ago. Such a connection was as important to the Egyptians as the Panama Canal is to us. Nile ships could likewise now sail from the eastern Delta directly to the land of Punt (§ 78) and to the s,traits leading to the Indian Ocean. These waters seemed to the sailors of the Feudal Age the end of the world, and their wondrous adventures there delighted many a circle of villagers on the feudal estates (Fig. 58).
In this age the Pharaoh had organized a small standing army. He could now make his power felt both in north and south, in-
103. Administration, and irrigation projects in the Feudal Age
104. Pharaoh’s commerce by sea; a predecessor of the Suez Canal four thousand years ago
8o
Ancient Times
105. Military Palestine and in Nubia. He conquered the territory of Nubia north and as ^ar south as the Second Cataract (see map, p. 36), and thus end^'fthe1*16 added tw0 hundred miles of river to the kingdom of Egypt. Feudal Age Here he erected strong frontier fortresses against the Nubian tribes, and these fortresses still stand. The enlightened rule of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age did much to prepare the way for Egyptian leadership in the early world. Three of these kings bore the name "Sesostris,” which became one of the great and illustrious names in Egyptian history. But not long after 1800 B.C. the power of the Pharaohs of the Feudal Age suddenly declined and their line disappeared.
106. The
Nile voyage — arrival at Thebes
107. Kamak — arrival of the horse in Egypt
Section 9. The Founding of the Empire
The monuments along the river banks have thus far told us the story of two of the three periods 1 into which the career of this great Nile people falls. After we have left the tombs of the Feudal Age and have continued our joumey over four hundred miles southward from Cairo, all at once we catch glimpses of Xfist masses of stone masonry and lines of tall columns rising among the palms on the east side of the river. They are the ruins of the once great city of Thebes, which will tell us the story of the third period, the Empire.
Here we shall find not only a vast cemetery, but also great temples (see plan, p. 81). A walk around the Temple of Kamak at Thebes (Fig. 64) is as instructive to us in studying the Empire as we have found the Gizeh cemetery to be in studying the Pyramid Age. We find the walls of this immense temple covered with enormous sculptures in relief, depicting the wars of the Egyptians in Asia. We see the giant figure of the Pharaoh as he stands m his war chariot, scattering the enemy before his plunging horses (Fig. 60). The Pharaohs of the Pyramid A?e had never seen a horse (§ 80), and this is the first time we
1 These three ages are (1) the Pyramid Age, about ,000 to tions 6-7); (2) the Feudal Age, flourishing 2000 b.c. (Section Empire, about 1580 to 1150 B.C. (Sections 9-11). '; (3) the
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81
have met the horse on the ancient monuments. After the dose of the Feudal Age the animal began to be imported from Asia; the chariot (Fig. 133) came with him, and Egypt, having learned warfare on a scale unknown before, became a military empire.
Map of Egyptian Thebes
This map may be compared with the aeroplane view of Karnak (Fig. 64), taken over point marked X, and with the view of the western plain toward the colossal statues of Amenhotep III and the western cliffs (Fig. 69), in ajid along which lie the tombs of the vast cemetery. Before it, and parallel with the cliffs, stretched a long line of temples facing the great temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east side of the river.
The houses of the ancient city have passed away
The Pharaohs were now great generals with a well-organized standing army made up chiefly of archers and heavy masses of chariots. With these forces the Pharaoh conquered an empire which extended from the Euphrates in Asia to the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in Africa (see map I, p. 188). By an empire we
108. Egypt a military empire
82 Ancient Times
mean a group of nations subdued and ruled over by the most powerful among them. Government began with tiny city-states (§ 38), which gradually merged together into nations (§ 74)> but the organization’ of men had now reached the point where
Fig. 60. A Pharaoh of the Empire fighting in his Chariot
The tiny figures of the enemy are scattered beneath the Pharaoh’s horses. This is one of an enormous series of such scenes, 170 feet long, carved in relief on the outside of the Great Hall of Karnak (Fig. 68). Such sculpture was brightly colored an<i served to enhance the architectural effect and to impress the people with the heroism of the Pharaoh. The color has now entirely disappeared, and the sculpture is much battered and weatherworn. This is the cause of the indistinctness in the above sketch
many nations were combined into an empire including a large part of the early oriental world. This world power of the Pharaohs lasted from the early sixteenth century to the twelfth century b. c. — something over four hundred years.
The Story of Egypt 83
The Kamak Temple (Fig. 64), jfhich stood in the once vast city of Thebes, is like a great historical volume telling us much of the story of the Egyptian Empire. Behind the great hall (Figs. 66 and 68) towers a huge obelisk, a shaft of granite in a single piece nearly a -hundred feet high (Fig. 65). It was
Fig. 61. Transportation of Queen Hatshepsut’s 350-T0N Obelisks down the Nile (Fifteenth Century b.c.)
The two obelisks are lying base to base on a large Nile barge some 300 feet long. The obelisks are each 97J feet long and weigh about 350 tons each, the two making a burden of some 700 tons in the barge. It is being towed by thirty tugboats in three rows of ten each. Each tugboat has thirty-two oarsmen, making nine hundred and sixty oarsmen in all. Under the guidance of the engineers in the other small boats these men towed the obelisks downstream from the granite quarries of the First Cataract to Thebes — a distance of about 150 miles. Under each obelisk we can see the sledge on which it was dragged on shore to the place where they were both set up in the Karnak Temple (Fig. 64). The scene is restored from a relief on the wall of the queen’s temple at Thebes
erected early in the Empire by the first great woman in history, Queen Hatshepsut. There were once two of these enormous monuments (see Fig. 65), and it was no small task to cut out two such blocks as these from the granite quarries at the First Cataract, transport them on a huge boat down the river (Fig. 61), and erect them in this temple. But the queen did not stop with this achievement. She even dispatched an expedition
109, The
reign of Queen Hat-shepsut, the first great woman in history
no. The end of Hatshep-sut and the triumph of Thutmose III
84 Ancient Times
of five ships (Fig. 62) through the Red Sea to Punt (§ 78), to bring back the luxuries of tropical Africa for another beautiful terraced temple which she was erecting against the western cliffs at Thebes (Plan, p. 81). Such achievements show what an efficient and successful ruler this first great woman was.
Fig. 62. Part of the Fleet of Queen Hatshepsut loading in the Laxd of Punt
Only two of Hatshepsut’s fleet of five ships are shown. The sails on the long spars are furled and the vessels are moored. The sailors are carrying the cargo up the gangplanks, and one of them is teasing an ape on the roof of the cabin. The inscriptions above the ships read: " The loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country of Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God’s-Land [the East], heaps of myrrh-resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds of incense, eye-cosmetic, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children. Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning. ’ The scene is carved on the wall of the queen’s temple at Thebes, in the garden of which she planted the myrrh trees
As we examine the obelisk of Hatshepsut we find around the base the remains of stone masonry with which it was once walled in almost up to the top. This was done by the queen’s halfbrother and husband, Thutmose III, in order to cover up the records which proclaimed to the world the hated rule of a woman. Thus Thutmose III had the names of the queen and the men who aided her all cut out and obliterated, including
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85
that of the skillful architect and engineer who erected this obelisk and its companion. But the masonry covering the' obelisk has fallen down, and it still proclaims the fame of Hatshepsut.
Thutmose III (Fig. 63) was the first great general in history, hi. The
1 x r 1 . .. . campaigns of
the Napoleon of Egypt, the greatest of the Egyptian conquerors., Thutmose III
(1501-I447 B.C.)
Fig. 63. Portrait of Thutmose III, the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt (A), compared with his Mummy (B)
This portrait (A), carved in granite, can be compared with the actual face of the great conqueror as we have it in his mummy. Such a comparison is shown in B, where the profile of this granite portrait (outside lines) is placed over the profile of Thutmose Ill’s mummy (inside lines). The correspondence is very close, showing great accuracy in the portrait art of this age
He ruled for over fifty years, beginning about 1500 B.C. On the temple walls at Karnak we can read the story of nearly twenty years of warfare, during which Thutmose crushed the cities and kingdoms of Western Asia and welded them into an enduring empire. At the same time his war fleet carried his power even to the y£gean, and one of his generals became governor of the JEgean islands (Fig. 143 ; see map I, p. 188).
86
Ancient Times
1x2. Temple architecture
113. The surroundings of the Empire temples at Thebes
Section 10. The Higher Life of the Empire
The wealth which the Pharaohs captured in Asia and Nubia during the Empire brought them power and magnificence un-.known to the world before, especially as shown in their vast and splendid buildings. A new and impressive chapter in the history of art and architecture was begun. The temple of Kamak, which we have visited, contains the greatest colonnaded hall ever erected by man. The columns of the central aisle (Fig. 68) are sixty-nine feet high. The vast capital forming the summit of each column is large enough to contain a group of a hundred men standing crowded upon it at the same time. The clerestory windows (Fig. 68) on each side of these giant columns are no longer low, depressed openings, as in the Pyramid Age (Fig. 55 and Fig. 271,1), but they have now become fine, tall windows, showing us the Egyptian clerestory hall- on its way to become the basilica church of much later times (Fig. 2 71).
Such temples as these at Thebes were seen through the deep green of clustering palms, among towering obelisks and colossal statues of the Pharaohs (Fig. 69). The whole was bright with color, flashing at many a point with gold and silver. Mirrored in the unruffled surface of the temple lake (Fig. 64), it made a picture of such splendor as the ancient world had never seen before. As the visitor entered he found himself
* This point of view is behind (east of) the great Kamak Temple at point marked X in plan (p. Si). We look northwestward across the Temple and the river to the western cliffs (cf. plan, p. 81). From the rear gate below us (lower right-hand corner of view) to the tall front wall nearest the river, the Temple is nearly a quarter of a mile long, and was nearly two thousand years in course of construction. The oldest portions were built by the kings of the Feudal Age, and the latest, the front wall, hy the Greek kings (the Ptolemies, Section 66). The standing obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut (Fig. 65) can be seen rising in the middle of the Temple. Beyond it is the vast colonnaded Hall of Karnak (Figs. 66 and 68), on the outside wall of which are the great war reliefs (Fig. 60). Hidden by the huge front wall is the Avenue of Sphinxes (Fig. 67). On the left we see the pool —all that is left of the sacred lake (§ 113).
Fig. 64. The Great Temple of Karnak and the Nile Valley at Thebes seen from an Aeroplane*
The area included in this view will be found bounded by two diverging dotted lines on the map of Thebes (p. 81). It will be seen that our view includes only a portion of the ancient city, which extended up and down both sides of the river. For description of Karnak, see note on opposite page
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. 65. The Obelisks of Oueex Hatshepsut and her Father Thutmose I at Karnak The further obelisk is that of the queen. It was one of a pair transported from the First Cataract (Fig. 61), but its mate has fallen and broken into pieces. The shaft is 8J feet thick at the base, and the human figure by contrast conveys some idea of the vast size of the monument. Its position in the temple can be seen from the aeroplane view (Fig. 64)
From a pen etching by Sears Gallagher
Fig. 66. The Colossal Columns of the Nave in the Great Hall of Karnak These are the columns of the middle two rows in Fig. 68. On the top of the capital of each one of these columns a hundred men can stand at oncev These great columns may be seen in the aeroplane view (Fig. 64) just at the left of the two obelisks
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. 67. Avenue of Rams leading from the Karnak. Temple to the Nile
The temple is just behind us as we look toward the river, here too low to be seen. Beyond rise the heights of the western desert, where the kings and nobles of the Empire were buried. The low buildings on the right are part of a modern village, seen between the temple and the river in the aeroplane view (Fig. 64)
The Story of Egypt
8 7
in a spacious and sunlit court, surrounded by splendid Colonnaded porches. Beyond, all was mystery, as he looked into the somber forest of vast columns in the hall behind the court (Figs. 66 and 68). These temples were connected by imposing
Fig. 68. Restoration of the Great Hall of Karnak, Ancient Thebes — Largest Building of the Egyptian Empire
With the wealth taken in Asia the Egyptian conquerors of the Empire enabled their architects to build the greatest colonnaded hall ever erected by man. It is 338 feet wide and 170 feet deep, furnishing a floor area about equal to that of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, although this is only a single room of the Temple. There are one hundred and thirty-six columns in sixteen rows. The nave (three central aisles) is 7.ct feet high and contains twelve columns in two rows, which the architects have made much higher than the rest, in order to insert lofty clerestory windows on each side. Compare the very low windows of the earliest clerestory (Fig. 55 and Fig. 271,1 and 2). In this higher form the clerestory passed over to Europe (Fig. 271)
avenues of sphinxes (Fig. 67), and thus grew up at Thebes .the first great "monumental city” ever built by man — a city which as a whole was itself a vast and imposing monument.1
Much of the grandeur of Egyptian architecture was due to the sculptor and the painter. The' colonnades, with flower capitals,’were colored to suggest the plants they represented. The
114. Painting and sculpture in the temples
1 City plans which treat a whole city as a symmetrical and harmonious unit are now beginning to be made in America.
Fig. 69. Gigantic Portrait Statues of Amenhotep 111 at Thebes (1400 B.C.)
They are 70 feet high; the right-hand figure bears many inscriptions of eminent Greek and Roman visitors In the cliffs behind is the vast cemetery of Thebes (§§ 115-117, and plan, p. 8;)
Fig. 70. Colossal Portrait Figure of Ramses II at Abu-Simbel in Egyptian Nubia
Four such statues, 75 feet high, adorn the front of this temple, which, like the statues, is hewn from the sandstone cliffs. The faces are better preserved than that of the Great Sphinx (Fig. 54) or the portrait statues of Amenhotep III {Fig. 69), and we can here see that such vast figures were portraits. The face of Ramses II here closely resembles that of his mummy {Fig. 123). (From a photograph taken from the top of the crown of one of the statues by The University of Chicago Expedition)
Fig. 71. Remarkable Limestone Portrait Head of Ikhnaton, the Earliest Monotheist
Recently discovered by Borchardt at Amarna (§ 119). It is carved in limestone and conveys a wonderful impression of the dreamy beauty of this extraordinary young king (§§ 118-120)
Fig. 72. Head of the Mummy of Seti I, Son of Ramses II, now in the Cairo Museum
One of the royal bodies discovered at Thebes (§ 125). The head of Seti is the best preserved of the entire group, but the royal mummies are all beginning to show evidences of decay
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89
vast battle scenes, carved on the temple wall (Fig. 60), were painted in bright colors. The portrait statues of the Pharaohs, set up before these temples, were often so large that they rose above the towers of the temple front itself, — the tallest part of the building, — and they could be seen for miles around (Figs. 69 and 70). The sculptors could cut these colossal figures from a single block, although they were sometimes eighty or ninety feet high and weighed as* much as a thousand tons. This is a burden equal to the load drawn by a modem freight train, but unlike the trainload it was not cut up into small units of light weight, convenient for handling and loading. Nevertheless, the engineers of the Empire moved many such vast figures for hundreds of miles,-using the same methods employed in moving obelisks. It is in works of this massive, monumental character that the art of Egypt excelled (Fig. 70).
Two enormous portraits of Amenhotep III, the most luxurious and splendid of the Egyptian emperors, still stand on the western plain of Thebes (Fig. 69), across the river from Kamak. As we approach them we see rising behind them the majestic western cliffs in which are cut hundreds of tomb-chapels belonging to the great men of the Empire. Here were buried the able generals who marched with the Pharaohs on their campaigns in Asia and in Nubia. Here lay the gifted artists and architects who built the vast monuments we have just visited, and made Thebes the first great " monumental city” of the ancient world. Here in these tomb-chapels we may read their names and often long accounts of their lives. Here is the story of the general who saved Thutmose Ill’s life, in a great elephant bunt in Asia, by rushing in and cutting off the trunk of an enraged elephant which was pursuing the king. Here is the tomb of the general who captured the city of Joppa in Palestine by concealing his men in panniers loaded on the backs of donkeys, and thus bringing them into the city as merchandise — an adventure which afterward furnished part of the story of " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
115. Tombs of the great men of the Empire
n6. The furniture and equipment of the Empire lords as found in their tombs
Ancient Times
The very furniture which these great men used in their houses was put into their tombs. In a neighboring va ^ recently found the tomb of the parents of Amenhotep ' villa among the Theban gardens
was
queen. Their beautiful villa among ^
filled with gorgeous furniture which their royal son-in-
law, Amenhotep III, had given to them. When this worthy old couple died, the king had them wonderfully embalmed, and much of the furniture which he had given to them (Fig. 73) was carried to the cemetery and deposited in their tomb, including even the gold-covered chariot in which the old couple were accustomed to take their daily airing thirty-three hundred years ago. Here we find chairs covered with gold and silver and fitted with soft . leathern cushions, a bed of sumptuous workmanship, jewel boxes, and perfume caskets. They are works of art —■ real triumphs of the skill of the Empire craftsmen — and almost as well preserved leather cushion and all, as when first made. Even the shadow clock, which belonged to the furniture of a well-equipped- household, still survives (Fig. 74).
Fig. 73. Armchair from the House of an Egyptian Noble of the Empire
This chair with other furniture from his house was placed in his tomb at Thebes in the early part of the fourteenth century B.C. There it remained for nearly thirty-three hundred years, till it was discovered in 1905 and removed to the National Museum at Cairo (§ 116)
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91
These tombs show us also how much farther the Egyptian has advanced in religion since the days of the pyramids of Gizeh. Each of these great men buried in the Theban cemetery looked forward to a judgment in the next world, where Osiris (§ 69) was the 'great judge and king. Every good man might rise from the dead as Osiris had done, but in the presence of Osiris he would be obliged to see his soul weighed in the
Fig. 74. The Oldest Clock in the World — an Egyptian-Shadow Clock
In sunny Egypt a shadow clock was a very practical instrument. In the mprning the crosspiece (AA) was turned toward the east, and its shadow fell on the long arm (BB), where we see it at the first hour. As the sun rose higher the shadow shortened and its place on the scale showed the hour, which could be read in figures for six hours until noon. At noon the head (AA) was turned around to the west and the lengthening afternoon shadow on the long arm (BB) was measured in the same way. It was from the introduction of such Egyptian clocks that the twelve-hour day reached Europe. This clock bears the'name of Thutmose III and is therefore about thirty-four hundred years old. Nearly a thousand years later such clocks were adopted by the Greeks. It is now in the Berlin Museum. The headpiece (AA) is restored after Borchardt
balances- over against the symbol of truth and justice (headpiece, p. 74). The "dead man’s friends put into his coffin a ' roll of papyrus containing prayers and magic charms which would aid him in the hereafter, and among these was a picture of the judgment. We now call this roll the " Book of the. Dead” (headpiece, p. 74).
( , When the Empire was about two hundred years old, Amen-« ( hotep Ill’s youthful son, Amenhotep IV, became Pharaoh in his father’s place. He believed in only one god, the Sun-god,
117. Religion in the Empire
Ancient Times
118. The
religious revolution of Amenhotep IV (Ikhnaton)
119. Ikhna-j
ton’s new capital, now j called Amarna
120. Ikhn; ton’s hymn 3 to Aton, th sole God
.nd he began a new and remarkable chapter in the religious .listory of Egypt by the attempt to destroy the old gods of Egypt and to induce the people to adopt the exclusive worship of the Sun-god. He commanded that throughout the great Empire, including its people in both Africa and Asia, only the Sun-god, whom he called Aton, should be worshiped. In order that the people might forget the old gods, he closed all the temples and cast out their priests. Everywhere he also had the names of the gods erased and cut out, especially on all temple walls. He particularly hated Amon, or Amen, the great Theban god of the Empire whose temple we visited at Karnak. His own royal name, Amen-hotep (meaning " Amen rests”), contained this god Amen’s name, and he therefore changed his name Amenhotep to Ikhnaton, which means " Aton (the Sun-god) is satisfied.”
Ikhnaton, as we must now call him, finally forsook magnificent Thebes, where there were so many temples of the old gods, and built a new city farther down the river, which he named "Horizon of Aton.” It is now called Amarna (see map, p. 36). The city was forsaken a few years after Ikhnaton’s death, and beneath the rubbish of its ruins to-day we find the lower portions of the walls of the houses and palaces which once adorned it. Recently the ruins of the studio of a sculptor were uncovered there and found to contain many beautiful works, which have greatly increased our knowledge of the wonderful sculpture of the age (Fig. 71). The cliffs behind the city still contain the cliff-tombs of the followers whom the young king was able to convert to the new faith, 'and in them we find engraved on the walls beautifully sculptured scenes picturing the life of the now forgotten city.
In these Amarna tomb-chapels we may still read on the walls the hymns of praise to th? Sun-god, which Ikhnaton himself wrote. They show us the simplicity and beauty of the young king’s faith in the sole God. He had gained the belief that one God created not only all the lower creatures but also all
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93
races of men, both Egyptians and foreigners. Moreover, the king saw in his God a kindly Father, who maintained all his' creatures by his goodness, so that even the birds in the marshes were aware of his kindness, and uplifted their wings like arms to praise him, as a beautiful line in one of the hymns tells us. In all the progress of men which we have followed through thousands of years, no one had ever before caught such a vision of the great Father of all. Such a belief in one god is called monotheism, which literally means one-god-ism.
Section ii. The Decline and Fall of the Egyptian Empire
A new faith like this could not be understood by the common lm. ikhna-people of the fourteenth century B.C. The country was full of {.t homeUbIeS the discontented priests of the old gods, and equally dissatisfied soldiers of the neglected army. The priests secretly plotted with the troops against the king, and they found willing ears among the idle soldiery. Confusion and disturbance arose in Egypt, and the conquered countries in Asia were preparing to revolt.
The consequences in Asia have been revealed to us by a remarkable group of over three hundred letters, part of the royal records stored in one of Ikhnaton’s government offices at Amama. Here they had lain for over three thousand years, when they were found some years ago by native diggers. They are written on clay tablets (§ 147), in Babylonian writing (§ 148).
Most of these letters proved to be from the kings of Western Asia to the Pharaoh, and they form the oldest international correspondence in the world (Fig. 1.2(3). They show us how these kings were gradually shaking off the rule of the Pharaoh, so that the Egyptian Empire in Asia was rapidly falling to pieces. The Pharaoh’s northern territory in Syria (see map I, p. 188) was being taken by the Hittites, who came in from Asia Minor (§ 359), while his southern, territory in
122. Ikhnaton’s troubles abroad ; the Amama letters
123. Death of Ikhnaton; partial restoration of the Egyptian Empire, last great power of Age of Bronze; coming of iron
124. Foreign mercenaries in the Egyptian army; invasion of the Northerners ; fall of the Empire
125. The bodies of the Egyptian emperors
94 Ancient Times
Palestine was being invaded by the Hebrews, who were (drifting in from the desert (§ 293).
In the midst of these troubles at home and abroad the young Ikhnaton died, leaving no son behind him. Although a visionary and an idealist, he was the most remarkable genius of the early oriental world before the Hebrews; but the faith in one god which he attempted to introduce perished with him.
* A new line of kings, the greatest of whom were Seti I (Fig. 7 2) and his son Ramses II (Fig. 123), after desperate efforts were able to restore to some extent the Egyptian Empire. But they were unable to drive the Hittites out of Syria, for these Hittite invaders from Asia Minor possessed iron (§ 360), which they could use for weapons, while the declining Egyptian Empire was the last great power of the Age of Bronze.
At Thebes the symptoms of the coming fall may be seen even at the present day. If we examine the great war pictures on the Theban temples which we have been visiting, we find in the battle scenes of the later Empire great numbers of foreigners serving in the Egyptian army. This shows that the Egyptians had finally lost their temporary interest in war and were calling in foreigners to fight their battles. Among these strangers are the peoples of the northern Mediterranean whom we left there in the Late Stone Age (§ 44). Here on the Egyptian monuments we find them after they have got from eastern peoples the art of using metal. With huge bronze swords in their hands we see them serving as hired soldiers in the Egyptian army (tailpiece, p. 519). They and other Mediterranean foreigners (§378) finally invaded Egypt in such numbers that the weakened Egyptian Empire fell, in the middle of the twelfth century b.c.
The great Pharaohs, who maintained themselves for over four hundred years as emperors, were buried here at Thebes. On the other side of the cliffs behind the huge statues of Amenhotep III (Fig. 69) is a wild and desolate valley formed by a deep depression in the western desert (Fig. 75). Here, in
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purpose in the western cliffs. Here they lay undisturbed for nearly three thousand years, until, in 1881, they were discovered and removed to the National Museum at Cairo, where they still rest (cf. Fig. 72). Thus we are still able to look into the very faces of these lords of Egypt and Western Asia who lived and ruled from thirty-one hundred to thirty-five hundred years ago.
Thus ends the story of the Empire at Thebes. The pyramids, tombs, and temples along the Nile have told us the history of early Egypt in three epochs: the Pyramids of Gizeh and the neighboring cemeteries of
Fig. 75. Valley at Thebes
WHERE THE PHARAOHS OF THE
Empire were buried
In the Empire (after 1600 B.C.) the Pharaohs had ceased to erect pyramids. They excavated their tombs in the cliff walls of this valley (see plan, p. 81), penetrating in long galleries hundreds of feet into the rock. Taken from here and concealed near by, the bodies of many of the Pharaohs, although long ago stripped of their valuables by tomb robbers, have survived and now lie in the National Museum of Egypt at Cairo (Fig. 72)
Memphis have told us about the Pyramid Age; the cliff-tombs, which we found on the Nile voyage, have revealed the history of the Feudal Age; and the temples and cliff-tombs of Thebes have given us the story of the Empire. The Nile has become, for us a great volume of history. Let us remember, however,
over forty vast rock-hewn galleries reaching hundreds of feet into the mountain, the bodies of the Egyptian emperors were laid to rest, only to suffer pillage and robbery after the fall of the Empire. Their weak successors as kings at Thebes hurried the royal bodies from one hiding place to another, and finally concealed them in a secret chamber hewn for this
126. Final significance of the Nile voyage
96
/.indent limes
that, preceding these three great chapters of civilization on Nile, we also foun4 here the earlier story of how man passe from Stone Age barbarism to a civilization possessed of metal, writing, ^nd government (§ 66). On the other hand, as we
Oval containing name of Ptolemy in hieroglyphics
'ii
PTOLE MAIOS
j rim ir r vi 7ii rinix Q # (/ and j) = P in both names (//) = T in one name
|Tj (I/I and 4) = 0 in both names and 2) = L in both names = M in one name
(V/)
(VZZ)
(IX)
AI in one name = S in one name
Oval containing name of Cleopatra in hieroglyphics
KLEOPATRA
1234667 8 9
A
<1
= K in one name = E in one name
(6 and 9)= A in two places
(7) =rT in one name (5) = R in one name
o
nnpronounced signs placed at end of all feminine names
Fig. 76. Diagram showing the First Steps in Champollion’s Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphics *
look forward, we should remember also that the three great chapters did not end the story; for Egyptian institutions and civilization continued far down into the Christian Age and greatly influenced later history in Europe (§§657,981, and 1063).
The Story of Egypt
97
Section 12. The Decipherment of Egyptian Writing by Champollion
Finally, our Nile voyage has also shown us how we gain 127. In mod-
knowledge of ancient men and their deeds from the monuments g™ able to°
and records which they have left behind. We have also noticed r?ad Eot-J tian writing
how greatly the use of the earliest written documents -aids us before 1822
in putting together the story. If we had made our journey up
* Champollion found an obelisk bearing on its base a Greek inscription, showing that the obelisk belonged to a king Ptolemy and his queen Cleopatra. The obelisk shaft bore an inscription in hieroglyphics which he therefore thought must somewhere contain the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Other scholars had shown that the ovals, or ” cartouches ” (see opposite page), so common on Egyptian monuments, contained royal names. Examination showed two such ovals on the shaft of the obelisk. He concluded that the hieroglyphs in these two ovals spelled the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. He then proceeded to compare them with the Greek spelling of Ptolemy (.Ptolemaios) and Cleopatra. These Greek spellings (in our letters) will be found in Fig. 76, each paired with its corresponding hieroglyphic form. All signs and letters in the left pair are numbered with Roman numerals, and in the right pair with Arabic numerals.
The first sign (I) in oval A is an oblong rectangle, and if it really is the first letter in Ptolemy’s name, it must be the letter P. Now the fifth letter in Cleopatra’s name is also a P, and so the fifth sign in the oval 3 ought also to be an oblong rectangle. To Champollion’s delight oval B did not disappoint him, and sign 5 proved to be an oblong rectangle. He was at first troubled by the fact that in his next comparison, II and 7 in the two ovals did not prove to be alike as the sign for T, but he concluded that 7 must be a second form for T, and he was right. The next two signs in oval A (III and IV) corresponded exactly with 4 and 2 in oval B, and showed him that he was certainly on the right road. Although the vowels (e.g. VII and 3) caused him some trouble, he soon saw that Egyptian was inaccurate in writing the vowels, or even omitted them (see Fig. 29). From these two names he had proved that the Egyptians possessed an alphabet and not merely signs for whole syllables or whole words. He had also learned the sounds of twelve of the letters (see table of signs below the names) and laid the foundation for completing the decipherment, by the aid of the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207), which he then for the first time understood how to use, after scholars had been working on it in vain for over twenty years. This was in 1822, and Champollion then announced his discovery to the French Academy in Paris.
128. Cham-pollion’s first efforts at decipherment
129. Cham-pollion’s successful decipherment
130. Transition to Asia
the Nile a hundred years ago, however, we would have had no one to tell us what these Egyptian records meant. For the last man who could read Egyptian hieroglyphs died over a thousand years ago. A hundred years ago, therefore, no one understood the curious writing which travelers found covering the great monuments along the Nile.
For a long time scholars puzzled over the strange Nile records, but made little progress in reading them. Then a young Frenchman named Champollion took up the problem, and after years of discouraging failure he began to make progress. He discovered the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra written in hieroglyphics. He was thus able to determine the sounds of twelve hieroglyphic signs which he proved to be alphabetic (see explanation of Fig. 76). Champollion was then able to read several other royal names, and in 1822, in a famous letter to the French Academy, he announced his discovery and explained the steps he had taken.
It was not until this point was reached that he was able to make use of the well-known Rosetta Stone, which was therefore not the first key employed by Champollion. But the Rosetta Stone (Fig. 207) then enabled him rapidly to increase his list of known hieroglyphic signs and to learn the meanings of words and the construction of sentences. When he died, in 1832, he had written a little grammar and prepared a small dictionary of hieroglyphic. There remains even now much to learn about the Egyptian language and writing, but Champol-lion’s marvelous achievement laid the foundations of a new science now called Egyptology, which has restored to the world a lost chapter of human history nearly three thousand years in length. Thus the monuments of the Nile have gained a voice and have told us their wonderful story of how man gained civilization.
In a similar way the monuments discovered along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Asia have been deciphered and made to tell their story. They show us that, following the Egyptians,
The Story of Egypt
99
the peoples of Asia emerged from barbarism, gained industries, learned the use of metals, devised a system of writing, and finally rose to the leading position of power in the ancient world. We must therefore turn, in the next chapter, to the story of the early Orient in Asia.
QUESTIONS
Section 8. What ages do the monuments.up the Nile reveal to us? Describe the rule of a Feudal Age baron. Describe his library. What kind of progress had been made since the Pyramid Age? Describe the science of the time. What great commercial link between two seas was created ?
Section 9. Write a description of what you see from an aeroplane over the east end of the Temple of Karnak. How did the Pharaohs who built Karnak differ from those who built the pyramids ? Who was the first great woman in history? Tell something of her reign. Tell about the reign of the greatest Egyptian general. What is an empire ? What was the extent of the Egyptian Empire ?
• Section 10. What did the Egyptian emperors do with the wealth gained from subject peoples? Describe an empire temple and its surroundings. Describe the great Karnak hall, and tell how the clerestory was improved. Give an account of the Theban cemetery and what it contains. Who tried to introduce the earliest belief in one god? Describe the attempt.
Section ii. What were the consequences of Ikhnaton’s movement? Tell about the Amarna letters. What Northerners held Syria, and what new weapons did they have? What do the war pictures at Thebes show us about the Egyptian army ? What foreigners invaded Egypt and aided in destroying the Empire? What happened, to the bodies of the emperors ? Summarize the ages we have learned along the Nile from the pyramids to Thebes.
Section 12. Why were our great-grandfathers unable to read hieroglyphic ? Who deciphered it, and when ? What Egyptian sign represents the first letter in Ptolemy’s name? What Egyptian sign represents the fifth sign in Cleopatra’s name? Compare the fourth ' Egyptian sign in Ptolemy’s name with the second sign in Cleopatra’s name. Would you call this an accident or proof that the lion equals LI What monument did Champollion next use ? Describe it (Fig. 207).
131. Water boundaries of Western Asia; mountainous north, desert south
CHAPTER IV
WESTERN ASIA: BABYLONIA
Section 13. The Lands and Races of Western Asia
The westernmost extension of Asia is an irregular region roughly included within the circuit of waters marked out by the Caspian and Black seas on the north, by the Mediterranean and Red seas on the west, and by the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf on the south and east. It is a region consisting chiefly of mountains in the north and desert in the south. The earliest home of men in this great arena of Western Asia is a borderland between the desert and the mountains, a kind of cultivable fringe of the desert, a fertile crescent havin'”' the mountains on one side and the desert on the other.
Note. The above scene shows us the Semitic nomads on the Fertile Crescent along the Sea of Galilee. In spring the region is richly overgrown, but the vegetation soon fades. The dark camel’s-hair tents of these wandering shepherds are easily carried from place to place as they seek new pasturage (§ 134) They live on the milk and flesh of the flocks.
I
THE ANCIENT ORIENTAL WORLD
AND NEIGHBORING EUROPE BEFORE THE RISE OF THE GREEKS
Scale
Xatire that the Persian Gulf extend?*! ISO to 160 miles than at presentjruikmy fiuoytoniu, niudv smaller than it _1_
Longitude 40 East from Greenwich
Western Asia: Babylonia
IOI
This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the open side toward the south, having the west end at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, the center directly north of Arabia, and the east end at the north end of the Persian Gulf (see map, p. 100). It lies like an army facing south, with one wing stretching along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center has its back against the northern mountains. The end of the western wing is Palestine; Assyria makes up a large part of the center; while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia.
This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the Fertile Crescent.1 It may also be likened to the shores of a desert-bay, upon which the mountains behind look down — a bay not of water but of sandy waste, some five hundred miles across, forming a northern extension of the Arabian desert and sweeping as far north as the latitude of the northeast comer of the Mediterranean. This desert-bay is a limestone plateau of some height — too high indeed to be watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, which have cut canons obliquely across it. Nevertheless, after the meager winter rains, wide tracts of the northern desert-bay are clothed with scanty grass, and spring thus turns the region for-a short time into grasslands. The history of Western Asia may be described as an age-long struggle between the mountain peoples of the north and the desert wanderers of these grasslands — a struggle which is still going on — for the possession of the Fertile Crescent, the shores of the desert-bay.
Arabia is totally lacking in rivers and enjoys but a few weeks of rain ■ in ihidwinter; hence it is a desert very little of which is habitable. Its people are and have been from the remotest ages a great white race called Semites. The Semites have always been divided into many tribes and groups, just as
1 There is no name, either geographical or political, which includes all of this great semicircle (see map, p. 100). Hence we are obliged to coin a term and call . it the Fertile Crescent
132. The Fer
tile Crescent between
133. The desert-bay
134. The Arabian desert and the
Semitic
nomad
102
Ancient Times
135. Ceaseless shift of the nomad from the desert to the Fertile Crescent
were the American Indians, whom we call Sioux, or Seminoles, or Iroquois. So we shall find many tribal or group names among the Semites. With two of these we are familiar the Arabs, and the Hebrews whose descendants dwell among us. They all spoke and still speak dialects of the same tongue, of which Hebrew was one. For ages they have moved up and down the habitable portions of the Arabian world, seeking pasturage for their flocks and herds (headpiece, p. 100). Such wandering shepherds are called nomads, and we remember how their manner of life arose after the domestication of sheep and goats (see §§ 35-36).
From the earliest times, when the spring grass of the northern wilderness is gone, they have been constantly drifting in from the sandy sea upon the shores of the northern desert-bay. If they can secure a footing there, they slowly make the transition from the wandering life of the desert nomad to the settled life of the agricultural peasant (see § 36). This slow shift at times swells into a great tidal wave of migration, when the wild hordes of the wilderness roll in upon the fertile shores of the desert-bay — a human tide from the desert to the towns which they overwhelm. We can see this process going on for thousands of years. Among such movements we are familiar with the passage of the Hebrews from the desert into Palestine, as described in the Bible, and some readers will recall the invasions of the Arab hosts which, when converted to Mohammedanism, even reached Europe and threatened to girdle the Mediterranean (§ 1155). After they had adopted a settled town life, the colonies of the Semites stretched far westward through the Mediterranean, especially in northern Africa, even to southern Spain and the Atlantic (see diagram, Fig. 112, and map, p. 288). But it took many centuries for the long line of their settlements to creep slowly westward until it reached the Atlantic, and we must begin with the Semites in the desert.
Out on the wide reaches of the desert there are no boundaries ; the pasturage is free as air to the first comer. No man
Western Asia: Babylonia
103
of the tribe owns land; there are no landholding rich and no landless poor. The men of the desert know no law. The keen-eyed desert marauder looks with envy across the hills dotted with the flocks of the neighboring tribe, which may be his when he has 'slain the solitary shepherd at the well. But if he does so, he knows that his own family will suffer death or heavy damages, not at the hands of the State, but at the hands of the slain shepherd’s family. This custom, known as "blood revenge,” has a restraining influence like that of law. Under such conditions there is no State. Writing and records are unknown, industries are practically nonexistent, and the desert tribesmen lead a life of complete freedom. The Turkish government owning Arabia to-day is as powerless to control the wandering Arabs of the wilderness as were formerly our own authorities in suppressing the lawlessness of our own herdsmen whom we called cowboys.
The tribesmen drift with their flocks along the margin of the Fertile Crescent till they discern a town among the palm groves. Objects of picturesque interest to the curious eyes of the townsmen, they appear in the market place to traffic for the weapons, utensils, and raiment with which the nomad cannot dispense (headpiece, p. 197). They soon learn to carry goods from place to place and thus become not only the common carriers of the settled communities but also traders on their own account, fearlessly leading their caravans across the wastes of the desert-bay, lying like a sea between Syria-Palestine and Babylonia. They became the greatest merchants of the ancient world, as their Hebrew descendants among us still are at the present day.
The wilderness is the nomad’s home. Its vast solitudes have tinged his soul with solemnity. His imagination peoples the far reaches of the desert with invisible and uncanny creatures, who inhabit every rock and tree, hilltop and spring. These creatures are his gods, whom he believes he can control by the utterance of magic charms — the earliest prayers. He believes
136. Lack of institutions and industries among the Semitic nomads of Arabia
137* Traffic and the caravan
138. Religion of the nomad
104
Ancient Times
139. The
tribal god of the nomad
140. The
nomad’s thoughts about his tribal god; his ideas of right
141. The
western Semites on the west end of the Fertile Crescent
that such charms render these uncanny gods powerless to do him injury and compel them to grant him aid.
The nomad pictures each one of these beings as controlling only a little comer of the great world, perhaps only a well and its surrounding pastures. At the next well, only a day’s march away, there is another god, belonging to the next tribe. For each tribe have a favorite or tribal god, who, as they believe, journeys with them from pasture to pasture, sharing their food and their feasts and receiving as his due from the tribesmen the firstborn of their flocks and herds.
The thoughts of the desert wanderer about the character of such a god are crude and barbarous, and his religious customs are often savage, even leading him to sacrifice his children to appease the angry god. On the other hand, the nomad has a dawning sense of justice and of right, and he feels some obligations of kindness to his fellows which he believes are the compelling voice of his god. Such feelings at last became lofty moral vision, which made the Semites the.religious teachers of the civilized world.
As early as 3000-B.C. they were drifting in from the desert and settling in Palestine, on the western end of the Fertile Crescent, where we find them in possession of walled towns by 2500 B.C. (Fig. 125). These predecessors of the Hebrews in Palestine were a tribe called Canaanites (§§ 293-294); farther north settled a powerful tribe known as Amorites (§175); while along the shores of north Syria (Fig. 159) some of these one-time desert wanderers had taken to the sea, and had become the Phosnicians (§ 396). By 2000 B.C. all these settled communities of the western Semites had developed no mean degree of civilization, drawn for the most part from Egypt and Babylonia. Their home along the east end of the Mediterranean was on the highway between these two countries, and they were in constant contact with both (map, p. 100). The Phoenicians, however, belonged to the Mediterranean, and we shall take up their story in discussing the history of the eastern Mediterranean (Sections 39 and 40).
Western Asia: Babylonia 105
At the same time we can watch similar movements of the nomads at the eastern end of the Fertile Crescent; along the lower course of the Tigris and Euphrates (Fig. 77), which we shall henceforth speak of as the "Two Rivers.” They rise in the northern mountains (see map, p. 100), whence they issue to cross the Fertile Crescent and to cut obliquely southeastward through the northern bay of the desert. Here
Fig. 77. The Euphrates at Babylon in Winter
The winter rainfall (§ 144) is so slight that the river shrinks to a very low level and its bed is exposed and dry almost to the middle. In summer the rains and melting snows in the northern mountains swell the river till it overflows its banks and inundates the Babylonian plain. The house on the right is the dwelling of the Gtrman Expedition still engaged in excavating Babylon (Fig. 111)
on these two great rivers of Western Asia developed the earliest civilization known in Asia. Just as on the Nile, so here on the Two Rivers we shall find three great chapters in the story.
As on the Nile, so also the earliest of the three chapters of Tigris-Euphrates history will be found in the lower valley near the rivers’ mouths. This earliest chapter is the story of Babylonia.1 As the Two Rivers approach most closely to each other, about one hundred and sixty or seventy miles from the Persian
1 The other two chapters of Tigris-Euphrates histoiy were Assyria and the Chaldean Empire (Chapter V).
142. The east end of the Fertile Crescent; the Two Rivers and the three great chapters in their histoiy
143. The Plain of Shinar (or Babylonia), the scene of the earliest chapter of Tigris-Euphrates history
144* Area of the Plain of Shinar; its fertility
I0g Ancient Times
Gulf,1 they emerge from the desert and enter a low plain of fertile soil, formerly brought down by the rivers. This plain is Babylonia, the eastern end of the Fertile Crescent. But during the first thousand years of the known history of this plain the later city of Babylon had not yet arisen, or was a mere village playing little or no part in the history of the
region. The plain was then called Shinar, and Babylonia is a name that properly should not be applied to it. until after 2100 B.C. (see § 176).
Rarely more than forty miles wide, the Plain of Shinar contained probably less than eight thousand square miles of cultivable soil — roughly equal to the state of New Jersey or the
1 This distance applies only to ancient Babylonian and Assyrian days. The rivers have since then filled up the Persian Gulf for one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty miles, and the gulf is that much shorter at the present day (see note under scale on map, p. 100). -
Western Asia: Babylonia
107
area of Wales.1 It lies in the Mediterranean belt of rainy winter and dry summer, but the rainfall is so scanty (less than three inches a year) that irrigation of the fields is required in order to ripen the grain. When properly irrigated the Plain of Shinar is prodigiously fertile, and the chief source of wealth in ancient Shinar was agriculture. This plain was the scene of the most important and long-continued of those frequent struggles between the mountaineer and the nomad, of which we have spoken (§ 133). We are now to follow the story of the first series of those struggles, lasting something like a thousand years, and ending about 2100 B.C.
Section 14. Rise of Sumerian Civilization and Early Struggle of Sumerian and Semite
The mountaineers were not Semitic and show no relationship to the Semitic nomads of the Arabian desert.2 We are indeed unable to connect the earliest of these mountain peoples with any of the great racial groups known to us. We find them shown on monuments of stone as having shaven fygads and wearing shaggy woolen kilts (Fig. 90). While they were still using stone implements, some of these mountaineers, now known as Sumerians, pushed through the passes of the eastern mountains at a very early date. Long before 3009 B.C. they had reclaimed the marshes around the mouths of the Two Rivers.
1 The current impressions of the cultivable area of Babylonia take no account of the fact that the Babylonian plain-was once much shorter than it is now (p. 106, note), nor of the further fact that on the north of it Mesopotamia is a desert which, moreover, does not belong to Babylonia. Only northern Mesopotamia is cultivable (especially the upper valleys of the Balikh and the Khabur rivers). The modern maps do not show this fact; for example, the Century Atlas confines the desert to the right bank of the Euphrates and does not admit it to Mesopotamia I The usually accepted ideas of the cultivable area of Babylonia are therefore enormously in excess of the actual area reached by irrigation.
2 On the other hand, although they were certainly white races, the mountaineers exhibited no relationship to the Indo-European group of peoples who were already spreading through the country north and east of the Caspian at a very early date. The Indo-European peoples, from whom we ourselves have descended, are discussed in Section 21.
145. Unknown race * of the early mountaineers
146. Their material civilization
!o8 Ancient Times
They gradually took possession of the southern section of the Plain of Shinar, and the region they held at length came to e
called Sumer (see map, p. 106).
Their settlements of low mud-brick huts crept gradually nort -ward along the. Euphrates (see map, p. 106); for the banks of the Tigris were too high for convenient irrigation. They learned to control the spring freshets with dikes, to distribute the waters
Fig. 78. Ancient Babylonian Seeder, or Machine Planter (After Clay)
The seeder is drawn by a yoke of oxen, with their driver beside them. Behind the seeder follows a man holding it by two handles. It is very pointed and evidently makes a shallow trench in the soil as it moves. Rising from the frame of the seeder is a vertical tube (a) on the top of which is a funnel (b). A third man walking beside the seeder is shown dropping the grain into this funnel with one hand; with the other he holds what is probably a sack of seed grain suspended from his shoulders. The grain drops down through the tube and falls into the trench made by the seeder. The scene is carved on a small stone seal
in irrigation trenches, and to reap large harvests of grain (Fig. 78). They had already received barley and split wheat (p. 38, note), which were their two chief grains as in Egypt; and they called the split wheat by its Egyptian name. They also already possessed cattle, sheep, and goats. Oxen drew the plow, and donkeys pulled wheeled carts and chariots; the wheel as a burden-bearing device appeared here for the first time.1 But
1 Probably earlier than the wheel in the Swiss lake-villages or on the chariot race courses of the Late Stone Age (§ 39) in the West.
Western Asia: Babylonia 109
the horse was still unknown. Traffic with the upper river had also brought in metal, probably from the Nile valley, and the smith learned to fashion utensils of copper. But he had not
Fig. 79. Early Sumerian Clay Tablet with Cuneiform Writing (Twenty-eighth Century b.c.)
This tablet'was written toward the close of the early period of the city-kings {§ 162), a generation before the accession of Sargon I (§ 166).
It contains business accounts; the numbers can be recognized as circles and other~curved signs made with the circular upper nd of the scribe’s stylus. The picture signs have at this time long since become groups of wedges as shown in Fig. 80. (By permission of Dr. Hussey)
yet learned to harden the copper into bronze by admixture of tin (§ 336). ,
Trade and government taught these people to make records 147. Rise of
scratched in rude pictures (cf. Fig. 26) with the tip of a reed torkf writing
on a flat oval or disk of soft clay. When dried in the sun onclay
I IO
Ancient Times
148. Transformation of Sumerian picture signs into cuneiform signs, and resulting loss of the pictures
such a clay record became very hard; and if well baked in a oven, it became an almost imperishable pottery tablet (Fig. 79)
,3
z
11
hi
IV
VI
VII
VIII
On the earliest surviving specimens of such tablets we can still recognize the original pictures (Fig. 80) which made up the writing, just as in Egypt.
The reed with which the pictures were made usually had a blunt, square-tipped end. The tablet was held at an oblique angle as the stylus held straight up was applied to the clay. We may see a writer so using it in Fig. 101. The writer did not scratch the lines of his picture; but in making
a single line he impressed one corner of the square tip of the reed into the soft clay, and then raised it again to impress another line in the same way. Owing to the oblique tilt of the
|
Foot turned around in 2 |
Cb= |
||
|
Donkey |
u |
||
|
Bird; turned over with feet to the right |
|||
|
Fish |
|||
|
Star |
* |
fr |
|
|
Ox; turned over in 2 |
V |
Si* | |
|
Sun or Day |
0 |
||
|
Grain; top of stalk turned j over |
»» |
* |
Fig. 80. Early Babylonian Signs showing their Pictorial Origin. (Chiefly from Barton)
This list of eight signs shows clearly the pictures from which the signs came. The oldest form is in column I; column 2 shows the departure from the picture and the appearance of the signs as the lines began to become wedges. In column3 are the later forms, consisting only of wedges and showing no resemblance to the original picture. The original forms of signs V, VI, and VII, in column 1, have not yet been actually found, but they are assumed from the existent forms shown in column a
Western Asia: Babylonia
in
tablet, each line thus made was wider at one end than at the other, and hence appeared triangular or wedge-shaped, thus ►— or J. Every picture or sign thus came to be made up of a group of wedge-shaped lines like >^f-, which was once a star, or once a foot (Fig. 80, V, 3, and I, 3). We therefore call the system cuneiform. (Latin, cuneus, meaning " wedge ”), or wedge-form writing. Pictures made up of these wedge lines became more and more difficult to recognize, especially as speed in writing increased. All resemblance to the earlier pictures finally disappeared.
The transition from the picture stage to the phonetic stage (§ 53) was early made. Sumerian writing finally possessed over three hundred and fifty signs, but each such sign represented a syllable1 or a word, that is, a group of sounds ; the Sumerian system never developed an alphabet of the letters which made up the syllables. That is, there were signs for syllables like kar or ban, but no signs for the letters k or r, b or n, which made up such syllables. Hence we cannot insert here an alphabet, as we did in discussing Egypt.
These clay records show us that in measuring time the Sumerian scribe began a new month with every new moon, and he made his year of twelve of these moon-months. We remember (see § 60) that twelve such months fell far short of making up a year. The scribe therefore slipped in an extra month whenever he found that he had reached the end of his calendar year a month or so ahead of the seasons. This inconvenient and inaccurate calendar was inherited by the Jews and Persians, and is still used by the oriental Jews and the Mohammedans. As in Egypt (Fig. 33), the years themselves were not numbered, but each year was named after some important event occurring in the course of the year.
1 The only exceptions were later the vowels and some surviving pictorial signs which served as graphic hints, like the Egyptian determinatives (Fig. 30). On the story of how this writing was deciphered, see Section 25* '
149. Rise of phonetic cuneiform signs; no alphabetic cuneiform signs
150. The Sumerian moon-calendar; year-names
112
Ancient Times
151. Sumerian numerals and weights
152. Nippur as a religious center; its temple-mount or tower, the ancestor of our church steeple
153. The low temple building beside the temple . tower
The Sumerian system of numerals was not based on tens, but had the unit sixty as a basis. A large number was given as so many sixties, just as we employ a score (fourscore, fivescore). From this unit of sixty has descended our division of the circle (six sixties) and of the hour and minute. The leading unit of weight which they used was a mina, divided into sixty shekels. The mina had the weight of our pound, and traffic, with the East at last brought this measure of weight to us, though under another name.
Almost in the center of the Plain of Shinar (see map, p. 106) rose a great tower (Fig. 104). It was of baked brick, for there was no stone in all Babylonia. This tower was the sacred mount of Enlil, the great Sumerian god of the air, at the ancient town of Nippur (Fig. 84), a holy place greatly revered among all the Sumerian communities. This temple-mount was in shape a building tapering upward somewhat like a pyramid. Around the outside of the square towerlike building was a broad steep footway, which rose as it turned, till it reached the top (see tailpiece, p. 170). The Sumerians erected this building at Nippur, probably in the effort to give their god a home on a mountain top such as he had once occupied, before they left their mountain home to dwell on the Babylonian plain (see § 145). Other towns also adopted the idea, and the temple tower at Babylon in later ages gave rise to the tale of the Tower of Babel (or Babylon), as preserved by the Hebrews. This Babylonian temple tower is the ancestor of our church steeple (Fig. 271).
But the tower was not itself the temple of the god, although he had a shrine at the top. Alongside the tower there was a small, low temple building serving as the temple proper. Such sanctuaries have all perished in Babylonia, but enough remains to show the simple character of this lower building (Fig. 206). Approaching from the outside the visitor saw only bare walls of sun-dried brick. These inclosed a court, behind which was the sacred chamber. Indeed, it is clear that this lower
Western Asia: Babylonia
113
dwelling of the god was simply a dwelling house like those of the townsmen (Fig. 82).
Around the temple and its mount were grouped the storehouses and business offices of the temple, while a massive wall forming an inclosure surrounded and protected the whole (Fig. 84). Here ruled a wealthy priesthood1. Assisted by a group of scribes (Fig. 101), they rented and cared for the temple lands and property. The king or ruler of the town at their head was really also a priest, called a " patesi” (pronounced pa-tay'see). His temple duties kept him about as busy as did the task of ruling the community outside of the temple walls.
At this sanctuary under the shadow of the temple-mount the peasant brought in his offering, a goat and a jar of water containing a few green palm branches intended to symbolize the vegetable life of the land, which the god maintained by the annual rise of the river. The jar with the green palm branches in it later became " the tree of life,” a symbol often depicted on the monuments of the land (Fig. 102). These gifts the worshiper laid before the gods of earth, of air, of sky, or sea, praying that there might be plentiful waters and generous harvests, but praying also for deliverance from the destroying flood which the god had once sent to overwhelm the land. Of this catastrophe the peasant’s fathers had told him, , and the tradition of this flood finally passed over to the Hebrews.
In one important matter of religion the Sumerians were veiy different from the Egyptians. The dead were buried in the town, under the court of a house or the floor of a room (Fig. 81),'often without any tomb or coffin or much equipment for the life beyond the grave. Of the next world they had only vague and somber impressions, as a forbidding place of darkness and dust beneath the earth, to which all men, both good and bad, descended. Great cemeteries and elaborate tomb equipment, such as those which told us so much of early Egypt, do not help us here in Babylonia.
154. The
temple inclosure ; the priesthood and their ruler
155. Sumerian religion and worship
156. Sumerian burials and beliefs about the hereafter
ii4
Ancient Times
157. Sumerian house and town
Around the temple inclosure extended the houses of the citizens — bare rectangular structures of sun-dried brick (Fig. 82), each with a court on the north side, and on the south side of the court a main chamber from which the other rooms were
Fig. 81. An Ear,ly Babylonian Burial
Two large pottery jars laid with their open ends together served as a coffin. Sometimes the body lay on the bottom of a rectangular grave lined with sun-dried brick, forming a rough vault. The usual burial was not in a cemetery but was in the house under the floor of the court or some room. Only one small cemetery, containing some thirty burials, has as yet been found in Babylonia. Little, if any, equipment for the hereafter was placed with the body, although some burials were supplied with a few jars of pottery or copper and ornaments of silver, gold, copper, or mother-of-pearl, with an occasional weapon or tool
entered. At first only a few hundred feet across, the town slowly spread out, although it always remained of very limited extent.1 Such a town usually stood upon an artificial mound (Fig. 83), which it is important for us to examine.
(6oL^8er:.cW:rseecnt°one:o)y ^ ” Baby'°nia the Chalde»
Western Asia : Babylonia 115
The ordinary building material .of the entire ancient world was sun-baked brick. The houses of the common people in the Orient even at the present day are still built of such brick. The walls of such houses in course of time are slowly eaten away by the rains, till after a heavy rain an old house sometimes falls down. When this happens at the present day the rubbish is leveled off and the house is rebuilt on top of it. This modern practice has been going on for thousands of years. It was this kind of a house whose fall Jesus had in mind in his parable (Matt, vii,
27). As this process went on for many centuries it produced a high mound of rubbish, on which the town stood.
Many a surviving oriental town still stands on such an ancient mound.
These mounds are to be found in all the ancient lands, like the mound of Troy (Fig. 149), that of Jericho in Palestine (Fig. 124), or Elephantine in Egypt (Fig. 211). Babylonia is to-day full of such great mounds long since forsaken and deserted, and Fig. 83 shows us how they look at the present day.
The clay tablets (Fig. 79) containing the household records, letters, bills, receipts, notes, accounts, etc., vMiich were in the houses when they fell, were often covered by the falling walls, and they still lie in the mound. In the temples and public
■Fig. 82. Restoration or an Early Babylonian House. (After Koldewey)
The towns of the early Babylonians were small and were chiefly made up of such sun-baked-brick houses as these. Their simple adornment consisted only of vertical panels and a stepped (crenelated) edge at the top of the wall. The doors were crowned by arches in contrast with those of the Egyptians, who knew the arch but preferred a horizontal line above all doorways
158. The
formation of ancient city mounds
159. Distribution of such early, mounds to-day
160. Contents preserved in such ancient mounds
Ii6
Ancient Times
buildings the documents cov.ered up were often important government records; while in the dwelling or offices of the ruler they were often narratives of wars and conquests. Sometimes the ruler placed accounts. of his buildings, his victories, and other great deeds deep in the foundations of his buildings in order that later rulers might find them. Besides
Fig. 83. Mound covering a Portion of the Ancient Babylonian City of Nippur
The bare ground in front of us now showing a scanty growth of desert shrubs once formed a court, or open square, for public business, unloading caravans, etc. The great mound beyond contains the chief temple buildings of Nippur, occupying the south corner of the temple inclosure. Its highest portion covers the temple mount (§ 152), of which only the lower parts still survive under the mound. In the buildings covered by these mounds lived the scribes (clerks) and officials who carried on the temple and government business of this town nearly five thousand years ag° (§ 154)• See also Fig. 84 for a view from the top of the temple-mount. (By courtesy of the University Museum, Philadelphia)
all these written records, many articles of household use or sculptured works of art still lie hidden in such mounds. Here too lie the gaunt and somber remains of the early Babylonian buildings themselves (Fig. 84). But these town buildings have fallen into such ruin that we cannot make them tell us a story such as we found in Egypt. Nevertheless, a city mound is a rich storehouse of ancient Babylonian civilization, the story of which we are now to follow.
Fig. 84. Excavation of the Ruins of Ancient Nippur
These ruins were excavated by the University of Pennsylvania Expedition in three campaigns between 1889 and 1900. This view shows the work of excavation going on. The earth (once sun-dried brick) is taken out in baskets and carried away by a long line of native laborers, who empty their baskets at the far end of an ever-growing bank of excavated earth. The ruinous buildings, once entirely covered (Fig. 83), are slowly exposed, and among them, often clay tablets or objects of pottery, st-one, or metal. Thus are recovered the records and antiquities of ancient Babylonia (§ 161). They lie at different levels, the oldest things nearer the bottom and the later ones higher up. This is a view seen from the top of the highest mound in Fig. 83. Beyond the laborers the view to the horizon gives a good idea of the flat Babylonian plain. Only two generations ago the monuments and records of Babylonia and Assyria preserved in Europe could all be contained in a show case only a few feet square. Since 1840, however, archaeological excavation, as we call such digging, has recovered great quantities of antiquities and records. Such work is now slowly recovering for us the story of the ancient world. (Drawn from a photograph furnished by courtesy of the University Museum, Philadelphia)
117
118 Ancient Times
161. Early
Sumerian art sculpture, seal-cutting, metal work
l
At the bottom of these mounds, reaching back to 3000 B.C., lie the works of the Sumerian sculptor in stone. They were in
the beginning very rough
a and crude. The demand
for personal seals cut in stone (Fig. 86) soon developed a beautiful art of engraving tiny figures ^^ ^ °n a hani st°ne surface j IfK / ’ do such work a lapidary.
The early Sumerian lapidaries soon became the ’ »>«'■!» finest craftsmen of the
kind in the ancient oriental world, and their work has had an influence on our own decorative art which has not
Fig. 85. Silver Vase of a Sumerian City-King
yet disappeared (see description, Fig. 85). The Sumerian craftsmen also did skillful work in metal, sometimes beautifully decorated (Fig. 85).
This vase, the finest piece of metal work from early Babylonia, is adorned with two broad bands o£ engraving extending entirely around it. They furnish an excellent example of early Sumerian decorative art. In the broader band we see a lion-headed eagle clutching the backs of two lions, which in their turn are biting two ibexes. This balanced arrangement of animal figures in violent action was a discovery of Sumerian art about 3000 B.C. The eagle and the lions here form the symbol, or arms, of the Sumerian city-kingdom of Lagash. Such symbols made up o£ balanced pairs of animal figures passed over to Europe, where they are still used in decorative art and in the heraldic symbols, or arms, of the kings and nations. The eagle still appears in the arms of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and other European nations, and finally reached us as our "American” eagle, really the eagle,of Lagash, five thousand years ago
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119
In all these monuments and the writings on clay tablets we find revealed to us the life which once filled the streets of the ancient Babylonian towns now sleeping under the silent mounds. We see a class of free landholding citizens in the town, working their lands with numerous slaves and trading with caravans and small boats up and down the river. Over these free, middle-class folk were the officials and priests, the aristocrats of the town. Such a community, owning the lands for a few miles round about the town, formed the political unit, or state, which we call a city-kingdom. We may therefore call the first three centuries after about 3050 B.C. the Age of the Sumerian City-Kingdoms.
The leading Sumerian city-kingdoms formed a group in the South, occupying the land of Sumer (see map, p. 106). These towns are still marked for us by a straggling line of mounds distributed along the Euphrates. In spite of oppressive and dishonest taxation, such a community owed much to its ruler, or patesi (§ 154). He was useful in a number of matters, but chiefly in two ways : in war and in irrigation. The irrigation canals
Fig. 86. An Early Sumerian Cylinder Seal
Instead of signing his name to a clay-tablet
document, the early Sumerian rolled over the soft clay a little stone roller, or cylinder, engraved with beautiful pictures (Figs. 90, 91, and 106, A) and sometimes also-bearing the owner’s name (Fig. 91). The impression left by the roller in the soft clay served as a signature. They have been found in great numbers in the ruins Gf Babylonia. By a study of these works the growth and decline of Babylonian art may be traced for twenty-five hundred years, from about 3000 B.C. to about 500 B.C. The picture shows end view and side view
162. Early Sumerian society and state; the Age of the City-King-doms (about 3050-2750 B.C.)
163. The Sumerian city-kingdoms and their patesis
120
Ancient Times
and dikes required constant repairs. The planting and harvesting of the fields would have stopped and the whole community would have starved if the ruler had ceased his constant oversight of the dikes and canals and the water supply had stopped.
Fig. 87. A Sumerian City-King leading a Phalanx of his Troops (about 2900 b.c.)
• The king himself, whose face is broken off from the stone, marches at
the light, heading his troops, who follow in a compact group. This is the earliest example of grouping men together in a mass, forming a single fighting unit, called a phalanx. This must have required a long drill and discipline, after many centuries of loose, irregular, scattered fighting (Fig. 88). This was the first chapter in the long history of the art of war, and it took place in Asia. Such discipline was unknown at this time in Egypt. These Sumerian troops have their spears set for the charge, but they carry no bows. Tall shields cover their entire bodies, and they wear close-fitting helmets, probably of leather.' They are marching over dead bodies (symbolical of the overthrow of the enemy). The scene is carved in stone and is a good example of the rude Sumerian sculpture in Babylonia in the days of the Great Pyramid and the remarkable portrait sculpture of Egypt (contrast with Figs. 52 and 53)
164. The As to war, we can watch more than one of these city rulers
theSumerln marching out at the head of troops heavily armed with shield city-kmgdoms and spear (but without the bow) and marshaled in massive phalanx (Fig. 87). We found on the Nile the earliest highly
Western Asia: Babylonia 121
developed arts of peace; we find here among the Sumerians the earliest highly developed art of war in the history of man. When the townspeople heard that a neighboring city-kingdom was trying to take possession of a strip of their land, they were glad to follow the patesi’s leadership in order to drive out the invaders. As such occurrences were common, the
Fig. 88. Semitic Bowmen of Early Babylonia fighting in Open Order
The nomads had no organization and no discipline; each man leaped about in the fray as he pleased, and the fight was a loose group of single combats between two antagonists. This loose rough-and-tumble fighting was the earliest method of warfare, before men learned to train and drill themselves to fight in groups or masses. The Sumerians were the earliest men who took this step (Fig. 87). The disciplined Sumerian townsmen were therefore long superior to these disorganized nomads of the desert along the Fertile Crescent
early history of Sumer for some three centuries (about 3050 to 2750 b.c.) was largely made up of the ever-changing fortunes of these city-kingdoms in war.
But while the city-kingdoms of Sumer were thus often fight- 165. Earliest ing among themselves, they were also called upon to meet an sumerfans enemy from the outside. The Semitic nomads of the desert and Semites (§ 135) early began to settle north of Sumer. This region called Akkad (see map, p. 106), where the Two Rivers are
122
Ancient Times
166. The
first Semitic triumph; Sargon of Akkad and his line (2750-2550 B.C.)
closest together, was on th.e main road from the Two Rivers to the eastern mountains, and the leading Semitic tribe there bore the name Akkadians. These desert wanderers had never learned discipline and drill in war like the Sumerians. They depended on their skill as archers, and they gave battle therefore at a distance. Or if they came to close quarters, they fought single-handed, in open order (Fig. 88). Their thin and open line was evidently at first no match for the heavy phalanx of the Sumerians. Thus two hostile races faced each other on the Plain of Shinar: in the North the half-settled Semitic nomads of Akkad, and in the South the one-time mountaineers of Sumer. The long struggle between them was only one of the many struggles between nomad and mountaineer along the Fertile Crescent (§ 133).
Section 15. The First Semitic Triumph: the Age of Sargon
About 2750, that is, about the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., there arose in Akkad a Semitic chieftain named Sargon. So skillful in war was he, that he succeeded in scattering the compact Sumerian spearmen, and making himself lord of all the Plain of Shinar. The old Sumerian city-kings were defeated and the Sumerian towns down to the mouths of the Two Rivers submitted to him. He led his swift Akkadian archers from the eastern mountains of Elam westward up the Euphrates to the shores of the Mediterranean. There, as we remember, the Pharaoh’s galleys (Fig. 41) were already moored in the harbors of the Phoenician cities. Some day chance may disclose to us the messages, written on day tablets, which now probably passed between the lord of the Euphrates and the lord of the Nile living in the splendors of his pyramid-city at Gizeh. Sargon was the first great leader in the history of the Semitic race, and he was the first ruler to build up a great nation in Western Asia, reaching from Elam (Fig. 89, and
• Western Asia: Babylonia
123
map, p. 100) to the Mediterranean and far up the Two Rivers northward. His splendid conquests made an impression upon the Tigris-Euphrates world which never faded, and ' he left them to his sons, one of whom, Naram-Sin, even extended them. I
Sargon’s conquests forced his nomad tribesmen (the Akka- 167. The dians) to make a complete change in their manner of- life. The IkkadLs
once wandering shepherds were obliged to drop their unsettled ?dopt
. Sumerian
life and to take up fixed abodes. We may best picture the change civilization
if we say that they forsook their tents (headpiece, p. 100) and built houses of sun-dried brick (Fig. 82), which could not be picked up every morning and set up somewhere else at night.
At first they did not even know how to write, and they had no industries (§ 136). Some, of them now learned to write their Semitic tongue by using the Sumerian wedge-form signs for the purpose. Then it was, therefore, that a Semitic language began to be written for the first time. These former nomads had never before attempted to manage the affairs of settled communities, — such business as we call government administration. All this too they were now obliged to learn from the Sumerians. The Semitic Akkadians therefore adopted the Sumerian calendar, weights and measures, system of numerals and business methods. With the arts of peace the Akkadians , also gained those of war. They learned to make helmets of leather and copper weighing over two pounds. These are the earliest-known examples .of the use of metal as a protection in war." From such beginnings as these were to come the steel-clad battleships and gun turrets of modern times.
Among other things the Akkadians learned also the art of 168. The sculpture, but they soon far surpassed their Sumerian teachers. frtoftheAge The relief of Naram-Sin. (Fig. 89) belongs among the real of Sargon triumphs of art in the early world — especially interesting as the first great. work of art produced by the Semitic race. The beautiful Sumerian art of seal-cutting, the Akkadians now carried’' to a wonderful degree of perfection (Figs. 90, 91, and 106, A).
Fig. 89. A King of Akkad storming a Fortress — the Earliest Great Semitic Work of Art (about 2700 b.c4
King Naram-Sin of Akkad (probably one of the sons of Sargo&I, § 166) has pursued the enemy into a mountain stronghold in Elam. His heroic figure towers above his pygmy enemies, each one of whom has fixed his eyes on the conqueror, awaiting his signal of mercy. The sculptor, with fine insight, has depicted the dramatic instant when the king lowers his weapon as the sign that he grants the conquered their lives. Compare the superiority of this Semitic sculpture of Akkad over the Sumerian art of two centuries earlier (Fig. 87)
mm
Western Asia: Babylonia
125
Thus the life of the desert Semite mingled with that of the 169. Com-
non-Semitic mountaineer on the Babylonian plain, much as sume'rians^
Norman and English mingled in England. 'On the streets and and Akka-
ln the market places of the Euphrates towns, where once the (Semites) bare feet, clean-shaven heads, and beardless faces of the Sumerian townsmen were the only ones to be seen, there was now a
Fig. 90. A Semitic Prince and his Sumerian Secretary' (Twenty-seventh Century b.c.)
The third figure (wearing a cap) is that of the prince, Ubil-Ishtar, who is brother of the king. He is a Semite, as his beard shows. Three of his four attendants are also Semites, with beards and long hair; but one of them (just behind the prince) is beardless and shaven-headed (§ 169). He is the noble’s secretary, for being a Sumerian he is skilled in writing. His name " Kalki ” we learn from the inscription in the corner, which reads, " Ubil-Ishtar, brother of the king; Ivalki, the scribe, thy servant.” This inscription is in the Semitic (Akkadian) tongue of the time and illustrates how the Semites have learned the Sumerian signs for writing (§ 167). The scene is engraved on Kalki’s personal seal (Fig. 85), and the above drawing shows the impression on the soft clay when the seal was rolled over it. It is a fine example of the Babylonian art of seal-cutting in hard stone (§ 168). The original is in the British Museum
plentiful sprinkling of sandaled feet, of dark beards, and heavy black locks hanging down over the shoulders of the swarthy Semites of Akkad (Fig. 90). The shaven Sumerian served in the army with shield and lance (Fig. 87) along with his bearded Semitic lord carrying only the bow (Fig. 88). The Semitic noble could not do without the deft Sumerian clerk, for we see the king’s brother with his Semitic attendants, followed also by his shaven-headed Sumerian secretary (Fig. 90).
126
Ancient Times
170. The
Kings of Sumer and Akkad (from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-third century B.C.)
171. Thought and myth under the Kings of Sumer and Akkad: the source of life; the Etana story
172. Death and eternal life: the Adapa story
Section 16. Union of Sumerians and Semites : the Kings of Sumer and Akkad
When at last the Semites of Akkad were enfeebled by the town life which they had adopted, the line of Sargon declined. As a result the Sumerian cities of the South were able to recover control of the country not long after 2500 B.C. Headed by the ancient city of Ur, three of the old Sumerian cities gained the leadership one after another. But the Semites of Akkad were henceforth recognized as part of the unified nation on the ancient Plain of Shinar, which now for the first time gained a national name. It was called " Sumer and Akkad.” The kings of this age, who called themselves " Kings of Sumer and Akkad,” were both Sumerians and Semites. They have left us no great buildings or imposing monuments, but the new United States of Sumer and Akkad prospered greatly and survived for over three centuries. For the first time literature flourished.
In simple stories these men of the Tigris-Euphrates world ndw began to answer those natural questions regarding life and death, which always rose in the minds of early men. They finally told of the wonderful adventures of the shepherd Etana, when his flocks were stricken with unfruitfulness, and no more lambs were born. Etana then mounted on the back of an eagle (Fig. 91) and rose to the skies in search of the herb in which was the source of life. But as he neared his goal he was hurled to the earth again. This is the earliest tale of flying by man.
The strange mystery of death led to the story of the fisherman Adapa. When the South-wind goddess overturned his boat, Adapa flew into a rage and broke her wing. Thereupon he was summoned to the throne of the Sky-god, whose wrath was at length appeased so that he offered to Adapa the bread and water of life. This would have made him immortal and destroyed death. But suspicious and forewarned of danger, the unhappy Adapa refused the food and thus lost both for himself and for mankind the treasure of immortal life.
Western Asia : Babylonia
127
In the same way they told how the gigantic hero Gilgamesh, m. Immor-
after many mighty deeds and strange adventures (Fig. 106,^), GUgajnSh
failed to gain immortal life. Among all these heroes, indeed, there st0I7; the
was but one who was granted endless life. Of him there was delUg6 St0ly a strange tale, telling how, together with his wife, he survived
Fig. 91. The Flight of Etana to the Skies
At the right Etana sits on the back of the flying eagle {§ 171), with his arm around the bird’s neck. Above him is the moon, while below, two dogs look up after him, barking. At the left approaches a goatherd driving three goats; before them walks a man with an object shaped like an umbrella. All, including the goats, are looking up in amazement at the flight of Etana. Over the goatherd a potter is making jars, and at the right of his jars a squatting baker is making round loaves, The scene is carved on a cylinder seal (Fig. 85), and our drawing shows the impression on the soft clay when the seal is rolled over it. It is a fine specimen of the Babylonian lapidary’s skill -
the great deluge (§ 155) in a large ship. Then the gods carried them both away to blessedness. But not even the kings of Sumer and Akkad were supposed to enter a blessed hereafter, much less the common people. Many of these stories of creation and flood were afterward known to the Hebrews.
Mingled with touches from the life of both Sumerian and Semite, these tales now circulated in both the Semitic and
128
Ancient Times
174. Decline of the Sumerian language; its survival as a sacred tongue
175. Return of Semitic supremacy; rise of Babylon
176. Rise of Hammurapi ^nd supremacy of Babylon
177. Hammurapi, the organizer
Sumerian languages. It was the old Sumerian tongue, however, which was regarded as the more sacred. It later continued in use as a kind of sacred language, like Latin in the Roman Catholic Church. The old Sumerian towns were now rapidly declining (twenty-third century B.C.), but religious stories were written in Sumerian, centuries after it was no longer spoken.
Section 17. The Second Semitic Triumph: the Age of Hammurapi and After
As the " Kings of Sumer and Akkad ” slowly weakened, a new tribe of Semites began descending the Euphrates, just as the men of Akkad had done under Sargon (§ 166). These newcomers were the Semitic Amorites of Syria by the Mediterranean (§ 141). About a generation before 2200 B.C. this new tribe of western Semites seized the little town of Babylon, which was at that time still an obscure village on the Euphrates. The Amorite kings of Babylon at once began to fight their way toward the leadership of Sumer and Akkad.
After a century of such warfare there came to' the throne as the sixth in the Amorite line of kings at Babylon one Hammurapi, who was flourishing by 2100 B.C. In the now feeble old Sumerian cities of the South, Hammurapi found the warlike Elamites who had come in from Elam in the eastern mountains. They fought him for over thirty years before he succeeded in driving them out and capturing the Sumerian towns. Victorious at last, Hammurapi then made his city of Babylon for the first time supreme throughout the land. It was therefore not until after 2100 B.C. that Babylon finally gained such a position of power and influence that we may call the land " Babylonia.”
Hammurapi survived his triumph twelve years, and in those yeais of peace, as he had done in war, he proved himself the ablest of his line. He was the second great Semitic tuIct, as Sargon had been the first. Only a few generations ear^eS his
Western Asia: Babylonia
129
ancestors, like those of Sargon, had been drifting about the desert, without any organization. He -still betrayed in his shaven upper lip, a desert custom, the evidence of his desert ancestry (Fig. 93). But he now put forth his powerful hand upon the teeming life of the Babylonian towns, and with a touch he brought in order and system such as Babylonia had never seen before. Two chief sources of information have survived over four thousand years to reveal to us the deeds and the character of this great king: these are a group of fifty-five of his letters, and the splendid monument bearing his laws.
Hammurapi’s letters afford us for the first time in history a glimpse into the busy life of a powerful oriental ruler in Asia. They disclose him to us sitting in the executive office of his palace at Babylon with his secretary at his side. In short, clear sentences the king begins dictating his brief letters, conveying his commands to the local governors of the old Sumerian cities which he now rules. The secretary draws a reed stylus (Fig. 101) from a leathern holder at his girdle, and quickly covers the small clay tablet (Fig. 92) with its lines of wedge groups. The writer then sprinkles over the soft wet tablet a handful of dry powdered clay. This is to prevent the clay envelope, which he now deftly wraps about the letter, from adhering to the written surface. On this soft clay envelope he writes the address and sends the letter out to be put into the furnace and baked.
Messengers constantly hand him similarly closed letters. This secretary of Hammurapi is a trusted confidential clerk. He therefore breaks to pieces the hard clay envelopes in the king’s presence and reads aloud to him letters from his officials all over the kingdom. The king quickly dictates his replies. The flood has obstructed the Euphrates between Ur and Larsa, and of course a long string of boats have been tied up and are waiting. The king’s reply orders the governor of Larsa to clear the channel at the earliest moment and make it navigable again.
178. Hammurapi’s letters: their dictation and preparation
179. Hammurapi’s letters: navigation
i8o. Hammu-rapi's letters: feasts and the calendar
181. Hammu-'rapi’s letters: delinquents
182. Hammu-rapi’s letters : justice and religion
183. The
code of Hammurapi
130 . Ancient Times
*
The king is much interested in his vast flocks of sheep, as if the nomad instinct had not altogether vanished from the blood of his line. He orders the officials to appear in Babylon to celebrate the spring sheep-shearing as if it were a great feast. The calendar has slipped forward a whole month in advance of the proper season (§ 150), and the king sends out a circular letter to all the governors, saying, " Since the year hath a deficiency, let the month which is now beginning be registered as a second (month of) Elul.”
But he warns the governor that all taxes otherwise falling due within the next month are not to be deferred by this insertion. Delinquent tax gatherers are firmly reminded of their obligations and called upon to settle without delay. Prompt punishment of an official guilty of bribery is authorized, and we can see the king’s face darken as he dictates the order for the arrest of three officials of the palace gate who have fallen under his displeasure. More than once the governor of Larsa is sharply reminded of the king’s orders and' bidden to see that they are carried out at once.
Many a petitioner who has not been able to secure justice before the board of judges in his home city is led in before the king, confident of just treatment; and he is not disappointed (Fig. 92). The chief of the temple baiters finds that royal orders to look after a religious, feast at Ur will call him away from the capital city just at the time when he has an important lawsuit coming on. He easily obtains an order from the king postponing the lawsuit. The king’s interest in the religious feast is here as much concerned as his sense of justice, for many of the letters which he dictates have to do with temple property and temple administration, in which he constantly shows his interest.
With his eye thus upon every corner’ of the land, alert, vigorous, and full of decision, the great king finally saw how necessary it was to bring into uniformity all the various and sometimes conflicting laws and business customs of the land.
Western Asia: Babylonia 131
He therefore collected all the older written laws and usages of business and social life, and arranged them systematically.
He improved them or added new laws where his own judgment deemed wise, and he then combined them into a great code or body of laws. It was written, not in Sumerian, as some of the old laws were, but in the Semitic speech, of the Akkadians and Amorites. He then had it engraved upon a splendid shaft of stone. At the top was a sculptured scene in which the king was shown receiving the law from the Sun-god (Fig. 93). The new code was then set up in the temple of the great god Mar-duk in Babylon. This shaft has survived to our day, the oldest preserved code of ancient law. Fragments of other copies on clay tablets, the copies used by the local courts, have also been found.
Hammurapi’s code insists on justice to the widow, the orphan, and the poor; but it also allows many of the old and naive ideas of justice to stand. Especially prominent is the principle that the punishment for an injury should
Fig. 92. A. -Letter written by Hammurapi, King of Babylonia (about 2000 B.C.)
One of the fifty-five clay-tablet letters of this king (§ 178) which have survived four thousand years. The writing, done while the clay was still soft, shows clear signs of the speed with which the writer, Hammurapi’s secretary, took down the king’s dictation (§ 178). The tablet has been baked. It was also inclosed in a baked-clay envelope bearing the address, but this has been broken off and thrown away (§ 179). This letter orders a local governor to hear the appeal of an.official who thinks himself unjustly defeated in law (§ 182)
184. Spirit of Hammurapi’s code ; position of woman
132
Ancient Times
require the infliction of the principle of "an eye for an
same injury on the culprit the eye,“a tooth for a tooth.” Injustice often resulted. For example, when a house fell (§ 158) and killed the son of the householder, the guilty builder must also suffer the loss of his son, and the innocent son was therefore condemned to die. Marriage was already a relation requiring legal agreements between the man and his wife, and these are carefully regulated in Hammurapi’s code. Indeed the position of women in this early Babylonian world, as in Egypt, was a high one. Women engaged in business on their own account, and even became
Fig. 93. The Laws of Hammurapi, the Oldest Surviving Code of Laws (2100 b.c.)*
* A shaft of stone (diorite) nearly 8 feet high, on which the laws are engraved, extending entirely around the shaft and occupying over thirty-six hundred lines. Above is. a fine relief showing King Hammurapi standing at the left, receiving the laws from the Sun-god seated at the right. Hammurapi’s shaven upper lip proclaiming him a man of the Syrian desert (§ 177) is here in the shadow and cannot be seen. The flames rising from the god’s shoulders indicate who he is. The flames 011 the left shoulder are commonly shown in the' current textbooks as part of a staff in the god’s left hand. This is an error. This scene is an impressive work of Semitic aft, six hundred years later than Fig. 89.
Western 'Asia: Babylonia
133
professional scribes. They' must have attended such a school as that described below (Fig. 95).
Thus regulated, the busy Babylonian communities prospered as never before. Their products were chiefly agricultural, especially grain and dates; but they had also flocks and herds, leather and wool. The weaving of wool was a great industry, for woolen clothing was commonly worn in Western Asia. Copper had been displaced by bronze (§ 146), and one document refers to iron, but this metal was still much too rare to play any part in industry. Iron for common use was still a thousand years in the future in Hammurapi’s time (§§ 360, 392).
A standing army kept the frontiers safe and quiet, and the slow donkey caravans of the Babylonian merchants, plodding from town to town, we're able to penetrate far into the surrounding communities. They were so common on the upper Euphrates (map, p. 100) that a town there was called Haran (or Kharan) from the Babylonian word kharanu, meaning "journey.” Many a courtyard was piled high with bales, each bearing a clay seal with the impression of the merchant’s name (cf. Fig. 91). These clay seals, broken away as the bales were opened, to-day lie in the rubbish of the Babylonian towns, where the modern excavator picks tliem up, still displaying on one side the merchant’s name and on the other the impression of the cord which bound the bale.
Such seals and the clay-tablet bills which accompanied the bales had to be read by many a local merchant in the towns of Syria and beyond the passes of the northern mountains. Thus Babylonian cuneiform writing slowly made its way through Western Asia, and the merchants of Syria began to write bills and letters of their own on clay tablets (see § 291 and Fig. 126). Hammurapi’s commercial influence was widely felt in the West. The memory of his name had not wholly died out in Syria-Palestine in Hebrew days over a thousand years after his death.
185. Industries of Hammurapi’s time
186. Babylonian commerce in Hammurapi’s time
187. Spread of cuneiform writing through Western Asia
134
Ancient Tinies
188. The
temples the center of business
189. Money and loans
190. Babylonian religion in the Age of Hammurapi
191. Mardnk and Ish'tar
192. Babylonian methods of reading the future, or divination
While the Babylonian merchants were a powerful class and were even called the " rulers ” in some communities, it was the temples with their large possessions which were the center of business life. They loaned money like banks, dealt in merchandise, and controlled extensive lands.
There was as yet no coined money, but lumps of silver of a given weight circulated so commonly that values were given in weight of silver. Thus a man could say that an ox was worth so many ounces of silver, only he would use " shekels ” in place of ounces. Loans were common, though the rate of interest was high: twenty per cent a year, payable in monthly installments. Gold was also in sparing use, for it was fifteen times as valuable as silver.
These commercial interests were the leading influences in Babylonian life, even in religion. The temples, as we have said, had a large place in business life; and religion never proclaimed the rights of the poor and the humble, nor championed their cause against the rich and powerful. To be sure, the ritual of the temple contained some prayers which indicated a sense of sin and unworthiness. But the advantages of religion consisted in being able to obtain substantial benefits from the gods and to avoid their displeasure.
'The people still worshiped the old Sumerian gods, but the political leadership of Babylon had enabled the men of that city to put their Semitic god Marduk at the head of all the gods, and in the old mythical stories (§§ 171—173) they inserted the name Marduk where once the ancient Sumerian god Enlil had played the leading part. At the same time the great Asiatic goddess of love, Ishtar, rose to be the leading goddess of Babylon. She was later to pass over to the Mediterranean to become the Aphrodite of the Greeks (§ 420).
Among the benefits granted by the gods was the ability to foretell the future. This art we call divination, and the priest who practiced it was a diviner. The skilled diviner could interpret the mysterious signs on the liver of the sheep (Fig. 94)
Western Asia: Babylonia
slain in sacrifice, and could thus reveal the positions of the stars and the planets, and he could thus discern the decrees of the gods for the future. These practices later spread westward. We shall find the reading of the liver a common practice in Rome (Fig. 234), and star-reading later developed, under the Chaldeans (§ 238), into the science of astrology, the mother of astronomy. It was taken up by the Greeks and has even survived into our own day.
To train such men and to furnish clerks for business and government, schools were necessary. These were usually in or connected with the temple. A schoolhouse of the time of Hammurapi has ac-
his anxious inquirers believed that he unknown future. He could note the
Fig. 94. Ancient Babylonian Diviner’s Baked-Clay Model of Sheep’s Liver (about 2100 b.c.)
The surface of the model is marked with lines and holes, indicating the places where the diviner must look for the mysterious signs which disclosed the future. These signs were of course the highly varied natural shapes and markings to be observed in any sheep’s liver. But the Babylonian believed that these things were signs placed on the liver by the god to whom the sheep had been given, when it was slain as a sacrifice. The meaning of each part of the liver is here written in cuneiform in the proper place. The whole forms a kind of map of the surface and shape of the liver with written explanations. Absurd as all this seems to us, the art of reading the future in this way was believed in by millions of people, and finally reached Europe (§ 793 and F'g- 234)
tually been uncovered (Fig. 95), with the clay-tablet exercises of the boys and girls of four thousand years ago still lying on the floor. They show how the child began his long and difficult task of learning to understand and to write three or four hundred different signs.
193. Education : a Babylonian schoolhouse
194- Education: learning to write
136 Ancient Times
The pupil’s slate was a soft clay tablet, on which he could rub out his exercises at any time by smoothing off the surface with a flat piece of wood or stone. With his reed stylus in his hand, he made long rows of single wedges in three positions, horizontal, vertical, and oblique (see § 148). When he could
Fig. 95. An Ancient Babylonian Schoolhouse in the Days of Hammurapi (about 2IOO B.C.)
On the right is the ground plan of the schoolhouse, which was about 55 feet square. The children went in at the door {A), across the end of the long room (B) where the doorkeeper sat and perhaps kept'a clly-tablet tardy-list of the pupils who came late. Then the children entered a court (C) which was open to the sky, and we may suppose that they separated here, the big boys and girls going into their own rooms, while the little ones went into others. Somewhere in the schoolhouse, and probably in the court (6"), was a pile or box of soft clay, where a boy who had already filled his clay-tablet slate with wedge-marks (§ 194) could quickly make himself a new slate by flattening a ball of soft clay. On the left we look through one of the doors of this oldest schoolhouse in the world, as it appeared on the day when it was uncovered by the French in 1894. The native Arab workmen who uncovered it stand in the doorway. The walls of sun-dried brick are still 8 or 9 feet high
make the single wedges neatly enough, the master set him at work on the wedge-groups forming the signs themselves. Lastly, he was able to undertake words and simple phrases, leading up to sentences and quotations from old documents. One of the tablets found in the schoolhouse contains a proverb which shows how highly the Babylonians valued the art of
Western Asia: Babylonia 137
writing. It reads : He who shall excel in tablet-writing shall shine like, the sun.” Doubtless many a Babylonian lad was encouraged in the long and wearisome task of learning to write, by copying this enthusiastic sentiment.
Of the higher life of Babylon in this age as expressed in great works of art and architecture, very little has survived on the spot. Indeed, the city of Hammurapi has perished utterly. Not a single building erected by him now stands. Enough remains in other old Babylonian mounds to show us that Western Asia was still without the colonnades already so common on the Nile (Fig. 56). In these Babylonian buildings the arch for the first time assumed a prominent place on the front of a structure. As a result of its early prominence here, the arch traveled slowly westward into Europe (§ 787 and Fig. 248). The chief architectural creation of early Babylonia was the temple tower, which we have already seen (Fig. 104); but of the temples themselves no surviving example has been excavated.1
There seems to have been no painting in Hammurapi’s time The sculptured scene in which Hammurapi receives the law from the Sun-god (Fig. 93) is a work displaying a certain fine dignity and impressiveness. But this scene shows us how Babylonian custom now muffled the human form in heavy woolen garments, so that the sculptor had little opportunity to depict the beauty of the human figure (contrast Fig. 89). Portraiture was scarcely able to distinguish one individual from another. The beautiful art of seal-cutting, the greatest art of the Babylonians, had noticeably declined since the wonderful works of Sargon’s age (Fig. 106, A). Although'it was commercially so successful, yet in art the great age of Hammurapi was already declining.
1 The common restorations to be found in our current histories of art and architecture, showing us complete early Babylonian temples, rest entirely on imagination, and are pure guesswork. The temples of late Babylonia (Chaldean Empire, Section 20) have been excavated and restored by the German Expedition (Fig. 206).
195. Scanty remains of art from Hammurapi’s time; architecture
196. Sculpture in Hammurapi’s time
138
Ancient Times
197. Earliest The decline in art was perhaps a prophecy of what was to the domestic1 come. For the Babylonian nation which Hammurapi had so history11 ' splendidly organized and started on its way did not survive his (2100 b.c.) ; death. The mountaineers of the East, whom Hammurapi had Hammurapi’s driven out of the Sumerian cities (§ 176), again descended llne upon the Babylonian plain, as the Sumerians had done so
long before. They brought with them a newcomer even more important than themselves. For as they began to appear more and more often on the streets of the Babylonian towns, they led with them a strange animal, for which the Babylonians had. no name. They called it the " ass of the East.” Thus about four thousand years ago the tamed horse appeared for the first time in a civilized community, and began to play that important part in war and industry which he has played ever since.1 In this continuation of the age-long struggle between nomad. and mountaineer on the Babylonian plain, even the line of Hammurapi was swept away, and the horse-breeders of the eastern highlands triumphed (twentieth century B.C.). Their rule was rude and almost barbaric, and their triumph marked the end of old Babylonian progress in civilization. Until its revival under the Chaldeans (Section 20) Babylonia relapsed into stagnation so complete that it was rarely interrupted.
198. Sum- As we look back over this first chapter of early human retrospect progress along the Two Rivers, we see that it lasted about a
thousand years, beginning a generation or two before 3000 B.C. The Sumerian mountaineers laid the foundations of civilization in Shinar and began a thousand-year struggle with the Semites of the desert. In spite of the mingling and union of the two
t These eastern mountaineers (called by the Babylonians Kassites) who brought the horse into Babylonia did not domesticate him themselves. They received him in trade from the North, from tribes of the Indo-Europeans (§ 247) who had long before tamed or domesticated the animal. The chariot courses which show his presence in prehistoric western Europe (§ 39) were probably a little later than this. We recall the appearance of the horse in Egypt about 1700 B c (§ >°7), some four hundred years later than in Babylonia.
Western Asia: Babylonia
139
races, the Semites triumphed twice under two great leaders, Sargon (2 7 5 o B. c.) and Hammurapi (2100 b. c.). The Sumerians then disappeared, and the language of Babylonia became Semitic. The reign of Hammurapi, in spite of some weakening in art, marks the highest point and the end of the thousand-year development — the conclusion of the first great chapter of history along the Two Rivers. The scene of the second chapter will carry us up the river valley, just as it did in our study of the Nile.
QUESTIONS
Section 13. Describe the Fertile Crescent. How can we summarize its history ? Discuss its relation to the desert. Who were the inhabitants of the desert? Describe their life. Into what lands did they shift at the west end of the Fertile Crescent? at the east end? What rivers cross the east half of the Crescent ? Describe the plain they have made.
Section 14. Who were the early dwellers in the Plain of Shinar? Describe their life. Describe their writing materials and their writing. Summarize their civilization. Describe their buildings and towns. What are such towns like to-day? What do we find in them? Were the Sumerians all united in one nation ? What progress had they made in war,?
Section 15. What outsiders defeated the Sumerians ? Who was the first great Semitic king ? What did the Akkadians learn from the Sumerians? What did the Akkadians accomplish in art? Describe the mingling of Akkadians and Sumerians.
Section 16. What nation resulted from the mingling of Sumerians and Akkadians ? How long did it last? Describe its literature. What became of the Sumerian language ? -
Section i 7. Who were the Amorites, and what city in the Plain of Shinar did they seize? Who was their greatest king? Describe his administration as seen in his letters. Tell about his achievements in adjusting the laws of Babylonia. Discuss Babylonian commerce. What did it carry to the peoples along the west of the Fertile Crescent ? Describe Babylonian divination, education, architecture. What happened at Hammurapi’s death ? How long had the first chapter of civilization on the Two Rivers lasted?
199- The
situation of Assnr,, the earliest capital of Assyria
CHAPTER V
THE ASSYRIANS AND CHALDEANS
Section 18. Early Assyria and her Rivals
The second chapter of history along the Two Rivers carries us up-river from Babylonia to the northeast corner of the desert-bay. Here, overlooking the Tigris on the east and the desert on the west and south, was an easily defended elevation (Fig. 96), possessing a natural strength unknown to the towns in the flat Plain of Shinar. The place was known as Assur (see map, p. 100), and it later gave its name to the land of Assyria.
Note. The headpiece shows an Assyrian king attacking a fortified city (ninth century B.C.). A century before the Empire the Assyrians had already developed powerful appliances for destroying a city wall. The city at the right is protected by walls of sun-dried brick like those of Samal (Fig. 97). The defending archers on the wall are trying to drive away a huge Assyrian battering-ram, mounted on six wheels, which has been pushed up to the wall from the left. It carries a tower, as high as the city wall, and Assyrian sharpshooters (archers) in the top of the tower are picking off th? defenders of the wall. Within the ram unseen men work the heavy beam of the ram. It is capped with metal and is. shown smashing a hole in the city wall, from which the bricks fall out. An observation tower with a protected dome, and holes for peeping out, shields the officer in command as he directs the operation of the machine. In the rear (at the left) is the Assyrian king shooting arrows into the hostile city. He uses a powerful bow, invented in Egypt, which will shoot an arrow with great force from 1000 to .1400 feet, and hence he can stand at a safe distance. This scene, carved on a slab of alabaster,-is among the earliest Assyrian palace reliefs which have survived (§ 209), and hence the artist’s childish representation of men as tall as city walls.
140
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 141
The region about Assur was a highland, enjoying a climate much more invigorating than the hot Babylonian plain. It had ■many fertile valleys winding up into the eastern and northern mountains, where rival cities were already in existence. Here an occasional promontory of rock furnished quarries of limestone, alabaster, and likewise harder stone. Herein Assyria differed greatly from • Babylonia, which was without building stone, and had therefore developed only architecture in brick.
These eastern valleys were green with rolling pastures and billowing fields of barley and wheat. Herds of oxen and flocks of sheep and goats dotted the hillside pastures. Donkeys formed the chief draft animals, and the horse was unknown in the beginning, ' just as it was originally unknown in Babylonia (§ 146).
Here flourished an agricultural population, little given to other industries or to trade. In this last particular Assyria was again in sharp contrast with Babylonia.
By 3000 B.C. a Semitic tribe of nomads from the desert-bay had settled at Assur, as their kindred of Akkad were doing at the same time in the Plain of Shinar. As Semites they spoke a Semitic dialect like that of the Semites of Babylonia, with
Fig. 96. The Tigris and the Promontory of Assur after a Snowstorm
The river is at the left, and the fertile plain beyond it soon breaks into hills, leading up to the eastern mountains. The ruins of the ancient city occupy the promontory on the right (§ 199). The buildings in the foreground are those of the German Expedition which completely excavated the ruins
200. Climate, soil, and products of Assyria
201. Founding of Assur (3000 B.C.) under Sumerian influence
Fig. 97. The Aramean City of Samal, One of the Western Rivals of Assyria*
142
The Assyrians and Chaldeans
differences no greater than we find between the dialects of different parts of Germany. The men of Assur at first formed a tiny city-kingdom like those of their Sumerian neighbors in the South (§ 162). It is evident that they were in close contact with the Sumerian towns, whose sculpture and writing (Fig. 79) they adopted. They likewise received the Sumerian calendar (§ 150) and most of the conveniences of Sumerian civilization. There may even have been some Sumerians among the early population of the town.
While the early civilization of Assur thus came from the south, the little city-kingdom was equally exposed to influences from the north and west. There in Asia Minor were the hostile Hittite communities, some of which were venturing eastward to the Two Rivers. . More than once Assur was ruled by Hittite lords, only to fall back again under the control of Sargon, Hammurapi, or some other ruler of’ Babylonia. Thus obliged for nearly fifteen hundred years after Sargon’s reign to defend their uncertain frontiers against their neighbors on both north and south, the Assyrians were toughened by the strain of unceasing war. Meantime, too, they introduced the horse (§ 197) and added chariots to their army. Then the Assyrian kings
* Plan (above). The city was nearly half a mile across. It was defended by a double wall of sun-dried brick on a heavy stone foundation (ABC). The wall was strengthened with towers every 50 feet, entirely round the city, making one hundred towers in all. The castle of the kings of Samal occupied a hill in the middle (G), and the houses of the townsmen filled the space between the city walls and the castle (D, E, F). These houses built of sun-dried brick have disappeared, but the castle can be restored. Restoration of the Castle (H, /, /, K, L, below). This is the castle, or citadel, marked G in the city plan (above). The walls of sun-dried brick rest on heavy stone, foundations widening at the base. Samal in north Syria, midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates (map, p. 100), received influences both from the Hittites in Asia Minor (§ 353) and from Egypt. The columned porches (K and L) in front of the palaces were built on a Hittite plan with columns suggested by Egyptian architecture. Hittite art in relief (Fig. 148) adorned this porch. The Assyrians adopted these Western innovations (Fig. 105).
202. Assur the vassal of Babylonia and the Hittites alternately; earliest expansion of Assur north and south
144 Ancient Times
began pushing westward, and by 1300 B.C. they crossed the Euphrates and swept back the Hittites from the great river. At the same time they began to descend the Tigris with such power that they even captured and ruled for a time their old conqueror, Babylon, still under the rule of the : half-barbaric eastern Kassites, who had brought in the horse (§ 19 ?)•
Fig. 98. General View of Modern Damascus
Damascus is still the largest city of Syria, having probably three hundred thousand inhabitants. When it became the most powerful Ara-mean city-kingdom (§ 203) it must have been surrounded by a wall like that of Samal (Fig. 97), with a splendid royal castle. The ruins of all these ancient Aramean buildings must now lie under those of the modern city, and hence ancient Damascus will never be excavated
203. The Assur was still an inland power, much like modem Russia,
of Assyria: and could not hope to rule Western Asia without access to the Hebrews "and Mediterranean. Along the Mediterranean coast new rivals Arameans arose to dispute her progress in the West. Here the harbor towns of former Semitic nomads (§ 141) had become a fringe of wealthy Phoenician city-kingdoms carrying on a flourishing commerce by sea (§ 396). These Phoenician cities proved obstinate enemies of the Assyrian kings. Meantime a new wave of Semitic nomads had rolled in from the desert-bay (§ 135). By 1400 B.C. they were endeavoring to occupy its western
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 14S
shores, that is, Palestine and Syria, just as the Assyrians had done at Assur. These Western nomads were the Hebrews in Palestine, and north of them the Arameans,1 or Syrians, occupying Syria. They soon held the entire west end of the Fertile Crescent and cut off Assyria from the sea. After 1-200 B.C. the Arameans established a group of flourishing kingdoms in the West, Here, under the influence of Hittite civilization on one side and Egyptian on the other, these Aramean kingdoms of Syria built royal cities (Fig. 97), and luxurious palaces for their kings (Fig. 97,
H~L), filled with sumptuous furniture (Fig. 101).
Among these Aramean kingdoms of Syria the most powerful was Damascus (Fig. 98).
The energetic Aramean merchants extended their business far beyond their own kingdoms. They pushed their caravans all along the shores of the desert-bay, even as far north as the sources of the Tigris, and they finally held the commerce of Western Asia. Their bronze weights found in the ruins of Nineveh (Fig. 99) show us how common were the Aramean merchants in. the Assyrian market places. Like their kinsmen the Jews in modem civilized states, although they were not organized as a single nation, they were the great commercial leaders of the age.
1 The Arameans are often called Syrians, and the region north of Palestine (see map, p. 100) is commonly called Syria. These two names, Syria and Syrians,
are not to be confused with Assyria and Assyrians.
Fig. 99. Aramean Weight found in Assyria
The weight is of bronze, cast in the shape of a lion and equipped with a handle. The inscription on the edge of the base is in Aramaic. Fifteen of these Aramean lion weights were found at one place, showing the common presence of Aramean merchants in the Assyrian markets (§ 204)
204. Widespread Aramean commerce
146
Ancient Times
205. The
Aramean merchants spread the first alphabet in Asia
The Arameans were a highly civilized race. By 1000 B.C. they were using alphabetic writing, which they had borrowed from the Phoenicians (Section 40). It was the earliest system of
writing known which employed exclusively alphabetic signs (Fig. 160). Along with the alphabet the Arameans also received the Egyptian pen and ink, conveniences indispensable in the use of the new alphabet (Fig. 100). As the Babylonian caravans had in earlier times carried cuneiform tablets throughout Western Asia (§ 187), so the Aramean caravans, with their bills and receipts, began to carry through the same region the alphabet which was to displace cuneiform signs. Thus spread throughout Western Asia the Phoenician Aramean alpha-' bet. It passed down the Euphrates, to Persia and the inner Asiatic lands, and even to the frontiers of India, to furnish at length even the East Indian peoples with their alphabet.
The Aramean merchants of course carried their language (called Aramaic) with them, and Aramaic gradually became very common all around the desert-bay. Indeed, in the old Assyrian
Fig. 100. An Aramean King of Samal and his Secretary hold-’ ing an Egyptian Writing Outfit (Eighth Century b.c.)
The king sits at the left on a richly carved throne of ebony, ivory, and gold, with a footstool of the same design. Before him stands his secretary, carrying underhisleft arm something which looks much like a book; but bound books were still unknown at this time. In his left hand he holds an Egyptian writing case containing pen and ink (cf. Fig. 101). The flat relief in which the entire scene is carved had its origin on the Nile. From Syria, in such cities as Samal, it passed to Assyria, where it was immensely improved (Fig. 107). (From a photograph .by von Luschan)
The Assyrians and Chaldeans
Fig. ioi. An Assyrian and an Aramean Scribe recording the Plunder taken from a Captured Asiatic City (Eighth Century b.c.)
The captive women and children ride by in oxcarts on their way to slavery in Assyria, and a shepherd drives off the captured flocks. At the left an Assyrian officer reads from a tablet his notes of the spoil taken in the city. Two scribes write as he reads. The first (in front) holds in his left hand a thick clay tablet, from which he has just lifted the stylus grasped in his right hand, as he pauses in his writing. The other scribe holds spread out on his left hand a roll of papyrus, on which he is busily writing with a pen held in his right hand. He is an Aramean (§205), writing Aramaic with pen and ihk. We see here, then, the two different methods of writing practiced at this time in Western Asia— the outgoing Asiatic clay tablet and the. incoming Egyptian paper, pen, and ink
communities the people who spoke Aramaic finally outnumbered the citizens of Assyrian speech. When an Aramean received a cuneiform tablet recording business matters in the Assyrian language, he sometimes took his pen and marked it with memoranda in Aramaic. Assyrian tablets bearing such notes in Aramaic have been found in the ruins of Assyrian buildings.
206. Assyrian and Aramaic side by side in business and government
207. Complete triumph of the Aramaic lan* guage along the whole Fertile Crescent
208. Ara-mean Damascus and her Semitic allies along the west end of the Fertile Crdfccent halt westward expansion of Assyria
209. Growth of Assyrian civilization before the Empire, under influences from Babylonia and the Hittites
148 Ancient Times
Indeed public business was finally carried on in both languages, Assyrian and Aramaic. Aramean clerks were appointed to government offices, and it was a very common thing for an Aramean official of the Assyrian Empire to keep his records on papyrus, writing with pen and ink on a roll, while his Assyrian companion in office wrote with a stylus on a clay tablet (Fig. 101).
Aramaic finally .became the language of the entire Fertile Crescent. It even displaced its very similar sister tongue, the Hebrew of Palestine, and thus this merchant tongue of the ArameanSj many centuries later, became the language spoken by Jesus and the other Hebrews of his time in Palestine (Fig. 131). In the end this widespread commercial civilization of the Arameans left more lasting influences behind than even the powerful military state of the Assyrians, as we shall see. Unfortunately the Aramean city mounds of Syria, with one exception (Fig. 97), still remain unexcavated ; hence we have recovered but few monuments to tell us of their career.
As wealthy commercial rulers, the Aramean kings of Damascus were long able to make their city so strong as to block further Assyrian advance toward the Mediterranean. One of the best illustrations of the effect of their power is the fact that Damascus long sheltered the feeble little Hebrew kingdoms from Assyrian attack (see map, p. 100). The Assyrian army marched westward and looked out upon the Mediterranean by 1100 B.C., but for more than three centuries after this the kings of Assur were unable to conquer and hold this western region against the strong group of Aramean, Phoenician, and Hebrew kingdoms. They held the Assyrian armies at bay until the eighth century b.c. '
As Assyrian power thus seemed to pause at the threshold of the Empire, let us look back for a moment over the long two thousand years of development and see what progress Assur had made in civilization since it had received from the Sumerians such things as cuneiform writing (§ 201), etc. Assur was near enough to the North and West to feel influences from there
The Assyrians and Chaldeans
also, especially from the Hittites (§ 356), who contributed much both in art and in religion. All these inherited things Assur
had also cultivated and developed. She had added some two hundred cuneiform signs to the list received from Babylonia. Under influences from the Hittite art of north Syria (Fig. 100) the sculptors of Assur were learning to tell the story of the king’s valiant exploits in elaborate stone pictures cut in flat relief on great slabs of alabaster (Figs. 101 and 105). These were set up in long rows along the palace walls. This architectural sculpture was an art not practiced in Babylonia. As in sculpture, so also in architecture, the possession of stone enabled the Assyrians to do what had been impossible in stoneless Babylonia. The Assyrian builder could erect heavy foundations of stone under his buildings, as the Hittite and Syrian had long been doing. Above Fig. 102. Symbol of the ^ founcjat;on the Assyrian build-God Assur surmounting . . .. , .
an Assyrian Represen- mS ltself> however, continued to
tation OF THE OldBaby- be made of sun-dried brick, as in lonian Tree of Life Babylonia.
Above is the winged sun-disk
of Egypt, the borrowed symbol of the Assyrian Sun-god Assur (§ 210), whom we see shooting his deadly arrows. Below is the beautiful symbol of the tree of life, which originated in old Babylonia (see § 155). The early Babylonian worshiper’s palm branch in a jar of water (§ 155) had been developed by artists into a decorative palm tree seen here rising like a post in the middle, with its spreading crown of leaves at the top and festooned with tufts of palm leaves like those on the top of the tree. In this form it was later much used by the Greeks
Ancient Times
210. Religion of Assur
The sacred stories and symbols of the gods which had grown up among the Babylonian communities (§§ 171 173) were taken over by the men of Assur, who copied and studied
Fig. 103. Stone Coffin of a King of Assyria a Century "before the -Empire
In this basalt sarcophagus (coffin) lay the body of an Assyrian king, buried here twenty-eight hundred years ago; in the ninth century B.C. Above this sun-dried-brick vault in which he was buried rose the palace of Assur. The German excavators found here five such vaults under the floor of the' palace. The dead Assyrian king was thus buried under his dwelling like ordinary Assyrians or Babylonians (Fig. 81). These are the first royal tombs ever found in Assyria. They had been broken open and robbed, the bodies of the kings scattered, and the coffins mostly shattered to pieces, over two thousand years ago, by the Parthians (§ 1023), and they were found empty by the excavators
and revered them (Fig. 102). But the Assyrians clung to their old tribal god Assur, whose name was the same as that of their city and their tribe. He was a fierce god of’war, whom they identified with the sun. He led the Assyrian
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 151
kings on their victorious campaigns, and shot his deadly arrows far and wide among the foe (Fig. 102). As his symbol, the Assyrians borrowed the winged sun-disk from the Hittites of Syria, who had received it from Egypt (cf. Figs. 34 and 102). Their great goddess was Ishtar, the goddess of love, whom we have already met in Babylonia. Religion among the warlike Assyrians, as in Babylonia, had little effect upon the conduct of the worshiper. One reason for this was the fact that the Assyrians had much the same notions of the hereafter as the Babylonians, with no belief in a judgment to come. Their burials, as in Babylonia (Fig. 81), were placed under the floor or court of the dead man’s house.
Recent excavations at Assur uncovered a series of brick vaults under the pavement of the royal palace. In these vaults were found fragments of massive stone coffins, two of which, however, had not been broken up (Fig. 103). These are the oldest royal burials known in Asia, and the first ever found in Assyria; for in these coffins once lay the bodies of the powerful kings of Assur, who lived and ruled and built there, toward the end of the long two-thousand-year development which led up to the Assyrian Empire.
Section 19. The Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.)
By the middle of the eighth century B.C., Assyria was again pushing her plans of westward expansion. Damascus, combined with the other Western kingdoms, made a desperate resistance, only to be slowly crushed. When at Jjist Damascus fell (732 B.C.), the countries of the West were all subdued and made subject kingdoms. Thus the once obscure little city of Assur gained the lordship over Western Asia as head of an empire, a great group of conquered and vassal nations (§ 108). The story of that Empire forms the second great chapter of history along the Two Rivers.
211. Discovery of the tombs of the kings of Assur
212. Continued westward expansion of Assyria
213* Sar-gon II of Assyria (722705 B.C.)
214. Sennacherib (705-68l B.C.)
152 Ancient limes
In the midst of these great Western campaigns of Assyria, while he was besieging the unhappy Hebrew city of Samaria (§ 306), one of the leading Assyrian generals usurped the throne (722 B.C.), and as king he took the name of Sargon, the first great Semite of Babylonia, who had reigned two thousand years earlier (§ 166). The new Sargon raised Assyria to the height of her grandeur and power as a militaiy empire. His descendants were the great emperors of Assyria.1 On the northeast of Nineveh he built a new royal residence on a vaster scale and more magnificent than any Asia had ever seen before. He called it Dur-Sharrukin (Sargonburg). Its inclosure was a mile square, . large enough to shelter a community of eighty thousand people, and the palace building itself (Fig. 104) covered twenty-five acres. Babylonia in her greatest days had never possessed a seat of power like this. In no uncertain terms it proclaimed Assyria. mistress of Western Asia.
The grandeur of Sargon II was even surpassed by his son Sennacherib, one of the great statesmen of the early Orient. Far up in Asia Minor the name of Sennacherib was known and feared, as he plundered Tarsus and the easternmost Ionian Greek strongholds (§ 438) just after 700 B.C. Thence his campaigns swept southward along the Mediterranean to the very borders of Egypt. To be sure, much of Sennacherib’s army was destroyed by a pest which smote them from the Delta marshes (§ 309), and hence Sennacherib never crossed the Egyptian frontier. But against Babylon, his other ancient fival, he adopted the severest measures. Exasperated by one revolt after another. Sennacherib completely destroyed the venerable city of Hammurapi and even turned the waters of a canal over the desolate ruins.
1 The leading kings of the dynasty of Sargon II are as follows :
Sargon II . . . . 722-705 b.c.
I T5; ' ' ' ■ 705-68. B.c.
Esarhaddon............. 6Si-668 b.c.
Assurbanipal (called Sardanapalus by the Greeks) . 668-626 b.c.
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 153
Thus Babylon was annihilated; but the ancient power on the Nile remained a continual disturber of Assyrian control. A crushing burden of Assyrian tribute had been laid on all
Fig. 104. Restoration of the Palace and a Portion of the City of Sargonburg, the Royal Residence of Sargon II (722-705 B.C.)
The palace stands partly inside and partly outside of the city wall on a vast elevated platform of brick masonry containing about 25 acres. Inclined roadways and stairways rise from the inside of the city wall. The king could thus drive up in his chariot from the streets of the city below to the palace pavement above. The rooms and halls are clustered about a number of courts open to the sky. The main entrance (with stairs before it leading down to the city) is adorned with massive towers and arched doorways (§ 222) built of richly colored glazed brick (Plate II, p. 164) and embellished with huge human-headed bulls carved of alabaster. The temple tower behind the great court, inherited from Babylonia, was the ancestor of the Christian Church spire (Fig. 272). The streets and houses of the city filled the space below the palace within the city walls, which could accommodate some eighty thousand people (§ 213)
2IS- Egypt conquered by Assyria
subject states, and hence Egypt was constantly able to stir revolt among the oppressed Western peoples, who longed to be freed from the payment of this tribute. Assyria perceived
Sketch Map of Nineveh
Notice the changes in the course of the Tigris, which formerly flowed along the west wall of the city. This change has been caused by the Khoser River, which has carried down soil and formed a plain between the wall of the city and the Tigris. In Fig. 203 we have a view from a housetop in Mosul, across the river from Nineveh, showing us this plain, with the mound of Kuyunjik just behind it. This mound covers the palaces of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, A destructive overflow of the Khoser River, which flooded the city and broke down a section of the eastern wall, was one of the chief causes of the fall of Nineveh
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 155
that Egypt’s interference must be stopped. Sennacherib’s son, therefore, appeared before the gates of. the eastern Delta forts by 674 B.C. Repulsed at first, he returned to the attack, and although he died before entering the Delta, Egypt at last fell a prey to the Assyrian armies, and Sennacherib’s grandson was for a time lord of the lower Nile.
By 700 B.C. the Assyrian Empire included all of the Fertile Crescent. It thus extended entirely around the great desert-bay; but it furthermore included much of the northern mountain country far behind. The conquest of Egypt gave it also the lower Nile valley in the west, though this last was too distant and too detached to be kept long. Built up by irresistible and far-reaching military campaigns which went on for two generations after Sargon II, the Assyrian conquests finally formed the most extensive empire the world had yet seen.
Sennacherib was not satisfied, merely to enlarge the old royal •residences of his fathers at Assur or at Sargonburg. He devoted himself to the city of Nineveh, north of Assur,. and it now became the far-famed capital of Assyria. Along the Tigris the vast palaces (Fig. 104) and imposing temple towers of the Assyrian femperors arose, reign after reign. The lofty and massive walls of Nineveh which Sennacherib built stretched two miles and a half along the banks 'of the Tigris. Here in his gorgeous palace he ruled the western Asiatic world with an iron hand, and collected tribute from all the subject peoples.
The whole administration centered in the king’s business office. He maintained a system of royal messengers, and in each of the more important places on the main roads he appointed an official to attend to the transmission of all royal business. In this manner all clay-tablet letters or produce and merchandise belonging to the royal house were sure of being .forwarded. This organization formed the beginnings of a postal system1 which continued for iriany centuries in the Orient (§ 273).
1 There are indications that it was already in existence in Asia, under Egyptian rule, as far back as 2000 B.C.
216. Extent of the Assyrian Empire
217. Nineveh becomes the Assyrian capital ,
218. Means of communication and the organization of the Assyrian JSmpire
156 Ancient Times
Fig. 105. Assyrian Soldiers pursuing the Fleeing Enemy across a Stream
The stream occupies the right half of the scene. As drawn by the Assyrian artist, it may be recognized by the fish and the curling waves.; also by the bows and quivers full of arrows floating downstream, along with the bodies of two dead horses, one on his back with feet up. Two dead men, with arrows sticking in their bodies, are drifting in midstream. Three of the living leap from the bank as their pursuers stab them with spears or shoot them with drawn bow. The Assyrian spearmen carry tall shields, but the archer needs both hands for his bow and carries no shield. The dead are strewn along the shore, occupying the left half of the scene. At the top the vultures are plucking out their eyes; in the middle an Assyrian is cutting off a head; beside him another plants his foot on a dead man’s head and steals his weapons.
The vegetation along the river is shown among the bodies
In this way the emperor received the letters and reports of some sixty governors over districts and provinces, besides many subject kings who were sometimes allowed to continue their rule under Assyrian control. We even have several clay-tablet letters dispatched by Sennacherib himself while he was
B
Fig. 106. Animal Sculpture of the Babylonians and Assyrians
A shows us the wonderful work of the Babylonian seal-cutter in the time of Sargon (§ 168). At the extreme left the bearded hero Gilgamesh (§ 173), the ancestor of Hercules, is slaying a wild bull. He is aided by the hero Eabani, half man, half bull. Next, Gilgamesh alone is slaying a lion. In the right-hand seal, in balanced heraldic arrangement (Fig. 85), a lion is twice shown slaying a wild bull. In £, the lion hunt, we have one of the best examples of Assyrian relief sculpture of the reign of Assurbanipal (§ 223). It clearly shows the influence of the animal sculpture of the old Babylonian seals, over two thousand years older
Fig. 107. Assyrian Soldiers of the Empire. (From the Palace Reliefs of Assurbanipal)
It was the valor of these stalwart archers and spearmen which made Assyria mistress of the East for about a century and a half (§§ 220-221)
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 157
crown prince, and addressed to his royal father, Sargon. To’ maintain the army was the chief work of the State. The State was a vast military machine, more terrible than any mankind had ever yet seen (Fig. 105). We shall understand this situation if we imagine that our war department were the central office in Washington, and that our government should devote itself chiefly to supporting it. ,
An important new fact aided in bringing, about this result. Through contact with the Hittite west (§ 360) iron had been introduced among the Assyrians. The Assyrian forces were therefore the first large armies equipped with weapons. of iron. A single arsenal room of Sargon’s palace was found to contain two hundred tons of iron implements. To a certain extent the rise and power of the Assyrian Empire were among the results of the incoming of iron.
The bulk of the Assyrian army was composed of archers, supported by heavy-armed spearmen and shield bearers (Fig. 107). Besides these, the famous horsemen and chariotry of Nineveh (Fig.. 106, £) became the scourge of the East. For the first time too the Assyrians employed the battering-ram (headpiece, p. 140) and formidable siege-machinery. The sun-dried-biick walls of the Asiatic cities could' thus be battered down or pierced, and no fortified.place could long repulse the assaults of. the fierce Assyrian infantry.
' Besides their iron weapons and their war machines the Assyrian soldiers displayed a certain inborn ferocity which , held all Western Asia in abject .terror before the thundering | squadrons of the Ninevites.1 Wherever the terrible Assyrian; armies swept through the land, they left a trail of ruin and desolation behind. Around smoking heaps which had ‘ once been towns, stretched lines of tall stakes, bn which were stuck the todies of revolting rulers flayed alive; while all around rose mounds ■ and piles of the slaughtered, heaped up to celebrate the great king’s triumph and serve as a warning to all revolters.
■ ~ 1 See Nahum iii, 2-3.
219; The Assyrian Empire and the Iron Agfc
220. The arms of the Assyrians
221. Terrors of the Assyrian army
222. Civili-• zation of the Assyrian Empire: % architecture
223. Civilization of the Assyrian Empire: sculpture
158 . Ancient Times
Through clouds of dust rising along all the main roads of the Empire the men of the subject kingdoms beheld great herds of cattle, horses, and asses, flocks of goats and sheep, and long lines of camels loaded with gold and silver, the wealth of the conquered, converging upon the palace at Nineveh. Before them marched the chief men of the plundered kingdoms, with the severed heads of their former princes tied about their necks.
While this plundered wealth was necessary for the support of the army, it also served higher purposes. As we have seen (Fig. 104), the Assyrian palaces were now imposing buildings, suggesting in architecture the far-reaching power of their builder. In the hands of the Assyrian architects the arch, inherited from. Babylonia, for the first time became an imposing monumental feature of architecture. The impressive triple arches of the Assyrian palace entrance, faced with glazed brick in gorgeous colors (Plate II), were the ancestor of the Roman triumphal arches (Fig. 248). On either side were vast human-headed, bulls wrought in alabaster, and above the whole towered lofty castellated walls of baked brick, visible far across the royal city (Fig. 104).
Within the palace, as a dado running along the lower portion of the walls, were hundreds of feet of relief pictures cut in alabaster (see Figs. 101, 105,106, B, andio7). They show great improvement over the older work (headpiece, p. 140) a century before the Empire. They display especially the great deeds of the emperor in campaign and hunting field (Figs. 105 and 106, B). The human figures are monotonously alike, hard, cold, and unfeeling. Nowhere is there a human form which shows any trace of feeling, either joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain. The Assyrian sculptor’s wild beasts, however, are sometimes magnificent in the abandon of animal ferocity which they display (Fig. 106, B). The tiger was in the blood of the Assyrian, and it came out in the work of his chisel. On the other hand, the pathetic expression of suffering exhibited by some of these won-1 derful animal forms (Fig. 106, B) was a triumph of art, which the
The Assyrians and Chaldeans
Assyrian sculptor owed to a study of the superb lions and bulls (Fig. 106, A) on the exquisite old Babylonian seals of the age of Sargon I, two thousand years earlier. The art of portraiture in statue form never got beyond very crude and unskillful efforts.
The emperors were obliged to depend much on foreign skill, both in art and industries.
The art of glazing colored brick had been borrowed from Egypt (§ 83). All the patterns of Assyrian decorative art likewise came from Egypt, and their furniture made by Phoenician workmen, of ebony and ivory, often betrays Egyptian origin (Fig. 108). Phoenician craftsmen at Nineveh wrought splendidly engraved bronze platters (Fig. 158). Sennacherib tells us that he had in his palace " a portal made after the model of a Hittite palace," and his predecessors had long before built similar portals like those they had seen in the Hittite west (Fig. 97). It is in this ability to use foreign resources that we must recognize one of the greatest traits of the Assyrian emperors.
In the fine gardens which Sennacherib laid out along the river above and below Nineveh he planted strange trees and
Fig. 108. Ivory Fragment of an Egyptian Winged Sphinx found in an Assyrian Palace
Such fragments of carved ivory were used in inlaying furniture like that, in Fig. roo. They were the work of Phoenician craftsmen in the service of the Assyrian kings (§ 224). These workmen constantly employed Egyptian designs and symbols combined with those of Assyria. The winged animal, first found in Egyptian art, passed to the Phoenicians and Hittites in Syria and thence to Assyria, where it finally developed into the' huge winged bull-figure adorning the front of the king’s palace
224. Assyrian borrowing from abroad
225. Introduction of foreign plants, including earliest cotton
226. Assur-
banipal’s
library
227. Internal decay; economic and agricultural decline
x6o Ancient Times
plants from all quarters of his great empire. Among them were cotton trees, of which he says," The trees that bore wool they clipped and they carded it for garments.” These cotton trees came from India. We thus see appearing for the first time in the ancient world the cotton which now furnishes so large a part of our own national wealth.1
Higher interests were also cultivated among the Assyrians, and literature flourished. Assurbanipal, grandson of Sennacherib, and the last great Assyrian emperor, boasts that his father instructed him not only in riding and shooting with bow and arrow but also in writing on clay tablets and in all the wisdom of his time. A great collection of twenty-two thousand clay tablets was discovered in Assurbanipal’s fallen library rooms at Nineveh, where they had been lying on the floor for twenty-five hundred years. They are now in the British Museum. In this library the religious, scientific, and literary works of past ages had been systematically collected by the emperor’s orders (Fig. 109). They formed the earliest library known in Asia. The Assyrians were far more advanced in these matters than the Babylonians, and Assyrian civilization was far from being a mere echo of Babylonian culture.
Like many another later ruler, however, the Assyrian emperors made a profound mistake in policy. For their wars of conquest led to the destruction of the industrial and wealth-producing population, first within their own territory and then throughout the subject kingdoms. In spite of interest in introducing a new textile like cotton, the Assyrian rulers did not or could not build up industries or commerce like those of Babylonia. The people were chiefly agricultural, and in the old days it had sufficed to call them from their farming for short periods to defend the frontiers. With the expansion of the Empire, however, such temporary bodies of troops were insufficient, and the peasants were permatuntly taken from, the
1 This cotton tree was doubtless related to the lower-growing cotton plant pf
our Southern states.
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 161
Fig. 109. Portion of Old Babylonian Story of the Flood
FROM ASSURBANIPAL’S LIBRARY AT NlNEVEH
This large flat tablet was part of an Assyrian cuneiform book consisting of a series of such tablets. This flood story (§ 155) tells how the hero, Ut-napishtim, built a great ship and thus survived a terrible flood, in which all his countrymen perished. Each of these clay-tablet books, collected in fresh copies by Assurbanipal for his library (§ 226), bore his "bookmark” just like a book in a modern library. To prevent anyone else from taking the book, or writing his name on it, the Assyrian king’s bookmark contained the following warning: " Whosoever shall carry off this tablet, or shall inscribe his name upon it side by side with mine own, may Assur and Belit overthrow him in wrath and anger, and may they destroy his name and posterity in the land ”
fields to fill the ranks of an ever-growing standing army. It is not improbable that the ruling class were buying up the small farms to form great‘estates. We learn of disused canals and
Ancient Times
228. Foreign
levies in
the army;
Aramean
merchants
controlling
trade
229. Assaults from without: the Chaldeans from the desert
230. Assaults
from without;
Indo-
European
peoples
from the
mountains
idle fields as we read of Sargon's efforts to restore the old farming communities. Nevertheless, so vast an expansion of the Empire exceeded the power of the standing army to defend it.
As reports of new revolts came in, the harassed ruler at Nineveh forced the subjects of his foreign vassal kingdoms to enter the army. With an army made up to a dangerous extent of such foreigners, with no industries, with fields lying idle, with the commerce of the country in the hands of the Aramean traders (§ 204), and Aramean speech more common in the cities of the Empire, even in Nineveh, than that of the Assyrians themselves — under these conditions the Assyrian nation fast lost its inner strength.
In addition to such weakness within, there were the most threatening dangers from without. These came, as of old, from both sides of the Fertile Crescent. Drifting in from the desert, the Aramean hordes were constantly occupying the territory of the Empire. Sennacherib in one campaign took over two hundred thousand captives out of Babylonia, mostly Arameans. At the same time another desert tribe called the " Kaldi,” whom we know as the Chaldeans, had been for centuries creeping slowly around the head of the Persian Gulf and settling along its shores at the foot of the eastern mountains. They were Semitic nomads, repeating what the Akkadians had done in Akkad (§ 166), the AmoriteS’in Babylon (§ 175), and the Assyrians at Assur (§ 201).
On the other hand, in the northern mountains the advancing hordes of Indo-European peoples were in full view (see Section 21), led by the tribes of the Medes and Persians (§ 2^1). These movements shook the Assyrian State to its foundations. The Chaldeans mastered Babylonia, and then, in combination with the Median hosts from the northeastern mountains, they assailed the walls of Nineveh.
Weakened by a generation of decline within, and struggling vainly against this combined assault from without, the mighty city of the Assyrian emperors fell (606 *b. c.). In the voice
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 163
of the Hebrew prophet Nahum (ii, 8, 13, and iii entire), we hear an echo of the exulting shout which resounded from the Caspian to the Nile as the nations discovered that the terrible scourge of the East had at last been laid low. Its fall was forever, and when two centuries later Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks marched past the place (§ 630), the Assyrian nation was but a vague tradition, and Nineveh, its great city, was a vast heap of rubbish as it is to-day (Fig. 203). Even Assyrian speech passed away, and Aramaic became the tongue of the region which had once been Assyria, just as it was also to become the language of Babylonia (§ 265). The second great chapter of history on the Two Rivers was ended, having lasted but a scant century and a half (about 750 to 606 B.C.).
The fall of Assyria, while dramatically sudden and tragically complete, nevertheless left the nations of Western Asia in a very different situation from that in which the first Assyrian emperors had found them. The rale of a single sovereign had been enforced upon the whole great group of nations around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and the methods of organizing such an empire had been much improved. It was really in continuance of this organization that the great Persian Empire was built up (§ 260), sixty years after the fall of Assyria. The Assyrian Empire, especially in its great military organization, marked a long step forward in that gradual growth of the idea of all-including world power, which culminated at last in the Roman Empire. In spite of its often ferocious harshness, the Assyrian rule had furthered civilization. The building of the magnificent palaces in and near Nineveh formed the first chapter, in great architecture in Asia. At the same time Nineveh possessed the first libraries as yet known there. Finally, the Assyrian dominion, as we shall see (§ 307), created the international situation which enabled the Hebrews to gain the loftiest conceptions of their own God, as they matched him against the great war god of Assyria — conceptions which have profoundly influenced the entire later history of mankind.
231. Fall of
Assyria; destruction of Nineveh (606 B.C.)
232. Progres! effected by the Assyrian Empire
164
Ancient Times
233. Rise of the Chaldean Empire
234. Reign of Nebuchadnezzar (604-56I B.C.)
235. Magnificent buildings of Chaldean Babylon
Section 20. The Chaldean Empire : the Last Semitic Empire
The Kaldi, or Chaldeans, the new masters of Babylonia, now founded an empire whose brief career formed the • third great chapter of history on the Two Rivers.1 They were the last Semitic lords of Babylonia. The Chaldeans made their capital at Babylon, rebuilt after its destruction by Sennacherib (§ 214). ' They gave their name to the land, so that we now know it as Chaldea (from " Kaldi ”). While they left the Medes in possession of the northern mountains, the empire of the Chaldeans included the entire Fertile Crescent.
At Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest of the Chaldean emperors, now (604 b.c ) began a reign of over forty years—a reign of such power and magnificence, especially as reflected to us in the Bible, that he has become one of the great figures'of oriental history. Exasperated by the obstinate revolts encouraged by Egypt in the West, Nebuchadnezzar punished the Western nations, especially the little Hebrew kingdom of Judah. He finally carried away many Hebrews as captives, to •Babylonia: and destroyed Jerusalem, their capital (586 B.C.).
In spite of long and serious wars, the great king found time and wealth to devote to the enlargement and beautification of Babylon. Copying much^from Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar was able to surpass his Assyrian predecessors in the splendor of the great buildings which he now erected. In the large temple quarter in the south of the city he rebuilt the temples of the long-revered Babylonian divinities (Fig. 206). Leading from
1 The three great chapters of history on the Two Rivers are :
1. Early Babylonia (thirty-first ccntury to twenty-first century B.C.; Sargon I about 2750 B.C., Hammurapi about 2100 B.C.). See Sections 14-17.
2. The’Assyrian Empire (about 750 to 606 B.C.). See Section 19.
3. The Chaldean Empire (about 606 to 539 b. c.). See Section 20
With the exception of parts of the first, these three.epochs were periods of Semitic power. To these wc might in later times add a fourth period of Semitic supremacy, the triumph of Islam in the seventh century A.D., after the death of Mohammed (§ 1154). ..... ^ - .
Plate II. Glazed Brick. Lion from the Wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace
The Egyptian art of covering walls with decorative designs in glazed tile or brick passed over to Asia. It was employed with magnificent effect on the walls of the Assyrian palaces and at Babylon (Fig. 1S4, B) in the Chaldean Age. Nebuchadnezzar’s festival avenue (§ 235) was inclosed on either side with walls adorned with lines of lions
like this, leading up to the Gate of Ishtar (Fig. 110)
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 165
1
these to the palace, he laid out a festival avenue which passed through an imposing gateway called the " Ishtar Gate ” (Fig. no), for it was dedicated to this goddess. Behind it lay
5~ llfOO 2000 3000 4000 5&)0
Map of Babylon in the Chaldean Age
the vast imperial palace and the offices of government, while high over all towered the. temple-mount which ■ rose by the Marduk temple as a veritable "Tower of Babel” (see § 152). Masses of rich tropical verdure, rising in terrace upon terrace,
Ancient Times
236. Extent and modern excavation of Chaldean Babylon
forming a lofty garden, crowned the roof of the imperial palace and, overlooking the Ishtar Gate, enhanced the brightness of _, its colors. Here in the cool
v
Fig. 110. The Ishtar Gate of the Palace Quarter of Babylon in the Chaldean Empire (Sixth Century b.c.)
This gfite, recently excavated by the Germans (cf. Fig. in), is the most important building still standing in Babylon. It is not a restoration like Fig. 206. The towers rising on either side of the gate are adorned with the figures of animals in splendidly colored glazed tile, as used also in the Assyrian palaces (Plate II, p. 164). Behind this gate rose the sumptuous palace of Nebuchadnezzar, crowned by the beautiful roof gardens known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (§ 235)
shade of palms and ferns, inviting to luxurious ease, the great king might enjoy an idle hour with the ladies of his court and look down upon the splendors of his city. These roof gardens of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace were the mysterious Hanging Gardens of Babylon, whose fame spread far into the West until they were numbered by the Greeks among the Seven Wonders of the World. Babylon thus became a monumental city like those of Assyria and Egypt (§ 113).
For the first time Babylonia saw a very large city. It was immensely extended by Nebuchadnezzar, and enormous fortified walls were built to protect it, including one (above the city) that extended entirely across from river to river. It is this Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar whose marvels over a century later ,so impressed Herodotus (§ 567),
The Assyrians and, Chaldeans
as is shown in the description, of the city which he has left us. This,, too, is the Babylon which has become familiar to all Christian peoples as the great city of the Hebrew captivity (Section 31). Of all the glories which made it'world renowned in its time, little now remains. The excavations of the Germans
Fig. 111. Beginning of the Excavation of Ancient Babylon on.March 26, 1899
The mounds shown are the rubbish covering the palace of Nebuchadnezzar (§ 235). The palms in the background fringe the Euphrates. The Arab workmen of the German Expedition' (in the foreground) have just uncovered part of the pavement of Nebuchadnezzar’s splendid Festival Street, or processional avenue, which connected the palace and the Ishtar Gate (Fig. 110) with one of the great temples. Beneath all these works of Chaldean Babylon (Section 20) should lie the remains of old Babylon of Hammurapi’s age (Section 17); but Sennacherib’s destruction of the city (§ 214) swept away the older Babylon. Since the first day’s work shown above, sixteen years of excavation at Babylon have uncovered almost nothing older than the city of Nebuchadnezzar
(Fig. 111), who have been uncovering the city since 1899, are slowly revealing one building after another, the scanty wreckage of the ages. To them we owe the recovery of the Festival Street and^the Ishtar Gate (Fig. 110), but the Ishtar Gate is practically the only building in all Babylonia of which any impressive remains- survive. Elsewhere the broken fragments of dingy sun-baked-brick walls suggest little of the brilliant life which once ebbed and flowed through these streets and public places.
Ancient Times
237. Civilization of Chaldean Babylon
238. Rise of astronomy and astrology
239. Origin of names of the planets
The Chaldeans seem to have absorbed the civilization of Babylonia in much the same way as other earlier Semitic invaders of this ancient plain (§§ 167, 175)- Commerce and business flourished, the arts and industries were highly developed, religion and literature were cultivated and their records were put into wedge-writing on clay tablets as of old.
Science made notable progress in one important branch — astronomy. The Babylonians continued the ancient practice of trying to discover the future in the heavenly bodies (see § 192). This art, which we call " astrology,” was now very systematically pursued and was really becoming astronomy. The equator was divided into 360 degrees, and for the first time the Chaldean astrologers laid out the twelve groups of stars which we call the " Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.” Thus for the first time the sky and its worlds were being mapped out.
The five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) were especially regarded as the powers controlling the fortunes of men, and as such thd five leading Babylonian divinities were identified with these five heavenly bodies. The names of these Babylonian divinities have descended to us as the names of the planets. But on their way to us through Europe, the ancient Babylonian divine names were translated into Roman forms. So the planet of Ishtar, the goddess of love, became Venus, while that of the great god Marduk became Jupiter, and so on. The celestial observations made by these Chaldean " astrologers,” as we call them, slowly became sufficiently accurate, so that the observers could already foretell an eclipse. These observations when inherited by the Greeks formed the basis of the science of astronofny, which the Greeks carried so much further (§ 492). The practice of astrology has survived to our own day; we still unconsciously recall it in such phrases as " his lucky star ” or an " ill-starred undertaking.”
We can discern in the new architecture of Babylon how this Chaldean Age brought Babylonia up to the new and higher
The Assyrians and Chaldeans 169
level of civilization attained by Assyria, Nevertheless, the Chaldeans themselves fancied that they were restoring the civilization of the old Babylonia of Hammurapi. The scribes loved to employ an ancient style of writing and out-of-date forms of speech; the kings tunneled deep under the temple foundations and searched for years that they might find the old foundation records buried (like our corner-stone documents) by kings of ancient days (§ 160).
This dependence upon the past meant decline. After the death of Nebuchadnezzar (561 B.C.), whose reign was the high-water mark of Chaldean civilization, the old civilized lands of the Orient seemed to have lost most of their former power to go forward and to make fresh discoveries and new conquests in civilization, such as they had been making during three great ages on the Nile and three similar ages on the Two Rivers. Indeed the leadership of the Semitic peoples in the early world was drawing near its close, and they were about to give way before the advance of new peoples of the Indo-European race (Section 21). The nomads of the southern desert were about to yield to the hardy peoples of the northern and eastern mountains, and to these we must now turn.
QUESTIONS
Section 18. Where does the second chapter of history on the Two Rivers carry us? Describe the region about Assur. Who founded Assur, and when ? Whence did they gain the beginnings of civilization? Was Assur also exposed to influences from the North? What was the result? Who were the Western rivals of Assur? Tell about the Arameans and what they accomplished. What important thing did they carry throughout Western Asia? What prevented Assyria from reaching the Mediterranean ? What had Assyrian civilization achieved by this time ? What has recent excavation discovered under .the palace of Assur ?
Section 19. What city had chiefly prevented Assyria from conquering the West? When was Damascus captured by Assyria ? What
was the result in the West? Who was the founder of the leading
240. The
oriental revival of the past
241. Decline of the old oriental lands
170
Ancient Times
line of Assyrian emperors? Describe his new city. What was the extent of the Assyrian Empire ? How was its government carried on ? What can you say about Assyrian warfare ? about architecture and sculpture? Was all this of Assyrian origin? What can you say of the reign of Sennacherib in war, building, or any other important matters ? What can you tell of Assurbanipal ? What dangers within and without caused the fall of Assyria? What peoples destroyed Nineveh, and when ? What became of the ruins of the city ? What progress resulted from the rule of the Assyrian Empire ?
Section 20. What empire formed the third chapter of history on the Two Rivers ? Who founded it, and when ? Whence did they come ? Who was the greatest Chaldean king ? What did he accomplish in war ? What people did he carry away captive ? Describe his buildings at Babylon. Had there been any large cities in Babylonia before his time? Whence did he borrow much in the architecture of his palace? What has become of his buildings? In what science did the Chaldeans make great progress ? What astronomical names have descended to us from them? Could they predict an eclipse? To what race did the Chaldeans belong? What race was to follow them in oriental leadership ?
Note. The following sketch shows us a temple of the Assyrians at Assur as restored by the German excavators. Behind the temple court is the holy of holies, and on each side of it rises a temple tower with a winding ascent, after the- old Babylonian manner (§ 152). It was from such towers that the tower architecture of the early world arose, eventually producing our own church spires, of which the Babylonian temple tower was the ancestor (see Fig. 272).
CHAPTER VI
THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE
Section 21. The Indo-European Peoples and their Dispersion1
We have seen that the Arabian desert has been a great 242. The reservoir of unsettled population, which was continually leaving grassiSids the grasslands on the margin of the desert and shifting over into the towns to begin a settled life (§ 135). Corresponding to these grasslands of the South, there are similar grasslands in the North (Fig. 112). These Northern grasslands stretch from the lower Danube eastward along the north side of the Black Sea through southern Russia and far into Asia north and east
Note! The headpiece above shows ancient fire altars still surviving in Persia.
.Nearby are the tombs of the great Persian kings (Fig. 118) not far from Persep-olis (Fig. 116), the capital of Persia, and these kings doubtless often worshiped before' the fires blazing on these altars.
1 Section 21 should be carefully worked over by the teacher with the class before the class -is permitted to study it alone. The diagram (Fig. 112) should be put on the blackboard and explained in detail by the teacher, and the class should then be prepared to put the diagram on the board from memory. This should be done again when the study of the Greeks is begun (§ 370), and a third time when Italy and the Romans are taken up.
171
243- The two lines — Indo-European and Semitic
244. The struggle between the two lines — Indo-European and Semitic
172 Ancient Times
of the Caspian (see map, p. 676). In ancient times they always had a wandering shepherd population, and time after time, for thousands of years, these Northern nomads have poured forth over Europe and Western Asia, just as the desert Semites of the South have done over the Fertile Crescent (§ 135).
These nomads of the North were from the earliest times a great white race, which we call Indo-European. We can perhaps best explain this term by saying that these Indo-Europeans were the ancestors of the present peoples of Europe. As our forefathers came from Europe, the Indo-European nomads were also our own ancestors. These nomads of the Northern grasslands, our ancestors, began to migrate in very ancient times, moving out along. diverging routes. They at last extended in an imposing line from the frontiers of India on the east, westward across all Europe to the Atlantic, as they do to-day (Fig. 112). This great northern line was confronted on the south by a similar line of Semitic peoples, extending from Babylonia on the east, through Phoenicia and the Hebrews westward to Carthage and similar Semitic settlements of Phoenicia in the western Mediterranean (§ 135, and map, p. 288).
The history of the ancient world, as we are now to follow it, was largely made up of the struggle between this southern Semitic line, which issued from the Southern grasslands, and the northern Indo-European line, which came forth from the Northern grasslands to confront the older civilizations represented in the southern line. Thus as we look at the diagram (Fig. 1.12) we see the two great races facing each other across the Mediterranean like two vast armies stretching from Western Asia westward to the Atlantic. The later wars between Rome and Carthage. (Sections 78, 79) represent some of the operations on the Semitic left wing; while the triumph of Persia over Chaldea (Section 23) is a similar outcome on the Semitic right wing.
The result of the long conflict was the complete triumph of' our ancestors, the Indo-European line, which conquered along the center and both wings and finally gained unchallenged
West
Celts Romans ' Greeks Greeks (France (Italy) in Italy in
to Asia and Greece
Minor) Sicily
Indo-European Line Various Indo-European Peoples of Asia Minor, like the Hittites. Phrygians, Scythians, and Armenians
NORTHERN GRASSLANDS ^ (.Indo-European Parent People)
Medes
(,Armenia and Media)
Persians
Aryans of North India {Sanski'it)
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Aryan Peoples (see §§ 249-251) Fertile Crescent (see §§ 131-142)
Phoenician Settlements in Southern Spain
West
Carthage Sicily Phoenician Set- Palestine Phoenicia Syria Assyria Babylonia {North Africa) Corsica tlements in {especially {Damascus) {later
Sardinia Eastern Mediter- Hebrews) Chaldea)
ranean; Cyprus *
Semitic Line
SOUTHERN GRASSLANDS OF ARABIA {Semitic Parent People)
Fig. 112. Diagram suggesting the Two Lines of Semitic and Indo-European Dispersion
The actual lines along which these peoples lie are of course not straight. The lines sometimes overlie each other, as in Sicily, mentioned in both lines. Egypt,. which_ geographically belongs in the southern line, has been omitted because it is not purely Semitic, although closely related" toTfre Semites. JMotice also that in the West the two races face each other for the most part across the Mediterranean; in the East they confront each other along the Fertile Crescent (§ 132). The Hittites, included above among the Indo-European peop'les, became so in language, though
evidently not originally so in blood (§ 376)
174
Ancient Times
245. Triumph of the European end of the Indo-European line
246. The Incjo-European parent people and their original home
247. Civilization of the Indo-European parent people
supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world under the Greeks and Romans (Sections 37—98). This triumph was accompanied by a long struggle for the mastery between the members of the northern line themselves. Among them the victory moved from the east end to the west end of the narthem line, as first the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans, gained control of the Mediterranean and oriental world.
Let us now turn back to a time before the Indo-European people had left their original home on the grasslands. Modem study has not yet determined with certainty the region where the parent people of the Indo-European nomads had their home. The indications now are that this original home was on the great grassy steppe in the region east and northeast of the Caspian Sea. Here, then, probably lived the parent people of all the later Indo-European race. At th& time when they were still one people, they were speaking one and the same tongue. From this tongue have descended all the languages later spoken by the civilized peoples of modern Europe, including, of course, our own English, as we shall see.
Before they dispersed, the parent people were still in the Stone Age for the most part, though copper was beginning to come in, and the time must therefore have been not later than 250° b.c. Divided into numerous tribes, they wandered at will, seeking pasture for their flocks, for they already possessed domestic animals, including cattle and sheep. But chief among their domesticated beasts was the horse, which, as we recall, was still entirely unknown to the civilized oriental nations until after Hammurapi’s time (see § 197). They employed him not^ only for riding but also for drawing their wheeled carts. The ox already bore the yoke and drew the plow for some of the tribes had adopted a settled mode of life ’and cultivated grain especially barley. Being without writing,’they possessed but little government and organization. But they were the most gifted and the most highly imaginative people ot the ancient world.
The Medo-Persian Empire
As their tribes wandered farther and farther apart they lost contact with each other. Local peculiarities in speech and customs became more and more marked, until wide differences resulted. While at first the different groups could doubtless understand one another when they met, these differences in speech gradually became so great that the widely scattered tribes, even if they happened to meet, could no longer make themselves understood, and finally they lost all knowledge of their original kinship. This kinship has only been rediscovered in very recent times. The final outcome, in so far as speech was concerned, was the languages of modern civilized Euirope ; so that, beginning with England in the West and going eastward, we can trace more than one common word from people to people entirely across Europe into northern India. Note the following:
EAST
English German Latin Greek
Old Persian Tokhar East Indian
and AveStan (in Central Asia) (Sanskrit)
brother bruder frater phrater brata pracar bhrata
mother mutter mater meter matar macar mata
father vater pater pater pitar pacar pita
In the West these wanderers from the Northern grasslands had already crossed the Danube and were far down in the Balkan peninsula by 2000 B.C. Some of them had doubtless already entered Italy by this time (§ 775), illustrating what we learned in studying Stone Age Europe, about the shifting habits of shepherd or< nomad peoples, as they drive their flocks from pasture to pasture (§ 35). These Western tribes were, of course, the ancestors df the Greeks and Romans. We shall later join them and follow them' in their conquest of the Mediterranean (Sections 37-98). Before doing so, however, we have to watch the eastern wing of the vast Indo-European line as it swings southward and comes into collision with the right wing of the Semitic line,
248. The dispersion of the Indo-European parent people
176
Ancient Times
249. The
Aryans; the advance of the eastern wing of the Indo-European line
250. Sanskritspeaking tribes in India
251. Medes and Persians further west toward the Fertile Crescent
Section 22. The Aryan Peoples and the Iranian Prophet Zoroaster
It is now an established fact that the easternmost tribes of the Indo-European line, having left the parent people, were pasturing their herds in the great steppe on the east of the Caspian by about 2000 b. c. Here they formed a people properly called the Aryans1 (see Fig. 112), and here they made their home for some time. The Aryan people had no writing, and they have left no monuments. Nevertheless, the beliefs of their descendants show that the Aryan tribes already possessed a high form of religion, which summed up conduct as " good thoughts, good deeds.” Fire occupied an important place in this faith, and they had a group of priests whom they called " fire-kindlers.”
When the Aryans broke up, perhaps about 1800 B.C., they separated into two groups. The Eastern tribes wandered southeastward and eventually arrived in India. In their sacred books, which we call the Vedas, written in Sanskrit, there are echoes of the days of Aryan unity, and they furnish many a hint of the ancient Aryan home on the east of the Caspian.
The other group, whose tribes kept the name " Aryan ” in the form " Iran,”2 also left this home and pushed westward and southwestward into the mountains bordering our Fertile Crescent (§ I33)- We call them Iranians, and among them were two
1 The Indo-European parent people apparently had no common name for all their tribes as a great group. The term " Aryan ” is often popularly applied to the parent people, but this custom is incorrect. ” Aryan ” (from which ” Iran ” and " Iranian ” are later derivatives) designated a group of tribes, a fragment of the parent people, which detached itself and found a home for some centuries just east of the Caspian Sea. When we hear the term " Aryan ” applied to the Indo-European peoples of Europe, or when it is said that we ourselves are descended from the Aryans, we must remember that this use of the word is historically incorrect, though very common. The Aryans, then, were Eastern descendants of the Indo-European parent people, as we are Western descendants of the parent people. The Aryans are our distant cousins but not our ancestors.
2 They have given their name to the great Iranian plateau, which stretches from the Zagros Mountains eastward to the Indus River. This whole region was known in Greek and Roman days as Ariana, which (like w Iran”) is, of course, derived from ” Aryan ” (see map, p. 436).
The Medb-Persian Empire
177
powerful tribes, the Medes and the Persians.1 We recall how, in the days of Assyria’s imperial power the Medes descended from the northern mountains. against Nineveh (§ 230). This southern advance of the Indo-European eastern wing was thus overwhelming the Semitic right wing (Fig. 112) occupying the Fertile Crescent.
By 600 B.C., after the fall of Assyria (§ 231), the Medes had 252. The established a powerful Iranian empire in the mountains east of (indo" the Tigris. It extended from the Persian Gulf, where it included ?uropean)
1 -r\ - 1 . . Empire
the Persians, northwestward in the general line of the mountains threatens to the Black Sea region. The front of the Indo-European east- (Semitic1) ern wing was thus roughly parallel with the Tigris at this point, Babylonla but its advance was not to stop here. Nebuchadnezzar (§ 234) and the Chaldean masters of Babylon looked with anxious eyes at this dangerous Median power. The Chaldeans on the Euphrates represented the leadership of men of Semitic blood from the southern pastures. Their leadership was now to be followed by that of men of Indo-European blood from the northern pastures (§ 242). As we see the Chaldeans giving way before the Medes and Persians (§ 261), let us bear in mind that we are watching a great racial change, and remember that these new Iranian masters of the East were our kindred; for both we and they have descended from the same wandering shepherd ancestors, the Indo-European parent people, who once dwelt in the far-off pastures of inner Asia, probably five thousand years ago.
All of these Iranians possessed a beautiful religion inherited 253. The ^ from old Aryan days (see § 249). Somewhere in the east- the Iranians ern mountains, as far back as 1000 B.C., an Iranian named Zoroaster began to look out upon the life of men in an effort to find a new religion which would meet the needs of man’s life. He watched the ceaseless struggle between good and evil
1 About 2100 B.C., in the age of Hammurapi, long before the Iranians reached the Fertile Crescent, their coming was announced in advance by the arrival of the horse in Babylonia (see § 197).
178
Ancient Times
254. Judgment hereafter
255. Zoroaster preaches his new religion
which seemed to meet him wherever he turned. To him it seemed to be a struggle between a group of good beings on the one hand and of evil powers on the other. The Good became to him a divine person, whom he called Mazda, or Ahura-mazda, which means " Lord of Wisdom ” and whom he regarded as God. Ahuramazda was surrounded by a group of helpers much like angels, of whom one of the greatest was the Light, called " Mithras.” Opposed to Ahuramazda and his helpers it was finally believed there was an evil group led by a great Spirit of Evil named Ahriman. It was he who later was inherited by Jews and Christians as Satan.
Thus the faith of Zoroaster grew up out of the struggle of life itself, and became a great power in life. It was one of the noblest religions ever founded. It called upon every man to stand on one side or the.other; to fill his soul with the Good and the Light or to dwell in the Evil and the Darkness. Whatever course a man pursued, he must expect a judgment here-after. This was the earliest appearance in Asia of belief in a last judgment. Zoroaster maintained the old Aryan veneration of fire (§ 249) as a visible symbol of the Good and the Light, and he preserved the ancient fire-kindling priests (headpiece, p. 171).
Zoroaster went about among the Iranian people, preaching his new religion, and probably for many years found but little response to his efforts. We can discern his hopes and fears alike in the little group of hymns he has left, probably the only words of the great prophet which have survived. It is characteristic of the horse-loving Iranians that Zoroaster is said to have finally converted one of their great kings by miraculously healing the king’s crippled horse. The new faith had gained a firm footing before the prophet’s death, however, and before 700 B.C. it was the leading religion among the Medes in the mountains along the Fertile Crescent. Thus Zoroaster became the first great founder of a religious faith.
As in the case of Mohammed, it is probable that Zoroaster fould neither read nor write, for the Iranians possessed no
The Medo-Persian Empire
179
system of writing in his day (see § 266). Besides the hymns mentioned above, fragments of his teaching have descended to us in,writings put together in the early Christian centuries, over a thousand years after the prophet’s death. They form a book known as the Avesta. This we may call the Bible of the Persians.
Section 23. Rise of the Persian Empire: Cyrus
No people became more zealou3 followers of Zoroaster than the group of Iranian tribes known as the Persians. Through them a knowledge of him has descended to us. At the fall of Nineveh (606 b. c.) (§ 231) they were already long settled in the region at the southeastern end of the Zagros Mountains, just north of the Persian Gulf. Its shores are here little better than desert, but the valleys of the mountainous hinterland are rich and fertile. Here the Persians occupied a district some four hundred miles long. They were a rude mountain peasant folk, leading a settled agricultural life, with simple institutions, no art, no writing or literature, but with stirring memories of their past. As they tilled their fields and watched their flocks they told many a tale of their Aryan ancestors and of the ancient prophet whose faith they held.
They acknowledged themselves vassals of their kinsmen the Medes, who ruled far to the north and northwest of them. One of their tribes dwelling in the mountains of Elam (see map, p. 100), a tribe known as Anshan, was organized as a litde kingdom. About fifty years after the fall of Nineveh this little kingdom of Anshan was ruled over by a Persian named Cyrus. He succeeded in uniting the other tribes of his kindred Persians into a nation. Thereupon Cyrus at once rebelled against the rule of the Medes. He gathered his peasant soldiery, and within three years he defeated the Median king and made himself master of the Median territory. The extraordinary career of Cyrus was now a spectacle upon which all eyes in the West were fastened with wonder and alarm.
256. The
Avesta, the Persian Bible
257. The
emergence of the Persians; their land and traditions'
258. Cyrus of Anshan organizes the, Persian tribes into a nation and conquers the Medes
i8o
Ancient Times
259. The
Persian army
260. Cyrus conquers ' the West
The overflowing energies of the new conqueror and his peasant soldiery proved irresistible. The Persian peasants seem to have been remarkable archers. The mass of the Persian
army was made up of bowmen (Fig. 113), whose storm of arrows
Fig. 113. Persian Soldiers
Although carrying spears when doing duty as palace guards, these men were chiefly archers (§ 259), as is shown by the size of the large quivers on their backs. The bow hangs on the left shoulder. The royal bodyguard may also be seen wielding their spears around the Persian king at the battle of Issus (Fig. 202). Notice the splendid robes worn by these palace guards. The figures are done in brightly colored glazed brick — an art borrowed by the Persians (see Plate II, p. 164) and employed to beautify the palace walls. The restoration in Fig. 204 shows such a frieze of archers in position along the wall of the palace court
at long range overwhelmed the enemy long before the hand-to-hand fighting began. Bodies of the skillful Persian horsemen, hovering on either wing, then rode in and completed the destruction of the foe. These arrangements were taken by the Persians from the Assyrians, the greatest soldiers the East had ever seen.
The great states Babylonia (Chaldea) and Egypt, Lydia under King Croesus in western Asia Minor (§ 497), and even Sparta in Greece (§ 426) formed a powerful combination against this sudden menace, which had risen like the flash of a meteor in the
The Medo-Persian Empire 181
eastern sky. Without an instant’s delay Cyrus struck at Crcesus of Lydia, the chief author of the hostile combination. One Persian victory followed after another. By 546 B.C. Sardis, the Lydian .capital (Fig. 173), had fallen, and Crcesus, the Lydian king, was a prisoner in the hands -of Cyrus. Cyrus at once gained also the southern coasts of Asia Minor. Within five years the power of the little Persian kingdom in the mountains of Elam had swept across Asia Minor to the Mediterranean and had become the leading state in the oriental world.
Fig. 114. Barrel-Shaped Clay Record of the Capture of . Babylon by Cyrus (539 b.c.)
It tells how "without battle and without fighting Marduk [God of Babylon] made him [Cyrus] enter into his city of Babylon; he spared Babylon tribulation, and Nabonidus the [Chaldean] king who feared him not, he delivered into his hand.” Nabonidus, the Chaldean king of Babylon, was not in favor with the priests, and they assisted in delivering the city to Cyrus
Turning eastward again, Cyrus had no trouble in defeating the Chaldean army led by the young crown prince Belshazzar, whose name in the Book of Daniel (see Dan. v) is a household word throughout the Christian world. In spite of the vast walls erected by Nebuchadnezzar to protect Babylon (§ 236), the Persians entered the great city in 539 B.C., seemingly without resistance (Fig. 114).
Thus only sixty-seven years after the fall of Nineveh (§ 231) had opened the conflict between the former dwellers in the Northern and the Southern grasslands, the Semitic East
261. Cyrus conquers Babylonia (Chaldea)
Ancient Times
262. Collapse of the Semitic East before the Indo-European assault
263. Cam-byses conquers Egypt; Persia rules whole civilized East
264. Persian kings at Babylon absorb civilization of the East they rule
completely collapsed before the advance of the Indo-European power. Some ten years later Cyrus fell in battle (528 B.C.) as he was fighting with the nomads in northeastern Iran. His body was reverently laid away in a massive tomb of impressive simplicity at Pasargadae (Fig. 115), where Cyrus himself had established the capital of Persia. Thus passed away the first great conqueror of Indo-European blood.
All Western Asia was now subject to the Persian king; but in 525 B.C., only three years after the death of Cyrus, his son Cambyses conquered Egypt. This conquest of the only remaining ancient oriental power rounded out the Persian Empire to include the whole civilized East from the Nile Delta, around the entire eastern end of the Mediterranean to the .^Egean, and from this western boundary eastward almost to India. The great task had consumed just twenty-five years since the overthrow of the Medes by Cyrus. It was an achievement for which the Assyrian Empire had prepared the way, and the Persians were now to learn much from the great civilizations which had preceded them.
Section 24. The Civilization of the Persian Empire (about 530 to 330 b.c.)
The Persians found Babylon a great and splendid city, with the vast fortifications of Nebuchadnezzar stretching from river to river and his sumptuous buildings visible far across the Babylonian plain (§§ 235-236). The city was the center of the commerce of Western Asia and the greatest market in the early oriental world. Along the Nile the Persian emperors now ruled the splendid cities whose colossal monuments- we have visited. These things and the civilized life which the Persians found along the Nile and the Euphrates soon influenced them greatly, as we shall see.
Aramaic, the speech of the Aramean merchants who filled the busy market places of Babylon, had by that time become
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. 115. The Tomb of Cyrus near Persepolis
The oldest important Persian building, probably built by Cyrus himself. It was surrounded by &. colonnade, of which the remains are visible at the left. The body of Cyrus lay here for nearly two hundred years, when Alexander the Great (§ 699) found it lying on the floor of the tomb, plundered of its royal ornaments. He ordered the body restored to its place, and had the tomb chamber closed up. It is now empty
From an etching by George T. Plowman
Fig. i i 6. Great Stairway and Gate of the Persian Palaces at Persepolis*
The grand terrace of which this is the entrance is as high as an average two-story house in America. It was occupied by a group of magnificent palaces, of which the ruins are shown on page 196. Below the terrace lay the royal city, just as in Fig. 104
The Medo-Persian Empire
183
the language of the whole Fertile Crescent. Business documents were now written in Aramaic with pen and ink on papyrus, and clay tablets bearing cuneiform writing were slowly disappearing. The Persian officials were therefore obliged to carry on their government business, like the collection of taxes, in the Aramaic tongue throughout the western half of the Persian Empire. Even as far as the Nile and western Asia Minor, they sent out their government documents in Aramaic, this universal language of business (Fig. 131).
The government of the Persian kings, like that of the Assyrian Empire, was thus "bilingual” (§ 206), by which we mean that it employed two languages — Aramaic and the old Persian tongue. Even in writing Persian, the Persians often employed Aramaic letters, as we write English with Roman letters. At the same time, having probably gained from Aramaic writing the idea of an alphabet, the Persian scribes devised another alphabet, of thirty-nine cuneiform signs, which they employed for writing Persian on clay tablets. They also used it when they fished to make records on large monuments of stone (Fig. 117). Thus the Persians, who had been so long entirely without writing, began to make enduring written records after they entered the'Fertile Crescent. These monuments are the earliest Persian documents which have
I
descended to us.
* This royal stairway, the finest surviving from the ancient world, was laid out by Darius and finished by Xerxes. A proud inscription of Darius cut in cuneiform on the wall of the stairway looks down upon the visitor. It reads: " Darius the king saith: ' This land of Persia, which Ahuramazda has entrusted to me, the land that is beautiful, that hath.good people and fine horses,—by the will of Ahurajnazda and my will, it fears no enemy.’ ” The terrace wall is from 30 to 50, feet high, but the steps of the grand stairway are so low that a horse may be easily ridden up the steps to the terrace. Leading from the stairway is the magnificent gate built by Xerxes, guarded on either hand by huge winged bulls, an art symbol borrowed by Persia from Assyria. Beyond the gate still rise two splendid columns of the imposing colonnade erected by Xerxes to adorn this entrance.
265. Aramaic becomes the language of Persian administration in the West
266. Persians devise a cuneiform alphabet
Fig. 117. Triumphal Monument of Darius the Great, the Rosetta Stone of Asia, on the Cliff of Behistun
This impressive monument is the most important historical document surviving in Asia. It is made up of four important parts: the relief sculptures (A) and the three inscriptions (B, C, D). B is a great inscription, in columns some 12 feet high, recording the triumph of Darius Over all his enemies in the extensive revolts which followed his coronation. It is in the Persian language, written with the new cuneiform alphabet of thirty-nine letters which the Persians devised (§ 266). The other two inscriptions (C and D) are translations of the Persian (B). C therefore contains the same record as the Persian (B)-, but it is in the Babylonian language and is written in Babylonian cuneiform with its several hundred wedge-signs (§ 149). the third inscription, is also cuneiform, in the language of the region of Susa, and hence is called Susian. Thus the Great King published his triumph in the three most important languages of this eastern region and placed the record overlooking a main road at Behistun (see map, p. 436) where the men of the caravans passing between Babylon and the Iranian Plateau would look up 300 feet and see the splendid monument 25 feet high and 50 feet wide. To reach it requires a dangerous climb, and it was on this lofty cliff, at the risk of his^ life, that Sir Henry Rawlinson copied all three of these cuneiform inscriptions (1B35—1 ^4-7)* By the use of these copies Rawlinson succeeded in deciphering the ancient Babylonian cuneiform (§§ 282-2®3)» and this great monument of Darius therefore enabled modem historians to recover the lost language and history of Babylonia and Assyria. It did for Western Asia what the Rosetta Stone did for Egypt (Drawn from photographs of the British Museum Expedition)
184
The Medo-Persian Empire
The organization of such a vast empire, stretching from the Indus River to the JEgean Sea (almost as long as the United States from east to west) and from the Indian Ocean to the deserts of the Caspian, was a colossal task. It demanded an effort of organization on a greater scale than any ruler had ever attempted before. It was much too great an undertaking to be completed by Cyrus. Begun by him, it was carried through by Darius the Great (521-485 B.C.), and his organization remains one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of the ancient Orient, if not of the world. The rule of Darius was just, humane, and intelligent, but the subject peoples had of course no voice in government. All that the Great King decreed was law, and all the peoples bowed to his word. Darius says in the Behistun inscription (Fig. 117), " By the grace of Ahuramazda these lands have conformed to my decree; even as it was commanded unto them by me, so was it done." Let us therefore notice an important fact here revealed: this system was not only attempting government on a larger scale than the world had ever seen before, but it was government controlled by one man. The ancient world.never forgot the example of the vast Persian Empire controlled by one-man power.
Darius did not desire further conquests, but he planned to maintain the Empire as he had inherited it. He caused himself to be made actual king in Egypt and in Babylonia, but the rest of the Empire he divided into twenty provinces, each called a " satrapy,” each province being under a governor called a "satrap,” who was appointed by the Great King, as the Persian sovereign came to be called. These arrangements, while similar to those of the Chaldean, Assyrian, and Egyptian empires, were a further development of provincial rule under governors. Indeed the Persian Empire was the first example of a fully organized group of subject peoples and nations ruled as provinces, an arrangement which we may call a provincial .system. The subject nations, or provinces under Persian rule, enjoyed a good deal of independence in local matters of their
267. Organization of the Persian Empire by Darius
268. The Persian provincial systerti
i86
Ancient Times
269. Lands, tribute, and coinage
270. Darius turns to the sea
own government, as long as they paid regular tribute and furnished recruits for the Great King’s army. To discover and prevent local rebellion, the revolt of a governor or people against the Persian government, the Great King kept officials residing in each subject state, who were called, after an old Egyptian custom, the King’s Ears or the King’s Eyes, and whose duty was to report all insubordination. All this was an advance upon the rule of the Assyrian Empire.
Farm lands were divided into vast domains held by powerful nobles and other great landowners. There were few small land-owning farmers. All paid dues to help make up the tribute collected from all parts of the Empire. In the East it was paid, as of old, in produce (§§ 75 and 189). In the West, chiefly Lydia and the Greek settlements in western Asia Minor (§ 375), the coinage of metal was common by 600 B.C. (§ 458), and there this tribute was paid in coined money. The Eastern countries — Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia herself — were not quick to adopt this new convenience. Darius, however, began the coinage of gold and permitted his satraps to coin silver. The rate was about thirteen to one, that is to say, gold was worth about thirteen times as much as silver. Thus the great commercial convenience of coined money issued by the State began to come into the Orient during the Persian period.
Nothing shows the wise statesmanship of Darius the Great more clearly than his remarkable efforts to make Persia a great sea power. It was no easy task for an inland nation of shepherds and peasants like the Persians, separated from the water by desert shores, to gain control of the sea. The endeavors of Darius in this direction may be compared with the policy of the German emperor in building up a strong navy. Unlike Emperor William, however, Darius was obliged to employ foreign navigators. He dispatched a skillful Mediterranean sailor named Scylax to explore the course of the great Indus River in India. Then Darius ordered him to sail plong the coast of Asia from the mouth of the Indus westward
The Medo-Persian Empire
18 7
to the Isthmus of Suez. Scylax was the first Western sailor known to have sailed along this south coast of Asia, so little known at that time (about 500 B.C.).
At Suez, Darius restored the ancient but long filled-up canal of the Egyptians connecting the Nile with the Red Sea (§ 104). Along the ancient route of this canal havQ been found fragments of great stone tablets erected by Darius (see map, p. 36). They bear an account of the restoration of the canal, in which we find the words of Darius: " I commanded to dig this canal, from the stream flowing in Egypt, called the Nile, to the sea [Red Sea] which stretches from Persia. Then this canal was dug as I commanded, and ships sailed from Egypt through this canal to Persia, according to my will.” Darius evidently cherished what proved to be a vain hope, that the south’coast of Persia might come to share in the now growing commerce between India and the Mediterranean world. As Persia was now lacking in small landowners, so also was she lacking in small and enterprising merchants, who might have become great promoters of commerce.
Unlike the Assyrians, Darius treated the Phoenician cities with kindness, and succeeded in organizing a great Phoenician war fleet. We shall find that Darius’ son Xerxes could depend upon many hundreds of ships for warfare and transportation in the eastern Mediterranean (§§ 501, 5x0). Thus 'the> more enlightened Persian kings accomplished what the Assyrian emperors never achieved, and Persia “became the first great sea power in Asia.
The Persian emperors maintained communication by excellent roads from end to end of the vast Empire. On a smaller scale these roads, must have done for the Persian Empire what railroads do for us. Royal messengers maintained a much more complete postal system than had already been introduced under the Assyrian Empire (§ 218). These messengers were surprisingly swift, although merchandise required about as much time^ to go from Susa to the yEgean Sea as we now need for going
271. Darius links East, and West by a Suez canal
272. Persia becomes the earliest great sea power in Asia
273. System of roads £nd communication
i88
Ancient Times
, around the world. A good example of the effect of these roads was the incoming of the domestic fowl, which we commonly call the chicken. Its home was in India and it was unknown
Fig. i i 8. Tombs of the Earlier Kings of Persia a Few Miles from the Ruins of Persepolis
After Cyrus and his son Cambyses had passed away, the Persian kings, beginning with Darius, excavated their tombs in the face of this cliff, about six miles from their palaces at Persepolis (Fig. 118). - Here then are the tombs of Darius. I (the Great) (third from the left), Xerxes (at the far end), Darius II and Artaxerxes I (first and second from the left). Of the first six great kings of Persia we thus have the tombs of five (tomb of Cyrus, Fig. 115), leaving out Cambyses the conqueror of Egypt, whose tomb has never been found. The remaining three royal tombs belonging to the last three kings of the Achasmenian line (the line of Darius) (Artaxerxes II, Artaxerxes III, and Darius III) are cut in the cliff behind the palaces of Persepolis (Fig. 116). The square above the colonnade in each tomb front shows a sculptured picture of the king worshiping Ahuramazda before a fire altar. All of these tombs were broken open and robbed in ancient times, like the tomb of Cyrus (Fig. 115). Inside, in niches, are the massive stone coffins in which Darius, Xerxes, and the other kings and their families were buried
in the Mediterranean until Persian communications brought it from India to the ^Egean Sea. Thus the Persians brought to Europe the barnyard fowl so familiar to us.
Map II ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 7tli Century B.C.
j Assyrian Empire
EZ1 Greeks
Sequence Map showing Expansion of the Oriental Empires for a Thousand Years (from about 1500 to 500 B.C.). In Four Parts. (See Map III and Map IV following)
Map III 5IEDIAN AND CHAIiDEAN EMPIRES Gtli Century B.C.
ir~~i Median Empire II I Chaldean Empire [ | Lydian 'Empire | I Other peoples independent I-1 of Medes and Chaldeans
7' Bit
v*
Second.
Sequence Map showing Expansion of the Oriental Empires for a Thousand Years (from about 1500 to 500 B.C.). In Four Parts. (See Map I and Map II preceding)
The ancient' Elamitd ^agros Mountains
(see map, p. 100), was tft ..^csraence and capital (Fig. 204). The mild air of the Babylonian plain, however, attracted the sovereign during the colder months, when he went to dwell in the palaces of the vanished Chaldean Empire at Babylon. In spite of its remoteness the earlier kings had made an effort to live in their old Persian home. Cyrus built a splendid palace near the battlefield where he had defeated the Medes at Pasargadae (see map, p. 436), and Darius also established a magnificent residence at Persepolis (Fig. 116), some forty miles south of the palace of Cyrus. Near the ruins of these buildings the tombs of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and the other Persian emperors still stand in their native Persia (Fig. 118).
The Persian architects had to learn architecture from the old oriental peoples now subject to Persia. The enormous terraces (Fig. 116) on which the Persian palaces stood were imitated from Babylonia. The winged bulls at the palace gates (Fig. 116) were copied from those of Assyria and the West. The vast colonnades (Fig. 116) stretching along the front and filling the enormous halls — the earliest colonnades of Asia — had grown up over two thousand years earlier on the Nile (Fig. 56). Likewise the gorgeously colored palace walls of enameled brick (Figs. 113, 204, and Plate II, p. 164) reached Persia from the Nile by the way of Assyria and the West.1 Thus the great civilizations which made up the Empire were merged together in the life of the Persian Empire.
Section 25. Persian Documents and the Decipherment of Cuneiform
The adoption by the Persians of the mixed oriental civilization which they found on the Fertile Crescent has been of the greatest scientific importance. It was the documents
1 It is very noticeable that the Persian architects did not adopt the arch from Babylonia. On the contrary, each door in the palace of Darius (Fig- 204) is topped with a horizontal block of stone, copied from Egyptian doors.
274* Capital and royal residences
275. Architecture
276. The value and place of Persian documents in the decipherment of cuneiform
Ancient Times
277. Cuneiform writing ceases; Babylonia and Assyria are forgotten
278. Grote-fend recovers the sounds of the first Persian signs (1802)
279. Rawlin-son’s decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform
(is47)
produced by the Persians when they learned to write cuneiform there, which first enabled us to read the cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia (§ 160). Without the documents left us by the Persians, modern scholars would still be unable to read the thousands of clay tablets which we discussed in our study of Babylonia and Assyria (Figs. 79, 92, 109, and 126).
^ When Aramaic had displaced the Babylonian and Assyrian languages (§ 265), there came a time when no one wrote any more clay tablets or other records in the ancient wedge-writiRg.1 Nearly two thousand years ago the last man who could read a cuneiform tablet had passed away. The history of Babylonia and Assyria was consequently lost under the city mounds (§§ 158-161) along the Tigris and Euphrates.
Before 1800 a.d. travelers in Persia had brought back to Europe a number of copies of cuneiform inscriptions which they had found engraved on the ruined walls of the Persian palaces (Fig. 116). These inscriptions were observed to contain a very limited number of cuneiform signs, and hence there seemed to be some possibility of learning their meaning. In 1802 a German schoolmaster at Gottingen named Grotefend identified and read the names of Darius and Xerxes and some other words and names in these Persian inscriptions. He was finally able to read two short Persian inscriptions in cuneiform (Fig. 119). These were the first Persian inscriptions to be read in modem times, but they were so short that they were far from including all the cuneiform signs in the Persian alphabet, and Persian cuneiform writing was still by no means - deciphered.
Other scholars, especially in Germany, were able to discover the sounds of nearly all the other signs in the Persian cuneiform alphabet. Meantime a gifted British officer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, while he was stationed in Persia,, had succeeded ,ln collecting far more Persian inscriptions than were available in Europe. Among them was the great Beh'istun inscription
1 The latest cuneiform document known is dated 68 B.C. : ■
lTT*W Sf Ur- 5 \2«T( <£ m ^ KT n" ftr 3>t£ H Bf vK<H « fn if Id M K- <5«tt « m '
tt to ?f ft- f» ►< Hr -w \6«tr << ffi k- kt ?T ft- -s
^ <K K- <v g< fir -H -ysfr ?f << m jf <c< Km \9f< <ff m v10<K «H in -M >< n << m T<- \ii <K ft- -W -T»T ^PrM fh ET -M ^tii <i( <{i -< <n <<
# -l«tT << ft- m l\ in *^«yr << m Tf Kt n K- H H <*«n << m ft- Kt ?f ft- v5«tt << m ft- kmi“ ft- m :<nr -M \6n w £T ft- »T> <r<<jj <7«tt % hi K- Kt T?~ Kr<r< K- ffl \8n <i? u n9<K «*t m -M ?Cm << if K-' i*7
Fig. 119. The Two Old Persian Inscriptions which were
FIRST DECIPHERED AND READ (§ 278)
The Persian scribes separated the words in their inscriptions by inserting an oblique wedge between all words. The above Arabic numbers are here added in order to be able to refer to the different words. It will be seen that these numbers (except 7) always stand where the oblique wedge shows a. new word begins. Grotefend (§ 278) noticed that the same word is repeated a number of times in each of these inscriptions. In E compare Nos. 4, S, and 6, and they will be recognized as the_ same word. In .Fit occurs also four times (Nos. 2,4,5, and 7). As these inscriptions were found above the figures of Persian kings, Grotefend therefore suspected that this frequent word must be the Persian word for "king.” Moreover, as it occurs in both inscriptions as No. 2, the preceding word (No. /) would probably be the name of the king, the two words being arranged thus : " Darius [the] king.” Grotefend then found that the words for the titles of the kings of Persia were known in later Persian documents. Guided by the known titles, he attempted the following guess as to the arrangement and meaning of the words: 1 '2 3 4
unknown name of [the] king [the] great king a Persian king
5 6 7 u 8
of kings, of king unknown name of the son
- a Persian king
etc. (6, 7, and 8 meaning "the son of King So-and-so”). He next experimented with the known names of the kings of Persia, and judging from their length, he found that the probable name for.No. / in E was " Darius,”'and for No. / in F was "Xerxes.” The result may be seen in Fig- 120 191
192
Ancient Times
280. Value of Persian cuneiform in deciphering Babylonian cuneiform
of Darius (Fig* 117)* *$47 Rawlinson published a complete
alphabet of the Old Persian cuneiform, containing thirty-nine
phonetic signs. Along with this alphabet he published also a
complete translaKh sha - y a r sha a
«TT x Tf- fff ET % TTT
Fig. 120. The Name of Xerxes in Old Persian Cuneiform
This is the first word in Fig. 119, supposed by Grotefend to be " Xerxes.” Now, just as our " Charles ” is an imperfect form of the ancient name "Carolus,” so the name we call " Xerxes ” waspronouncedbythe old Persians Khshayarsha. The above seven signs therefore should be read: Kh-sha-y-a-r-sha-a. Grotefend in this way learned the sounds for which these signs stood. Now some of these signs appear in the word Grotefend thought was " king ” in Persian. Hence it was now possible for Grotefend to see if he could find out how to pronounce the ancient Persian word for " king.” And the reader can do the same. Let him copy on a slip of paper the first three signs in the word supposedly meaning "king”; for example, use word 2 in Fig. 119. Now take these three signs and compare them with the signs in "Xerxes” (Fig. 120). The student will find that the three signs he has copied are the same as the first, second, and seventh signs in the word "Xerxes” (Fig. 120). Let us write down in a row the sounds of these three signs (first, second, and seventh), and we find we have Kh-sha-a. The ancient Persian word for " king ” must have begun with the sounds Kh-sha-a. When we compare this with " shah,” the title of the present king of Persia, it is evident that Grotefend was on the right road to decipher Old Persian cuneiform
tion of the Persian portion of the long Behistun inscription^ in Fig. 117). This showed that he had completed the decipherment of the Old Persian cuneiform.— a feat all the more remarkable on the part of Rawlinson because he worked in the Orient, almost entirely in ignorance of parallel work by scholars in Europe.
Scholars were. now able for the first time to read Old Persian inscriptions, and much valuable information was gained, especially from a study of the great
Behistun monument (Fig. 117). But the number of Persian inscriptions surviving is very small. 1 he chief value of the ability to read ancient Persian cuneiform records lay in the fact that this
The Medo-Persian Empire
193
Persian writing might form a bridge leading over to an understanding'of ancient Babylonian cuneiform.
Scholars had early discovered that the inscription C on the 281. Dis-Behistun monument was written with the same cuneiform signs on7of thf which were also observable on many of the older clay tablets ®ehi?tun
/-rp- o j \ 1 inscriptions
(rigs. 00 and 92j and stone monuments found in Babylonia, was in the
Meantime the museums of London and Paris were receiving -guTge'and great sculptured slabs of alabaster (Figs. 101, 105, and 106) ^eof38 from Nineveh and the palace of Sargon (Fig. 104), bearing Babyi°n>a many inscriptions, all in the language and writing of inscription ^
C on the Behistun monument (Fig. 117). Scholars therefore perceived that if they could decipher inscription C at Behistun, they would be able to read all the ancient documents of Babylonia and Assyria, reaching back to a far greater age than the few surviving Persian inscriptions.
Every indication led to the conclusion that inscription C at 282. Behis-Behistun was a Babylonian translation of the Persian portion, men™the" already translated by Rawlinson. The Behistun monument might therefore become the Rosetta Stone of Western Asia, Western Asia and enable scholars to read the ancient Babylonian language, as the Rosetta Stone had enabled them to read the ancient Egyptian language. We can diagram this situation thus:
Behistun Monument Containing:
1. Babylonian cuneiform inscription to be deciphered by scholars by comparison with'
2. The Persian translation understood by scholars (since Rawlin-son’s translation, § 279)
%
Many scholars attacked the problem, but they found it far 283. Rawlin-more difficult than the decipherment of the Persian had been; dpherment for the Persian cuneiform had contained only forty signs, while the °jg®*ylon‘an Babylonian was found to use over five hundred (see § 209).
Rosetta Stone Containing:
1. Egyptian inscription deciphered by scholars by comparison with
2. The Greek translation understood by scholars
194
Ancient Times
284. The
modern science of Assyriology
285. Decline of Persia
286. Character of the Persian kings and their rule
It was again Rawlinson, however, who accomplished the task. Iri 1850 he published his results. They were followed the next year by a full translation of the Babylonian portion of the Behistun inscription.
The city-mounds of Babylonia and Assyria at once began to speak and to tell us, piece by piece, the three great chapters of history along the Two Rivers (Sections 14-20) — something over twenty-five hundred years of the story of man in Western Asia, of which the world before had been entirely ignorant. A group of scholars arose who devoted themselves to the study of the vast body of cuneiform documents on clay and stone which was then coming and still continues to come from the ruined cities of Assyria and Babylonia (Fig. 84). We call such scholars Assyriologists. Thus it happened that we owe to documents left us by the Persian kings the creation of a new and wonderful branch of knowledge and the recovery of the ancient history of Western Asia.
Section 26. The Results of Persian Rule and its Religious Influence
For the oriental world as a whole, Persian rule meant about two hundred years of peaceful prosperity (ending about 333 .B.C.). The Persian kings, however, as time went on, were no longer as strong and skillful as Cyrus and Darius. They loved luxury and ease and left much of the task of ruling to their governors and officials. This meant corrupt and ineffective government; the result was weakness and decline.
The later world, especially the Greeks, often represented the Persian rulers as cruel and barbarous oriental tyrants. This unfavorable opinion is* not wholly justified. The Persian emperors felt a deep sense, of obligation to give just government to the nations of the earth. Darius the Great in the Behistun Inscription (Fig. 117) says: "On this account Ahu-ramazda brought me help, . . . because I was not wicked,
The Medo-Persian Empire
nor was I a liar, nor was I a tyrant, neither I nor any of my line. I have ruled according to righteousness.” There can be no doubt that the Persian Empire, the largest the ancient world had thus far seen, enjoyed' a government far more just and humane than any that had preceded it in the East.
Many such statements as that of Darius just quoted show that the Persian rulers were devoted followers of Zoroaster’s teaching. Their power carried this noble faith throughout Western Asia and especially into Asia Minor. Here Mithras, regarded by Zoroaster as a helper of Ahuramazda (§ 253), appeared as a hero of light, and finally as a Sun-god, who gradually outshone Ahuramazda himself. From Asia Minor Mithras passed into Europe, and, as we shall see, the faith in the mighty Persian god spread far and wide through the Roman Empire, to become a dangerous competitor of Christianity (§ 1064).
In matters of religion, as in many other things, the Persian Empire completed the breakdown of national boundaries and the beginning of a long period when the leading religions of the East were called upon to compete in a great contest for the mastery among all the nations. The moSt important of the religions which thus found themselves thrown into a world struggle for chief place under the dominion of Persia was the religion of the Hebrews. While we leave the imperial family of Persia to suffer that slow decline which always besets a long royal line in the Orient, we may glance briefly at the little Hebrew kingdom among the Persian vassals in the West, which was destined to influence the history of man more profoundly than any of the great empires of the early world.
QUESTIONS
Section 21. What great race inhabited the northern grasslands? How did their migrations finally distribute them? What rival line confronted them on the south ? Describe the life and dispersion of the Indo-European parent people, Where are their descendants now ?
287. Spread of Persian religion
288. Far-reaching competition among oriental religions
196
Ancient Times
Section 22. From whom did the Aryan people come forth?-What became of them when they left their first home ? What great tribes of the Aryans came toward the Fertile Crescent? Who was their great prophet, and what did he tgach ? When did he probably live?
Section 23. What can you say of the rise and conquests of Cyrus? What race did he subdue on the Fertile Crescent? What race thus became the leaders ? What was the extent of the Persian Empire ? How long had it taken to conquer it ? Give dates.
Section 24. Did the Persians possess a civilization like those which they found in Babylonia and Egypt? Describe the organization of the Empire by Darius, and his rule. What was the land system like? What can you say about his plans for commerce by sea and land? Where was the capital? How did Persian architecture arise ? Give examples.
Section 25. Can you write the three signs with which the ancient Persians began their word for " king ”? What is the modern Persian word for '' king ” ? What monument became the Rosetta Stone of Western Asia? Can you explain how? What was the result?
Section 26. How long did the Persian Empire last ? Give dates. What can you say about the character of the Persian kings ? What was happening among the religions of the East? What great religion was involved in this struggle ?
Note. The sketch below shows the ruins of Persepolis (cf. Fig. 116).
_3£_
- PALESTINE
The Ijand of the Hebrews
_SCALE OF MILES_
5 i'o 20 30 io 5b So 1o lb
Kingdoms of Israel and Judah Philistines Phoenicians Desert
CHAPTER VII
%
THE HEBREWS AND THE DECLINE OF THE ORIENT
Section 27. Palestine and the Predecessors of the Hebrews there
The home of the Hebrews was on the west end of the Fertile Crescent (§ 132), in a land now called Palestine.1 It is the region lying along the southeast corner of the Mediterranean — a narrow strip between desert and sea; for while the sea limits it on the west, the wastes of the desert-bay (§ 133) sweep northward, forming the eastern boundary of Palestine (see map, p. 100). It was about one hundred and fifty miles long, and less than ten thousand square miles are included within these limits; that is, Palestine was somewhat larger than the state of Vermont.
Much of this area is unproductive, for the desert intrudes upon southern Palestine and rolls northward in gaunt and arid limestone hills, even surrounding Jerusalem (Fig. 127). The valleys of northern Palestine, however, are rich and
Note. The above headpiece shows us a caravan of Canaanites trading in Egypt about 1900 B.C. as they appeared on the estate of a feudal baron in Egypt (§ 99). The Egyptian noble had this picture of them painted with others in his tomb (Fig; 57), where it still is. Observe the shoes, sandals, and gay woolen clothing, the costume of the Palestinian towns, worn by these Canaanites; observe also the metal weapons which they carry. The manufacture of these things created industries which had begun to flourish among the towns in Syria and Palestine by this’ time. Notice also the type of face, with the prominent nose, which shows that Hittite blood was already mixed with the Semitic blood of these early dwellers in Palestine (Fig. 146).
1 On the origin of the name see § 379.
197
289. Situation and extent of Palestine, the home of the H ebrews
290. Character of Palestine
igg Ancient Times
productive. The entire land is without summer rains and is dependent upon a rainy season (the winter) for moisture. There is no opportunity for irrigation, and the harvest is therefore scantier than in lands enjoying summer rains. Only
Fig. 121. Ancient Egyptian Painting of a Brickyard with ' Asiatic Captives engaged in Brickmaking (Fifteenth Century b.c.)
The Hebrew slaves working in the Egyptian brickyards (see Exod. i, 14 and v, 6-19) must have looked like this when Moses led them forth into Asia (§ 293). At the left below, the soft clay is being mixed in two piles; one laborer helps load a basket of clay on the shoulder of -another, who carries it to the brick-molder, at the right above. Here a laborer empties the clay from his basket, while the molder before him fills with clay an oblong box, which is the mold. He has already finished three bricks. At the left above, a molder spreads out the soft bricks with spaces between for the circulation of air to make them dry quickly in the sun. The overseer, staff in hand, sits in the upper right-hand corner, and below him we see a workman carrying away the dried bricks, hanging from a yoke on his shoulders. Thus were made the bricks used for thousands of years for the buildings forming so large a part of the cities of the ancient world, from the • Orient to Athens and Rome (§ 548)
the northern end of the Palestinian coast has any harbors (Fig. 159), but these were early seized by the Phoenicians (Sections 39-40). Palestine thus remained cut off from the sea. In natural resources it was too poor (Fig. 129) ever to develop prosperity or political power like its great civilized neighbors on the Nile and Euphrates or in Syria and Phoenicia.
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 199
Here at the west end of the Fertile Crescent,, as at the east end, the Semitic nomads from the desert-bay (reread Section 13) mingled with the dwellers in the northern mountains. The Northerners, chiefly Hittites from Asia Minor (§§ 351-360), left their mark on the Semites of Palestine. The prominent aquiline nose, still considered to be the mark of the Semite, especially of the Jew, was really a feature belonging to the (non-Semitic) Hittites, who intermarried with the people of Palestine and gave them this Hittite type of face (see Fig. 146). Strange faces from many a foreign clime therefore crowded the market places of Palestine, amid a babel of various dialects. Here the rich jewelry, bronze dishes, and ivoiy furniture of the Nile craftsmen (Fig. 73) mingled with the pottery of the ^Egean Islands (Fig. 136), the red earthenware of the Hittites, or the gay woolens of Babylonia. The donkeys (headpiece, p. 197), which lifted their complaining voices above the hubbub of the market, had grazed along the shores of both Nile and Euphrates, and their masters had trafficked beneath the Babylonian temple towers (Fig. 104) as well as under the shadow of the Theban obelisks (Fig. 65). We recall how traffic with Babylonia had taught these Western Semites to write the cuneiform hand (§ 187). Palestine was the entrance to the bridge between Asia and Africa — a. middle ground where the civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia, of Phoenicia, the yEgean, and Asia Minor, all represented by their wares, met and commingled as they did nowhere else in the early Orient.
Just as the merchandise of the surrounding nations met in peaceful competition in the markets of Palestine, so the armies of these nations also met there in battle. The situation of Palestine, between its powerful neighbors on the Nile and on the Euphrates, made it the battleground where these great nations fought for many centuries (§ 213). Over and over again unhappy Palestine went through the experience of little Belgium in the conflict between Germany and France in 1914. Egypt held Palestine for many centuries (§ 108). Later we recall
291. Mixture of races and civilization in Palestine before the Hebrews possessed it; Babylonian writing
1
1
1
292. Palestine, the great battleground of the early Orient
200
Ancient Times
203. The
Hebrew invasion of Palestine (about 14001200 B.C.)
how Assyria conquered it (§§ 212-214). Chaldea also held it (§ 234), and we finally found it in the power of Persia (§ 263). When, therefore, the Hebrews originally took possession of the land, there was little prospect that they would ever long enjoy freedom from foreign oppression.
Section 28. The Settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine and the United Hebrew Kingdom
The, Hebrew's were all originally men of the Arabian desert, wandering with their flocks and herds and slowly drifting over
into their final home in Palestine (read §§133141). For two centuries (about ,1400 to 1200 B.C.) their movement from the desert into Palestine continued. Another group of their tribes had been slaves in Egypt, where they had suffered much hardship (Figs. 121 and 122) under a cruel Pharaoh (Fig. 123). They were successfully led out of Egypt by their heroic leader Moses, a great national hero whose achievements they never forgot. On entering Palestine the Hebrews found the Ca-naanites (§ 141) already dwelling there in flourishing towns protected by massive walls (Figs. 124 and 125). The Hebrews
Fig. 122. Brick Storehouse Rooms
THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN BUILT BY HEBREW Slaves in Egypt (Thirteenth Century b.c.)
This storehouse is in the city of Pithom on the east of the Nile Delta. It was built by Ramses II, whose face we see in Fig. 123. The making of the brick for such buildings may be seen in Fig. 121
' The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 201
were able to capture only the weaker Canaanite towns (Fig. 126). As the rough Hebrew shepherds looked across the highlands of north Palestine they beheld their kindred scattered over far-stretching hilltops, with the frowning walls of many a Canaanite stronghold (Fig.
127) rising between them. Even Jerusalem in the Judean highlands (Fig. 127) for centuries defied the assaults of the Hebrew invaders (Fig. 126). ’
Let us remember that these unconquered Canaanite towns now possessed a civilization fifteen hundred years old, with comfortable houses, government, industries, trade, writing, and religion — a civilization which the rude Hebrew shepherds were soon adopting; for they could not avoid intercourse with the unsubdued Canaanite towns, as trade and business threw them together. This mingling with the Canaanites produced the most profound changes in the life of the Hebrews. Most of them left their tents (headpiece, p. 100) and began to build houses like those ..of the Canaanites (Fig. 125) ; they put off the rough sheepskin they had
Fig. 123. Mummy of Ramses II, commonly
THOUGHT TO BE THE PHARAOH WHO ENSLAVED the Hebrews
See §125 for account, of the preservation of the bodies of the kings of Egypt. Ramses II died about 1225 B.C., that is, over thirty-one hundred years ago. He was about ninety years old. It was probably he who treated the Hebrews so cruelly, as told in Exodus v, 6-19 (§ 293)
294. The Hebrews adopt Canaanite civilization an*} acquire Hittite type of face
202
Ancient Times
worn in the desert, and they put on fine Canaanite raiment of gayly colored woven wool (headpiece, p. 197)- After a time, in appearance, occupation, and manner of life the Hebrews were not to be distinguished from the Canaanites among whom they now lived. In short, they had adopted Canaanite civilization, just as newly arrived immigrants among us soon adopt our | clothing and our ways. Indeed, as the Hebrews intermarried with the Canaanites, they received enough Hittite blood to 1 acquire the Hittite type of face (Fig. 146).
295. Differ-1 These changes did not proceed everywhere at the same rate.-and^ustoml The Hebrews in the less fertile South were more attached to Hebrews^ t*ie desert ^e> so ^at manY would not give up the tent
antagonism between North and South
Fig. 124. The Long Mound of the Ancient City of Jericho
The walls of the city and the ruins of the houses (Fig. 125) are buried under the rubbish which makes up this mound. Many of the ancient cities of Palestine are now such mounds as this
and the old freedom of the desert. The wandering life of the nomad shepherd on the Judean hills could still be seen from the walls of Jerusalem. Here, then, were two differing modes of life among the Hebrews: in the fertile North of Palestine we find the settled life of the town and its outlying fields; in the South, on the other hand, the wandering life of the nomad still went on. For centuries this difference formed an important cause of discord among the Hebrews.
Fortunately for the Hebrews, Egypt was now in a state of decline (1100 B.C.) (§ 124) and Assyria had not yet conquered the West (§ 208). But a Mediterranean people called Philistines (headpiece, p. 252, and § 379) had at this time migrated from the island of Crete to the sea plain at the southwest comer of
296. Foundation of the Hebrew nation; Saul, the first king
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 203
Palestine (see map, p. 196). Bynoo b.c. these Philistines fonjied a highly civilized and warlike nation, or group of city-kingdoms. Hard pressed by the Philistines, the Hebrew local leaders, or judges, as they were called, found it hard to'unite their people into a nation. About a generation before the year 1000 B.C.,
Fig. 125. Ruins of the Houses of Ancient Jericho
Only the stone foundations of these houses are preserved. The walls were of sun-baked brick, and the rains of over three thousand y.ears have washed them away; for these houses date from about 1500 B.C., and in them lived the Canaanites, whom the Hebrews found in Palestine (§ 293). Here we find the pottery jars, glass, and dishes of the household ; also things carved of stone, like seals, amulets, and ornaments of metal. The industries of these people were- clearly learned from Egypt (§ 291). Cuneiform tablets of clay found in these ruins sho.w the influence of Babylonian business (§§ 187, and 291)
however, a popular leader named Saul succeeded in gaining for himself the office of king. The new king was a Southerner who 'still loved the old nomad customs; he had np fixed abode and dwelt in a tent. In the fierce struggle to thrust back the Philip tines, Saul was disastrously defeated, and, seeing the rout of his army, he fell upon his own sword and so died (about 1000 B.C.).
204
Ancient Times
2(?j- David (about 1000960 B.C.)
fortress on the steep hill of Jerusalem (Fig. 127), hitherto held by the Canaanites. He therefore gained possession of it and made it his residence. Here he ruled for a time as king of the South, till his valor as a soldier and his victories on all sides won him Fig. 126. Letter of the Egyptian also the support of Oovernor of Jerusalem telling of the more prosperous
the Invasion of Palestine by the xt , r,,
TI ■ . North. The Philis-
Hebrews (Fourteenth Century b.c.)
tines were now beaten
The letter is a clay tablet written in Babylonian cuneiform by the terrified Egyptian
governor, who begs the Pharaoh for help, saying: " The Khabiru [Hebrews] are taking the cities of the king. No ruler remains to the king, my lord; all are lost.” The king of Egypt to whom he wrote thus was Ikhnaton, at a time when the Egyptian Empire in Asia was falling to pieces (§ 122). This letter is one of a group of three hundred such cuneiform letters found in one of the rooms of Ikhnaton’s palace at Tell el-Amarna (or Amama), and called the Amarna Letters, the oldest body of international correspondence in the world. We find in them the earliest mention of the Hebrews (cf. Fig. 92 and see § 187)
In a few years the ability of David, one of Saul’s daring men at arms whom he had unjustly outlawed, won the support of the South. Seeing the importance of possessing a strong castle, the sagacious David selected the ancient"
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 205
off, and David ruled over an extensive Hebrew kingdom. He enjoyed a long and prosperous reign, and his people never forgot his heroic deeds as a warrior nor his skill as a poet and singer.
Fig. 127. Glimpse of the Walls of Jerusalem from the # Low Valley below the Old Canaanite Fortress
The houses on the right of this valley belong to the modern village of Siloam; but on the left we see the high walls of Jerusalem where they pass around the ancient place of the temple. Here above us at the left, looking down several hundred feet into this valley, was the Canaanite fortress captured by David (§ 297), but it long ago fell into ruin and disappeared. The wall we see here is of a much later date. The Canaanite fortress must have looked very much like the castle of David s-northern neighbor, the king of Samal (Fig. 97). (Drawn from photograph by Underwood & Underwood)
David’s son, Solomon, became, like Hammurapi, one of the leading merchants of the East. He trafficked in horses and launched a trading fleet in partnership with Hiram, the Phoenician
298. Solomon and the division of his kingdom (about 930 B.C.)
299. The contrast between the two Hebrew kingdoms
300. The
effect of this contrast upon religion
206 Ancient Times
\
king of Tyre. His wealth enabled him to marry a daughter of the king of Egypt, and he delighted in •oriental luxury and display. He removed the portable tent which the Hebrews had thus far used as a temple, and with the aid of his friend Hiram, who loaned him skilled Phoenician workmen, he built a rich temple of stone in Jerusalem (Fig. 127). Such splendor demanded a great income, and to secure it he weighed down the Hebrews with heavy taxes. The resulting discontent of his subjects was so great that, under Solomon’s son, the Northern tribes withdrew from the nation and set up a king of their own. Thus the Hebrew nation was divided into two kingdoms before it was a century old.
Section 29. The Two Hebrew Kingdoms
There was much hard feeling between the two .Hebrew kingdoms, and sometimes fighting. Israel, as we call the Northern kingdom, was rich and prosperous ; its market places were filled with industry and commerce; its fertile fields produced plentiful crops. Israel_displayed the wealth and success of town life. On the other hand, Tudah- the Southern kingdom, was poor; her land was meager (Fig. 128); besides Jerusalem she had no large towns; many of the people still wandered with their flocks.
These two methods of life came into conflict in many w&ys, but especially in religion. Every old Canaanite town had for centuries its local town god, called its " baal,” or " lord.” The Hebrew townsmen found it very natural to worship the gods of their neighbors, the Canaanite townsmen. They were thus unfaithful to their old Hebrew God Yahveh (or Jehovah).1 To some devout Hebrews, therefore, and especially to those in the South, the Canaanite gods seemed to be the protectors of the wealthy class in the towns, with their luxury and injustice to
1 The Hebrews pronounced the name of their God "Yahveh.” The pronunciation " Jehovah” began less than six hundred years ago and was due to a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of the word " Yahveh.”
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 207
the poor, while Yahveh appeared as the guardian of the simpler shepherd life of the desert, and therefore the protector of the poor and needy..
There was growing reason for such beliefs. Less than a century after the separation of the two kingdoms, Ahab, a king of the North, had had Naboth, one of his subjects, killed in order to seize a vineyard belonging to Naboth, and thus to enlarge
Fig. 128. The Stony and Unproductive Fields of Judah
Judah is largely made up of sterile ridges like this in the background. Note the scantiness of the growing grain in the foreground
his palace gardens. Reports of such wrongs stirred the anger of Elijah, a Hebrew of old nomad habits, who lived in the desert east of the Jordan. Still wearing his desert sheepskin, he -suddenly appeared before Ahab in the ill-gotten vineyard and denounced the king for his seizure of it. Thus this uncouth figure from the' desert proclaimed war between Yahveh and the injustice of town life. Elijah’s followers finally slew not only the entire Northern royal family, but also the priests of
301, Elijah and the violence of the older ideas of Yahveh
208
Ancient Times
302. The
earliest historical writing among the Hebrews (afcout 850 B.C.) ; the Unknown Historian
303. Amos, and the peaceful methods of reformer and prophet
(750 B.C.)
the Canaanite gods (or baals). Such violent methods, however, could not accomplish lasting results. They were the methods of Hebrews who thought of Yahveh only as a war god.
Besides such violent leaders as these, there were already among the Hebrews more peaceable men, who also chafed under the injustice of town life and turned fondly back to the grand old days of their shepherd wanderings,, out on the broad reaches of the desert, where no man " ground the faces of the poor.” It was a gifted Hebrew of this kind who now put together a simple narrative history of the Hebrew forefathers — a glorified picture of their shepherd life. While his original work has perished, much of it still survives in the immortal tales of the Hebrew patriarchs, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Joseph. These tales belong among the noblest literature which has survived to us from the past (see Gen. xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, xxxvii, xxxix-xlvii, 12). They are the earliest example of historical writing in prose which we possess among any people, and their-nameless author, whom we may call fhe Unknown Historian, is the earliest historian whom we have found in the ancient world.1
Another century passed, and about 750 B.C. another dingy figure in sheepskin appeared in the streets of Bethel, where the Northern kingdom had an important temple. It was Amos, a shepherd from the hills of Judah in the south. In the solitudes of his shepherd life Amos had learned to see in Yahveh far more than a war god of the desert. To him Yahveh seemed to be a God of fatherly kindness, not demanding bloody butchery like T:hat practiced by Elijah’s followers (§ 301), but nevertheless a God who rebuked the selfish and oppressive wealthy class in the towns. The simple shepherd could not resist the inner; impulse to journey to the Northern kingdom and proclaim to the luxurious townsmen there the evils of their manner of life.
1 Unfortunately the Hebrews themselves early lost all knowledge of his name and identity, and finally associated the surviving fragments of his work with the
name of Moses.
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 209
We can imagine the surprise of the prosperous Northern 304. Amos Hebrews as they suddenly met this rude shepherd figure clad the corrupt in sheepskin, standing at a street corner addressing a crowd ^^hern*16 of townsmen. He was denouncing their showy clothes, fine kingdom houses, beautiful furniture (Fig. 100), and above all their corrupt lives and hard-heartedness toward' the poor, whose lands they seized for debt and whose labor they gained by enslaving their fellow Hebrews. These things had been unknown in the desert. By such addresses as these Amos, of course, endangered his life, but he thus became the first social reformer in Asia.
We apply the term " prophet ” to such great Hebrew leaders , who pointed out the way toward unselfish living, brotherly ‘ kindness, and a higher type of religion.
While all this had been going on the Hebrews had been 305. The learning to .write, as so many of their nomad predecessors 1 iearn t0 write on the Fertile Crescent had done before them (§§ 167 and 201). They were now abandoning the clay tablet (Fig. 126), and they wrote on papyrus with the Egyptian pen and ink (Fig. 101). They borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenician-and Aramsean merchants (§ 205). There is no doubt that our'earliest Hebrew historian’s admiration for the nomad life (§ 302), although the nomads were without writing, did not prevent him from making use of this new and great convenience of town life — that is, writing. The rolls containing the Unknown Historian’s tales of the patriarchs, or bearing the teachings of such men as Amos, were the first books which the Hebrews produced — their first literature. Such rolls of papyrus were exactly like those which had been in use in Egypt for over two thousand years. The discovery of the household papers of a Hebrew community in Egypt has shown us just how such a page of Hebrew or Aramaic writing looked (Fig. 131). But literature remained the only art the Hebrews/1 possessed. They had no painting, sculpture, or architecture,11 and if they needed these things they borrowed from their great neighbors, Egypt, Phoenicia (§ 398), Damascus, or Assyria.
210
Ancient Times
306. Destruction of the Northern kingdom by Assyria (722 B.C.)
307. Yahveh, the God of Palestine, in conflict with Assur, god of Assyria
308. Isaiah and the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib
Section 30. The Destruction of the Hebrew Kingdoms by Assyria and Chaldea '
While the Hebrews had been deeply stirred by their own conflicts at home, such men as Amos had also perceived and proclaimed the dangers coming from abroad, from beyond the border's of Palestine, especially Assyria. Amos indeed announced the coming destruction of the Northern kingdom by Assyria, because of the evil lives of the people. As Amos had foreseen, Assyria first swept away Damascus (§§ 208 and 212). The kingdom of Israel, thus left exposed, was the next victim, and Samaria, its capital, was captured by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. (§ 213). Many of the unhappy Northern Hebrews were carried away as captives, and the Northern nation, called Israel, was destroyed after having existed for a little over two centuries.
The national hopes of the Hebrews were now centered in the helpless little kingdom of Judah, which struggled on for over a century and- a quarter more, in the midst of a great world conflict, in which Assyria was the unchallenged champion. Thus far thoughtful Hebrews had been accustomed to think of their God as dwelling and ruling in Palestine only. Did he have power also over the vast world arena where all the great nations were fighting ? But if so, was not Assur (Fig. 102), the great god of victorious Assyria, stronger than Yahveh, the God of the Hebrews? And many a despairing Hebrew, as he looked out over the hills of Palestine, wasted by the armies of Assyria (Fig. 129), felt in his heart that Assur, the god of the Assyrians, must indeed be stronger than Yahveh, God of the Hebrews.-
It was in the midst of somber doubts like these, in the years before 700 B.C., that the princely prophet Isaiah, in one great oration after another, addressed the multitudes which filled the streets of Jerusalem. The hosts of Sennacherib were at the gates (Fig. 130), and the terrified throngs in the city were expecting at any moment to hear the thunder of the great
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 211
Assyrian war engines (headpiece, p. 140) battering down the crumbling walls of their city, as they had crushed the walls of Damascus and Samaria. Then the bold words of the dauntless Isaiah lifted them from despair like the triumphant call of a trumpet. He told them that Yahveh ruled a kingdom far larger
Fig. 129. Hebrews paying Tribute to the King of Assyria
•The Assyrian king, Shalmaneser III, stands at the left, followed by two attendants. Before him hovers the winged sun-disk (§ 210 and Fig. 102). His appearance in the middle of the ninth century B.C., campaigning in the West against Damascus (§ 208), so frightened the Hebrews of the Northern kingdom that their king (Jehu) sent gifts to the Assyrian king by an envoy whom we see here bowing down at the king’s feet. Behind the Hebrew envoy are two Assyrian officers who are leading up a line of thirteen Hebrews (not included here) bearing gifts of silver, gold, etc. Although it was over a century before the Assyrian kings succeeded in capturing Damascus (§§ 208, 212, and 213), this incident showed the Hebrews what they might expect. The scene is carved on a black stone shaft set up by the Assyrian king in his palace on the Tigris, where the modern excavators found it. It is now in the British Museum
than Palestine — that He controlled the great world arena, where He, and not Assur, was the triumphant champion. If the Assyrians had wasted and plundered Palestine, it was because they were but the lash in the hands of Yahveh, who was using them as a scourge to punish Judah for its wrongdoing. Isaiah made this all clear to the people by vivid oriental illustrations, calling Assyria the " rod ” of Yahveh’s anger, scourging the Hebrews (Isa. x, 5-15).
212
Ancient Times
309. Destruction of Sennacherib's army and vindication of Isaiah’s teaching
310. Destruction of the Southern kingdom by Chaldea (586 B.C.)
Fig. 130. Sennacherib, King of Assyria, receiving Captive Hebrews
The artist, endeavoring to sketch the stony hills of southern Palestine, has made the surface of the ground look like scales. We see the Assyrian king seated on a .throne, while advancing up the hill is a group of Assyrian soldiers headed by the grand vizier, who stands before the king, announcing the coming of the Hebrew captives. At the left, behind the soldiers, appear three of the captives kneeling on the ground and lifting up their hands to appeal for mercy. The inscription over the vizier’s head reads, " Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, seated himself upon a throne, while the captives of Lachish passed before him.” Lachish was a small town of southern Palestine. Sennacherib captured many such Hebrew towns and carried off over two hundred thousand captives; but even his own records make no claim that he captured Jerusalem (cf. § 309). The scene is engraved on a large slab of alabaster, which with many others adorned the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh
Thus while the people were momentarily expecting the destruction of Jerusalem, Isaiah undauntedly proclaimed a great and glorious future for the Hebrews and speedy disaster for the Assyrians. When at length a pestilence from the marshes of the eastern Nile Delta swept away the army of Sennacherib and saved Jerusalem, it seemed to the Hebrews the destroying angel of Yahveh who had smitten the Assyrian host (see 2 Kings xix, 32-37). Some of the Hebrews then began to see that they must think of Yahveh as ruling a larger world than Palestine.
About a century after the deliverance from Sennacherib they beheld and rejoiced over the
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 213
destruction of Nineveh (606 B.C., § 231), and they fondly hoped that the fall of Assyria meant final deliverance from foreign oppression. But they had only exchanged one foreign lord for another, and Chaldea followed Assyria in control of Palestine (§ 233). Then their unwillingness to submit brought upon the Hebrews of Judah the same fate which their kindred of Israel had suffered (§ 306). In 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean king, destroyed Jerusalem and carried away the people to exile, in Babylonia. The Hebrew nation both North and South was thus wiped out, after having existed about four and a half centuries since the. crowning of Saul.
Section 31. The Hebrews in Exile and their Deliverance by the Persians
Some of the fugitives fled to Egypt. Among them was the melancholy prophet Jeremiah, who had foreseen the coming destruction of Jerusalem with its temple of Yahveh. He strove to teach his people that each must regard his own heart as a temple of Yahveh, which would endure long after His temple in Jerusalem had crashed into ruin. Recent excavation has restored to us the actual papers of a colony of Hebrews in Egypt at Elephantine (see map, p. 36, and Fig. 211). These papers (Fig. 131) show that the exiled Hebrews in Egypt had not yet reached Jeremiah’s ideal of a temple of Yahveh in every human heart; for they had built a temple of their own, in which they carried on the worship of Yahveh..
Similarly, the Hebrew exiles in Babylonia were not yet convinced of the truth of the teaching they had heard from their great leaders the prophets. There were at first only grief and unanswered questionings, of which the echo still reaches us:
By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea we wept,
When we remembered Zion [Jerusalem],
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
311. Jeremiah and a temple of the Hebrews in Egypt
312. Doubts of the exiled Hebrews in Babylonia and the great Unknown Prophet of the exile
313* Monotheism reached by the Hebrews in exile
214 Ancient Times
We hanged up our harps.
How shall we sing Yahveh’s song
In a strange land ? (Psalms 137, 1—4)
Had they not left Yahveh behind in Palestine? And then arose an unknown voice 1 among the Hebrew exiles, and out of centuries of affliction gave them the answer. In a series of triumphant speeches this greatest of the Hebrews declared Yahveh to be the creator and sole God of the universe. He explained to his fellow exiles that suffering and affliction were the best possible training and discipline to prepare a' people for service. He announced therefore that by afflicting them Yahveh was only preparing His suffering people for service to the world and that He would yet restore them and enable them to fulfil a great mission to all men. He greeted the sudden rise of Cyrus the Persian (§ 258) with joy. All kings, he taught, were but instruments in the hands of Yahveh, who through the Persians would overthrow the Chaldeans and return the Hebrews to their land.
Thus had the Hebrew vision of Yahveh slowly grown from the days of their nomad life, when they had seen him only as a fierce tribal war god, having no power beyond the corner of the desert where they lived, until now when- they had come to see that He was a kindly father and a righteous ruler of all the earth. This was monotheism (§ 120), a belief which made Yahveh the sole God. They had reached it only through a long development, which brought them suffering and disaster—a discipline lasting many centuries. Just as the individual to-day, especially a young person, learns from his mistakes, and develops character as he suffers for his own errors, so the suffering Hebrews had outgrown many imperfect ideas. They thus illustrated the words of the greatest of Hebrew teachers, " First the blade, then the
1 This unknown voice was that of a great poet-preacher, a prophet of the exile, whose name has been lost. But his addresses to his fellow exiles are preserved in sixteen chapters imbedded in the Old Testament book now bearing the name of Isaiah (chaps, xl-lv, inclusive). We may call him the Unknown Prophet.
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Fig. 131. Aramaic Letter written by a Hebrew Community in Egypt to the Persian Governor of Palestine in the Fifth Century b.c.
This remarkable letter was discovered in 1907, with many other similar papers, lying in the ruins of the town of Elephantine (Fig. 2 n) in Upper Egypt. Here lived a community of some six or seven hundred Hebrews, some of whom had probably migrated to Egypt before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem (§ 310). They had built a temple to Yahveh (Jehovah) on the banks of the Nile. This letter tells how the jealous Egyptian priests formed a mob, burned the Hebrew temple, and plundered it of its gold and silver vessels. Thereupon the whole Hebrew community sat down in mourning, and for three years they tried in vain to secure permission to rebuild. Then in 407 B.c.'their leaders wrote this letter to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Palestine, begging him to use his influence with the Persian governor of Egypt, to permit them to rebuild their ruined temple. They refer by name to persons in Palestine who are also mentioned in the Old Testament. The letter is written with pen and ink on papyrus, in the Aramaic language (§ 205 and Fig. 101), which was now rapidly displacing Hebrew (§ 207). This writing used the Phoenician letters long before adopted throughout Western Asia (§ 205). This beautifully written sheet of papyrus, about 10 by 13 inches, bearing the same letters which the Hebrews used (§ 3°5)> shows us exactly how a page of their ancient writings in the Old Testament looked. They read the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (§ 305) from pages like this 215
216
Ancient Times
314. Restoration of the exiled Hebrews by the Persian kings
315. Jewish law and Judaism ; the restored Jewish state a church
316. Editing of Hebrew writings: the Prophets and the Psalms
ear, then the full grain in the ear.” 1 By this rich and wonderful experience of the Hebrews in religious progress, the whole world was yet to profit.
When the victorious Cyrus entered Babylon (§ 261) the Hebrew exiles there greeted him as their deliverer. His triumph gave the Hebrews a Persian ruler. With great humanity the Persian kings allowed the exiles to return to their native land. Some had prospered in Babylonia and did not care to return. But at different times enough of them went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city on a very modest scale and to restore the temple.
The authority given by the Persian government to the returned Hebrew leaders enabled them to issue a code of religious law,2 much of which had come down from earlier days. The religion thus organized by the returned Hebrew leaders, we now call Judaism, the religion of the Jews. Under it the old Hebrew kingship was not revived. In its place a High Priest at Jerusalem became the ruler of the Jews. The Jewish state was thus a religious organization, a church with a priest at its head.
The leaders of this church devoted themselves to the study of the ancient writings of their race still surviving in their hands. Many of the old writings had been lost. They arranged and copied the orations and addresses of the prophets, the tales of the Unknown Historian (§ 302), and all the old Hebrew writings they possessed. As time went on, the service of the restored temple required songs, and they produced a remarkable book of a hundred and fifty religious songs, the hymn book of the second temple, known to us as the Book of Psalms. For a long time, indeed for centuries, these various Hebrew books, like the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, and others, circulated in separate rolls, and it did not occur to anyone to put them together to form one book.
1 The words of Jesus; see Mark iv, 28.
2 It consisted of the first five books of the Bible.
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 217
It was not until Christian times that the Jewish leaders put 317. The all these old writings of their fathers together to form one mmtand" book. Printed in Hebrew, as they were originally written, °nUHebrew they form the Bible of the Jews at the present day. These religion Hebrew writings have also become a sacred book of the Christian nations. When translated into English, it is called the Old Testament. It forms to-day the most precious legacy which we have inherited from the older Orient before the coming of Christ (§ 1067). <It tells the story of how a rude shepherd folk issued from the wilds of the Arabian desert, to live in Palestine and to go through experiences there which made them the religious teachers of the civilized world. And we should further remember, that, crowning all their history, there came forth from them in due time the founder of the Christian religion (§ 1067). One of the most important things that we owe to the Persians, therefore, was their restoration of the Hebrews to Palestine. The Persians thus saved and aided in transmitting to us the great legacy from Hebrew life which we have in the Old Testament, and in the life of the Founder of Christianity.
Section 32. Decline of Oriental Leadership ;
Estimate of Oriental Civilization
Persia was the last of the great oriental powers and, as its 318. Decline decline continued after 400 B.C., it gave way to the Greeks,, and end of another Indo-European people who arose not in Asia but in ofst^eIndent Europe, to which we must now go. Before we do so, however, world (fifth
v & to fourth cen-
let us look back over oriental civilization for a moment and turies b.c.)
review what it accomplished in over thirty-five hundred years.
We recall how it passed from the discovery of metal and the
invention of writing, through three great chapters of history *
on the Nile (about 3000 to 1150 B.C.), and three more on
the Two Rivers (thirty-first century to 539 B.C.). When the
six great chapters were ended, the East finally fell under the
2X8
Ancient Times
319. The
achievements of the Orient: inventions
320. The
achievements
of the Orient:
earliest
architecture,
sculpture,
alphabet,
literature,
calendar,
science,
government
S32i. The achievements of the Orient: religion
rule of the incoming Indo-Europeans, led by the Persians (from 539 B.C. on).
What did the Ancient Orient really accomplish for the human race in the course of this long career ? It gave the world the first highly developed practical arts, like metal work, weaving, glassmaking, paper-making, and many other similar industries. To distribute the products of these industries among other peoples and carry on commerce, it built the earliest seagoing ships. It first was able to move great weights and undertake large building enterprises —• large even for us of to-day. The early Orient therefore brought forth a great group of inventions surpassed in importance only by those of the modern world.
The Orient also gave us the earliest architecture in stone masonry, the colonnade, the arch, and the tower or spire. It produced the earliest refined sculpture, from the wonderful portrait figures and colossal statues of Egypt to the exquisite seals of early Babylonia. It gave us writing and the earliest alphabet. In literature it brought forth the earliest known tales in narrative prose, poems, historical works, social discussions, and even a drama. It gave us the calendar we still use. It made a beginning in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. It first produced government on a large scale, whether of a single great nation or of an empire made up of a group of riations.
Finally, in religion the East developed the earliest belief in .a sole God and his fatherly care for all men, and it laid the foundations of a religious life from which came forth the founder of the leading religion of the civilized world to-day. For these things, accomplished—most of them—while Europe was still undeveloped, our debt to the Orient is enormous.
Let us see, however, if there were not some important things which the East had not yet gained. The East had always accepted as a matter of course the rule of a king, and believed that his rule should be kindly and just. It had never occurred to anyone there, that the people should have
The Hebrews and the Decline of the Orient 219
a voice in the government, and something to say about how they should be governed. No one had ever gained the idea of a free citizen, a man feeling what we call patriotism, and under obligations to vote and to share in the government. Liberty as we understand it was unknown, and the rule of the people, which we call "democracy,” was never dreamed of in the Orient. Hence the Jife of the individual man lacked the stimulating responsibilities which come with citizenship. Such responsibilities, — like that of thinking about public questions and then voting, or of serving as a soldier to defend the nation, — these duties quicken the mind and force men to action, and they wtere among the strongest influences in producing great men in Greece and Rome.
Just as the Orientals accepted the rule of kings without question, so they accepted the rule of the gods. It was a tradition which they and their fathers had always accepted. This limited their ideas of the world about them. They thought . that every storm was due to the interference of some god, and that every eclipse must be the angry act of a god or demon. Hence the Orientals made little inquiry into the natural causes of such things. In general, then, they suffered from a lack of freedom of the mind — a kind of intellectual bondage to religion and to old ideas.1 Under these circumstances natural science could not go very far, and religion was much darkened by superstition, while art and literature lacked some of their greatest sources of stimulus and inspiration.
There were, therefore, still boundless things for mankind to do in. government, in thought about the natural world, in gaining deeper views of the wonders and beauties of nature, as well as in art, in literature, and in many other lines. This future progress was to be made in Europe — that Europe
1 Intellectual freedom from tradition was earliest shown by the great Egyptian king Ikhnaton (§§ 118-120) and by the Hebrew prophets (§ 304). Perhaps we could also include Zoroaster; but complete intellectual freedom was first attained by the Greeks.
322. Lack of political freedom, democratic government, and citizenship in the Ancient Orient
323. Lack of freedom of mind from religious tradition in the Ancient Orient
324. Limitations caused by lack of political and intellectual freedom; transition to Europe
220
Ancient Times
which we left at the end of our first chapter in the Late Stone Age. To Europe, therefore, we must now turn, to follow across the eastern Mediterranean the course of rising civilization, as it passed from the Orient to our forefathers in early Europe four to five thousand years ago.
QUESTIONS
Section 27. Describe the situation and character of the land of the Hebrews. What can you say about the character of its civilization? Was it likely to offer a tranquil home? Why?
Section 28. Where was the original home of the Hebrews ? Where did some of them suffer bondage? What was the result of their living among the Canaanites ? Did all the Hebrews adopt the settled life? When did they gain their first king and who was he? Who was their leading enemy ? Describe the reign of David; of Solomon. What happened to the kingdom after Solomon ?
Section 29. What were the relations between the two Hebrew kingdoms? Contrast the two kingdoms. How did this contrast affect religion? What work did Elijah do? Were there more peaceful men of similar opinions? What can you say of the Unknown Historian? Tell the story of Amos. What was the work of a prophet? Whence did the Hebrews learn to write and what were their first books ?
Section 30. What danger threatened the Hebrews from abroad? What happened to the Northern kingdom? Did the Hebrews believe Yahveh to be stronger than Assur? What can you say of the work of Isaiah? Tell about Sennacherib’s campaign against Jerusalem. Describe the destruction of the Southern kingdom.
Section 31. What became of the Hebrews of Judah? What did they think about Yahveh? Who taught them better .and what was his teaching ? Did the Hebrews reach their highest ideas about Yahveh all at once or were such ideas a gradual growth? What did the returned Hebrews accomplish and by what authority ?
Section 32. What were the most important things which the Orient contributed to human life? Did the people there ever have any voice in government? Were there any citizens? What was the attitude of the Orientals toward the gods ? What was the effect upon science? To what region do we now follow the story of early man?
PART III. THE GREEKS CHAPTER VIII
THE DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION AND THE RISE OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
■Section 33. The Dawn of Civilization in Europe
We have already studied the life of earliest man in Europe, where we followed his progress step by step through some fifty thousand years (Sections 1-4). At that point we were obliged to leave him and to pass over from Europe to the Orient, to watch there the birth and growth of civilization, while all Europe remained in the barbarism of the Late Stone Age. Meantime
Note. The above drawing shows us the upper part of a stone vase carved by a Cretan sculptor. The lower part is lost. The scene depicts a procession of Cretan peasants with wooden pitchforks over their shoulders. Among them is a chorus of youths with wide-open mouths, lustily singing a harvest song, doubtless in honor of the great Earth Mother (§ 357), to whom the peasants believed they' owed the fertility of the earth. The music is led by a priest with head shaven after the Egyptian manner, and he carries upraised before his face a sistrum, a musical rattle which came from Egypt. The work is so wonderfully carved that we seem to feel the forward motion of the procession,
221
325. Late Stone Age Europe and its future
222
Ancient Times
326. The wares distributed in Late Stone Age Europe by traders from the 'Mediterranean
327. The oriental source of the European trader’s wares
328. Europe nears of the earliest ships in the faraway Nile
the towns and villages of the Late Stone Age men had stretched far across Europe. The smoke of their settlements rose through the forests and high over the lakes and valleys of Switzerland. Their roofs dotted the plains and nestled in the inlets of the sea, whence they were thickly strewn far up the winding valleys of the rivers into inner Europe. In southeastern Europe' these men had finally reached the dawn of the Age of Metal, about three thousand years before Christ.1
The occasional visits of the traders from the coast settlements along the Mediterranean were welcome events. Such a trader’s wares were eagerly inspected. Some bargained with him for a few decorated jars of pottery, while others preferred glittering blue-glaze beads. Great was the interest, too, when the trader exhibited a few shining beads or neck rings of a strange, heavy, gleaming, reddish substance, so beautiful that the villagers trafficked eagerly for them. Most desired of all, however, was the dagger (Fig. 132) or ax head made of the same unknown substance. Such ax heads, though they were much thinner, did not break like stone axes, and they could be ground to a better edge than the ground stone ax ever gained.
To the communities of inner Europe, the trader brought also vague rumors of the lands from which his wares had come, of great peoples who dwelt beyond the wide waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Whereupon some of the Late Stone Age villagers of Europe perhaps recalled a dim tradition of their fathers that grain and flax, and even cattle and sheep, first came to them from the same wonderlands of the Far East.
With rapt attention and awe-struck faces they listened to the trader’s tales, telling of huge ships (Fig. 41) which made the rude European dugouts (Fig. 14) look like tiny chips. They
1 As we shall see, the Stone Age was only very gradually succeeded by the Copper or Bronze Age. Metal reached southeastern Europe not long after 3000 B.C., but in western and northern Europe it was almost 2000 B.C. before the beginning of the Copper Age, which soon became the Bronze Age.
The Dawn of European Civilization
223
had many oarsmen on each side, and mighty fir trunks were mounted upright in the craft, carrying huge sheets of linen to catch the favoring wind, which thus drove them swiftly from land to land. They came out of the many mouths of the vast river of Egypt, greater than any river in the world, said the trader, and they bore heavy cargoes across the Mediterranean
A B C D
Egypt Italy Jura Mountains Denmark
Fig. 132. Series of Four Dagger Blades of Copper and Bronze, showing Influence from Egypt to Denmark
The lost handles were of wood, bone, or ivory, and the rivet holes for fastening them can still be seen. We see in this series how the early Egyptian form {A) passed from Egypt across Europe to the Scandinavian countries. The later swords of western Europe were simply the old Egyptian dagger elongated
to the islands and coasts of southeastern Europe or neighboring Asia. Thus at the dawn of history, barbarian Europe looked across the Mediterranean to the great civilization of the Nile, as our own North American Indians fixed their wondering eyes on the first Europeans who landed in America, and listened to like strange tales of great and distant peoples.
Slowly Europe learned the use of metal (Fig. 133 and p. 222, footnote). In spite of much progress in craftsmanship and a
224
Ancient Times
329. Backwardness of the continent of Europe after receiving metal (30002000 B.C.)
more civilized life in general, the possession of metal did not enable the peoples of Europe to advance to a high type of civilization. They still remained without writing, without architecture in hewn-stone masonry, and without large sailing ships for commerce.1 The failure to make progress in architecture beyond such rough stone structures as Stonehenge (Fig. 20)
Fig. 133. Chariot made by the Mechanics of Bronze Age
Europe
This chariot shows 11s what good woodwork the Bronze Age craftsmen could do with bronze tools. It is also an evidence of the far-reaching commerce of the Bronze Age; for it was transported across the Mediterranean to Egypt, where it was placed in a cliff-tomb, to be used by some wealthy Egyptian after death. There it has survived in perfect-condition to our day. It is built of elm and ash, with bindings of birch fiber. The birch does not grow south of the Mediterranean, and hence the chariot must have been made on the north of the Mediterranean (§ 329)
is an illustration of this backwardness of western and northern Europe. It clearly proves the failure of Bronze Age Europe to bring forth a high civilization, such as we have found in the Orient. It was naturally in that portion of Europe nearest Egypt that civilization developed most rapidly; najnely, around the ^Egean Sea.
t In this matter the Norsemen were the leaders in northern Europe, and seem to have developed considerable skill in navigation by 1500 B.C.
The Dawn of European Civilization 225
Section 34. The ^Egean World : the Islands
The ALge&n Sea is like a large lake, almost completely encircled by the surrounding lands (see map, p. 252). Around its west and north sides stretches the mainland of Europe, on the east is Asia Minor, while the long Island of Crete on the south lies like a breakwater, shutting off the Mediterranean from the -<Egean Sea. From north to south this sea is at no point more than four hundred miles in length, while its width varies greatly. It is a good deal longer than Lake Michigan, and in places over twice as wide. Its coast is deeply indented with many bays and harbors, and it is so thickly sprinkled with hundreds of islands that it is often possible to sail from one island to another in an hour or two. Indeed it is almost impossible to cross the /Egean without seeing land all the way, and in a number of directions at the same time. Just as Chicago, Milwaukee, and other towns around Lake Michigan are linked together by modern steamboats, so we shall see incoming civilization connecting the shores of the ^Egean by sailing ships. This sea, therefore, with its islands and the fringe of shores around it, formed a region by itself, which we may call the ^Egean world.
It enjoys a mild and sunny climate; for this region of the Mediterranean lies in the belt of rainy winters and dry summers. Here and there, along the bold and broken, but picturesque and beautiful, shores (Plate III, p. 276), river valleys and small plains descend to the water’s edge. Here wheat and barley, grapes and olives, may be cultivated without irrigation. Hence bread, wine, and oil were the chief food, as among most Mediterranean peoples to this day. Wine is their tea and coffee, and oil is their butter. So in the Homeric poems (§§408-411) bread and wine are spoken of as the food of all, even of the children. The wet season clothes the uplands with rich green pastures, where the shepherds may feed the flocks which dot the hillsides far and near. Few regions of the world are
330. The
^Egean Sea and the jEgean world
331. Climate and products of the JEgean world
226
Ancient Times
better suited to be the home of happy and prosperous communities, grateful to the gods for all their plentiful gifts by land and sea.
332. The A map of the Mediterranean (p. 676) shows us that the
Mdksi?ear-d ^Egean world is the region where Europe thrusts forward its
ness to the southernmost and easternmost peninsula (Greece), with its island Orient . . ,
outposts, especially Crete, reaching far out into the oriental waters so early crossed and recrossed by Egyptian ships (§ 77). The map thus shows us why the earliest high civilization on the north side of the Mediterranean appeared on the Island of Crete. At the same time we should notice thkt the vEgean world is touched by Asia, which here throws out its westernmost heights (Asia Minor), so that Asia and Europe face each other across the waters of the JEgean. Asia Minor with its trade routes was a link which connected the JEgean world with the Fertile Crescent.
333. The We see here, then, that the older oriental civilizations con-uiands out- verged upon the JEgean by two routes: first and earliest by Orient^prog S^P across the Mediterranean from Egypt; second by land
ress of these through Asia Minor from the Euphrates world. Thus the
islands and • i /-v • i
backwardness /Egean islands became a bridge connecting the Orient and
land16 mam" Europe. Already in the Late Stone Age the JEgean islands had unavoidably become outposts of the great oriental civilizations which we have found so early on the Nile and the Euphrates. It was on the ^Egean islands and not on the mainland of Europe that the earliest high civilization on the north side of the Mediterranean grew up.
334. The We call the earliest inhabitants of the yEgean world ^geans. Sigean world They were inhabiting this region when civilization dawned there
(about 3000 B.C.), and they continued to live there for many centuries before the race known to us as the Greeks entered the region. These yEgeans, the predecessors of the Greeks in the northern Mediterranean, belonged to a great and gifted white race having no connection with the Greeks. They were, and their descendants still are, widely extended along the
The Dawn of European Civilization 227
northern shores of the Mediterranean.1 We call them the Mediterranean race, but their origin and their relationships with other peoples are as yet little understood. At a time far earlier than any of our written records, they had occupied not only the mainland of Greece and the islands of the JEgezn, but they had also settled on the neighboring shores of Asia Minor.
From the beginning the leader in this island civilization of the ^Egeans was Crete. This large island lies so far out in the Mediterranean that one is almost in doubt whether it belongs to Europe or to Africa (see map, p. 252). At the dawn of civilization " Crete was as much a part of the East ... as Constantinople is to-day.” 2 Even in ancient ships the mariners issuing from the mouths of the Nile and steering northwestward would sight the Cretan mountains in a few days. Thus Crete was the link between Egypt on the south and the JEgean Sea on the north (see map, p. 252).
The little sun-dried-brick villages, forming the Late Stone Age settlements of Crete, received copper from the ships of the Nile by 3000 B.C., as we have seen (§ 326). Somewhat later the Cretan metal workers received, probably from mines in the northern Mediterranean, supplies of copper mixed with tin, giving them the hard mixture we call bronze, which is much harder than copper. Thus began the Bronze Age in Crete after 3000 B.C. For a thousand years afterward their progress was slow, but it gained for them some very important things. While the great pyramids of Egypt were being built, the Cretan craftsmen learned from their Egyptian neighbors the use of the potter’s wheel and the closed oven (Fig. 48). They could then shape and bake much finer clay jars and vases. By copying Egyptian stone vessels they learned also to hollow out hard varieties of stone and to make beautifully wrought stone vases, bowls, and jars (Fig. 134). For some time the Cretans had been
1 It has been thought that this race had its home in North Africa and that they spread entirely around the Mediterranean. The Egyptians and Semites
may be branches of it. ^ Burrows, The Discoveries iti Crete.
335. Crete the link between the /Egean and the Nile
336. Rise of Cretan civilization under Egyptian influence (30002000 B.C.)
337- Rise of the sea-kings of Crete (2000 B.C.)
228 Ancient Times
employing rude picture records like Figs. 26 and 32. Under the influence of Egypt these picture signs now gradually developed into real phonetic writing (Figs. 170 and 171), the earliest writing in the ^Egean world (about 2000 B.C.).
By 2000 B.C. the Cretans had become a highly civilizcd people. Near the coast, for convenient access to ships, were
Egypt Crete
Fig. 134. Early Stone Vases of Crete and the Egyptian Originals from which they were copied
The earlier vases from Egypt (on the left) compared with those of Crete (on the right) show that the Cretan craftsmen copied the Egyptian forms (§ 336) in the latter part of the Pyramid Age (about 2700-2600 B.C.)
the manufacturing towns, with thriving industries in pottery and metal work, enabling them to trade with other peoples. Farther inland the green valleys of the island must have been filled with prosperous villages cultivating their fields of grain and pasturing their flocks. At Cnossus, not far from the middle of the northern coast (see map, p. 254), there grew up a kingdom which may finally have included a large part of the island. The
The Dawn of European Civilization
229
Late Stone Age town at Cnossus had long since fallen to ruin and been forgotten. Over a deep layer of its rubbish a line of splendid Cretan kings now built a fine palace arranged in the Egyptian manner, with a large cluster of rooms around a central court. Farther inland toward the south shore arose another palace at Phsestus, perhaps another residence of the same royal family, or the capital of a second kingdom.
Egyptian Cretan Egyptian Cretan
Fig. 135. Cretan Hieroglyphs and the Egyptian Signs
FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN. (AFTER SlR ARTHUR EvANS)
These examples show us in the first column the Egyptian originals from which the Cretan hieroglyphic signs shown in the second column were taken (see § 336)
These palaces were not fortified castles, for neither they nor 338. Power the towns connected with them possessed any protecting walls, kings6IT But the Cretan kings were not without means of defense. They Crete already had their palace armories, where brazen armor and weapons were stored. Hundreds of bronze arrowheads, with the charred shafts of the arrows, along with written lists of weapons and armor and chariots, have been found still lying in the ruins of the armory rooms in the palace at Cnossus (§ 340).
The troops who used these weapons were of course not lacking.
Moreover, the Cretan kings were also learning to use ships in
Sign of Life
Palace Tower
Libation Vase
Bronze Adze
230
Ancient Times
339. Expansion of Cretan commerce and industry
340. Development of Cretan linear writing and records
warfare, and it has become a modem habit to call them the " sea-kings of Crete.” 1
Cretan industries henceforth flourished as never before. The potters of Cnossus began to produce exquisite cups as thin and delicate as modem porcelain teacups. These and their pottery jars and vases they painted in bright colors with decorative' designs, which made them the most beautiful ware to be had in the East (Fig. 136, A). Such ware was in demand in the houses of the rich as far away as the Nile, just as fine French table porcelain is widely sold outside of France at the present day. The new many-colored Cretan vases were so highly prized by the Egyptian nobles of the Feudal Age that they even placed them in their tombs for use in the next world. In these Egyptian tombs modern excavators have recovered them, to tell us the story of the wide popularity of Cretan industrial art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries b. c. Egyptian ships, common in the eastern Mediterranean since the thirtieth century B.C., must have been frequent visitors in the Cretan harbors. At the same time the prevailing north wind of summer easily carried the galleys which the Cretans had learned to build, across to the mouths of the Nile. There were many things in Egypt which the Cretans needed: Hence commerce between Crete and the Nile was constant (see map, p. 252).
Cretan business now required much greater speed and convenience in writing than was possible in ufeing the old picture signs (Fig. 135). These pictures were therefore much abbreviated and reduced to simpler forms, each picture consisting of only a few lines. This more rapid hand, called linear writing (Fig- *37)> was scratched on clay tablets. The chests of arms and weapons in the palace armory had each a clay-tablet label hanging in front of it. Great numbers of clay tablets stored in
t The sea power of the Cretans has been much exaggerated by recent writers. One of the old Cretan sea kings, according to later tradition, was named Minos. For this reason early Cretan civilization has been called Minoan, and this is now the most common term applied to it. We use the term " jEgean ”; for the term " Mycensean." see § 347.
A ' B
Fig. 136. Two Cretan Vases showing Progress in the Art of Decoration
The first vase (A) is an example of the earlier pottery, painted on a dark background with rich designs in " white, orange, crimson, red and yellow.” The potters who made such vases were, together with the seal-cutters, the first really gifted decorative artists to arise in Crete. They flourished from 2000 B.C. onward, in the days of the first palace of Cnossus (§ 337). We should notice that their designs do not picture carefully anything in nature, like flowers or animals (even though a hint of a lotus flower appears in the angle of the spiral); but the figures are almost purely imaginative and drawn from Egyptian art. The second vase (B), however (some five hundred years later than the first), shows how the artists ‘ of the Grand Age had learned from Egyptian decorative art to take their decorative figures from the natural world, for we see that the design consists chiefly of Egyptian lotus flowers (§ 341). Such designs were no longer in many colors; on this jar, indeed, they are molded in relief. This jar {B) is nearly 4 feet high and much larger then the first example {A). Stone and metal vases of the Grand Age were sometimes superbly decorated with carved bands of human figures in action. See the fine examples of this style in Fig. 140, and the headpiece, p. 221 231
341- The
Grand Age in Crete and its art (16001500 B.C.)
232 Ancient Times
chests seem to have contained the records, invoices, and bookkeeping lists necessary in conducting the affairs of a large royal household. Masses of these have been found covered by the rubbish and ruins of the fallen palace. In spite of much study, scholars are not yet able to read these precious records, the earliest-known writing on the borders of the European world.
^ The Cretan kings, how
ever- did not erect large stone monuments engraved with written records of their buildings, their victories, and their great deeds, like those we have found in the Orient.
A few centuries of such development as this carried Cretan civilization to its highest level, and the Cretans entered upon what we may call their Grand Age (1600-1500 B.C.). As the older palace of Cnossus gave way to a larger and more splendid building (Fig. 138), the life of Crete began to unfold in all directions. The new palace itself, with its colonnaded hall, its fine stairways (Fig. 138), and its impressive open areas, represented the first real architecture in the northern Mediterranean. The palace walls were painted with fresh and beautiful scenes from daily life, all aquiver with movement and action ; or by learning the Egyptian art of glassmaking the Cretans adorned them with glazed figures attached to the surface
Fig. 137. Clay Tablet bearing a Record in the Rapid Cretan Handwriting often called Linear
This writing is a later stage of the hieroglyphs in Fig. 135 (see also § 340)
The Dawn of European Civilization
233
of the wall. The pottery painters had by this time given up the use of many colors. They now employed one dark tone on a light background, or they modeled the design in relief. Noble vases (Fig. 136, B) were painted in grand designs drawn from plant life or often from the life of the sea, where the Cretans were now more and more at home. This wonderful pottery shows the most powerful, vigorous, and impressive decorative art of the early oriental world. Indeed; • it belongs among', the finest .works of decorative art ever produced by any people.
The method of use and the execution of the work everywhere show that this art was developing under suggestion from Egypt; for example, walls covered with colored glazed tiles were in use in Egypt nearly two thousand years earlier than in Crete. But in spite of this fact the Cretan artist did not follow slavishly the. Egyptian model. A growing plant painted on an Egyptian wall seems sometimes so rigid and stiff that it looks as if done with a stencil. The Cretan artist drew the same plant with such free and splendidly curving lines (Fig. 136, S) that we seem to hear the wind swaying the stems and giving us
Fig. 138. Colonnaded Hall and Staircase in the Cretan Palace of the Grand Age at Cnossus
The columns and roof of the hall are modern restorations. This hall is in the lower portion of the palace, and the stairway, concealed by the balustrade at the back of the hall, led up by five flights of fifty-two massive steps to the main floor of the palace. On the painted interior decoration of this palace consult § 341 and see Fig. 139
342. Independence and power of Cretan artists in spite of Egyptian influence
234 Ancient Times
" The soft eye-music of slow-moving boughs ” (Wordsworth). The Cretan sculptor in ivory, too, as well as the goldsmith and worker in bronze wrought masterpieces which remain to-day among the world’s greatest works of art (Figs. 140 and 141).
The palace of Cnossus looked out upon a town of plain, sun-dried-brick houses. Here must have lived the merchants and traders, the potters, metal workers, painters, and other craftsmen, though many of these also lived and worked in the palace
Fig. 139. Cretan Lords and Ladies of the Grand Age on the Terraces of the Palace at Cnossus. (After Durm)
This scene was painted on the walls of the palace as part of the interior wall decoration. It has been somewhat restored, as shown above, but it forms a remarkable example of the Cretan artist’s ability to produce the impression of an animated multitude of people seen from a distance and blending into a somewhat confused whole (see also § 341)
itself; while on the outskirts, or up the valley, dwelt the peasants who cultivated the fields. On one occasion we see the peasants marching in joyous procession, probably celebrating a harvest festival (headpiece, p. 221).
344. The Upon such celebrations of the people there looked down
the king °U from the palace a company of lords and ladies, who lived an astonishingly free and modem life. The ladies, wearing costumes (Fig. 141) which might tastefully appear in the streets of modem New York or Chicago, crowded the palace terraces and watched their champions struggling in fierce boxing matches, in which the contestants wore heavy metal helmets (Fig. 139).
Fig. 140. Wild Bulls pictured by a Cretan Goldsmith around Two Golden Cups
These cups were found at Vaphio, near Sparta, whither they were imported from Crete. The goldsmith beat out these marvelous designs with a hammer and punch over a mold, and then cut in finer details with a graving tool. His work must be ranked among the greatest works of art produced by any people
Fig. 141. Ivory and Gold Statuette of a Cretan Lady of the Grand Age. (Boston Museum of Fine Arts)
The proud little figure stands with shoulders thrown far back and arras extended, each hand grasping a golden serpent, which coils about her arms to the elbow. She wears a high tiara perched daintily on her elaborately curled hair. Her dress consists of a flounced skirt and a tight bodice tapering to her slender waist. The whole forms a costume so surprisingly modern that this little Cretan lady would hardly create any comment if she appeared so dressed on one of our crowded city streets of to-day. The figure is carved in ivory, while the flounces are edged with bands of gold and the belt about the waist is of the same metal. She represents either the great Cretan mother goddess or possibly only a graceful snake-charmer of the court. In any case the sculptor has given her the appearance of one of the noble ladies of his time. Even the Greek sculptor never surpassed the vitality and the winsome charm which passed from the fingers of the ancient Cretan
arfict intr» thic tinv ficrnr#»
The Dawn of European Civilization 235
Or the assembled court (Fig. 139) cheered the plucky bullfighters tossed on the horns of huge wild bulls (Fig. 140),— the same huge creatures which were hunted by the Late Stone Age men of Europe a thousand years before (Fig. 12). These people lived in comfortable quarters in the palace, where they even had bathrooms and sanitary drainage (Fig. 142).
From the palace of Cnossus the Cretan king could issue at the North Gate and, mounting his chariot, ride in half an hour to the harbor, three and a half miles away.
At the harbor he looked out northward where the nearest islands of the ^Egean could be clearly seen breaking the northern horizon (see map, p. 252). Here the trading galleys of the Cretan kings were spreading Cretan art and industries far and wide through the Mediterranean. These Cretan fleets formed the earliest naval power which grew up in the northern Mediterranean, and the student should contrast the dugouts of the Late Stone Age (Fig. 14). Nevertheless, the kings of Crete were now vassals of the Pharaoh. An Egyptian general of Thutmose III (§ 111) in the fifteenth century B.C. bore
Fig. 142. Tile Drainpipes from the Cretan Palace of Cnossus
These joints of pottery drainpipe (2| feet long and 4 to 6 inches across) are part of an elaborate system of drainage in the palace, the oldest drainage system in the European world. The oldest-known system of drainpipe (copper) is in the pyramid-temple of Abusir, Egypt (see Fig. 56), about a thousand years earlier than this system at Cnossus
345. Political and commercial position of Crete in and after the Grand Age
236
Ancient Times
346. Crete to be regarded as the home of the third great civilization in the ancient world
347. Cretan civilization reaches the mainland of Greece; the Mycenasan Age
the title of " governor of the islands in the midst of the sea, as the Egyptians called the islands of the ^gean (Fig. 143).
Here, then, in the island of Crete, there had arisen a new world. The culture of the gifted Cretans, stimulated by the magic touch of riper Egyptian culture, shook off the Late Stone
Age lethargy of early Europe and sprang into a vigorous life all its own. Beside the two older centers of- civilization on the Nile and the two rivers in this age, there thus grew up here in the eastern Mediterranean, as a third great civilization, this splendid world of Crete and the Mgean Sea. It is this third great civilization which forms the link between the civilization of the Orient and the later progress of man in Greece and western Europe.
Section 35. The ^Egean World : the Mainland
As yet, the mainland, both in Europe and in Asia Minor, had continued to lag behind the advanced civilization of the islands. Nevertheless, the fleets of Egypt and of Crete maintained commerce with the mainland of Greece. They naturally entered the southern bays, and especially the Gulf of Argos, which looks southward directly toward Crete (see map, p. 252). In the plain of. Argos (Plate III), behind the sheltered inlet, massive strongholds, with heavy stone masonry foundations and walls, arose at
Fig. 143. Golden Dish of the Egyptian Governor of the ^Egean Islands in the Grand Age
This golden dish was given by the Pharaoh Thutmose III (§ in) to one of his favorite generals, whom he had made governor of the j^Egean islands; The dish bears an inscription which calls him "goy-ernor of the islands in the midst of the sea,” by which the Egyptians meant the Mgean islands and coasts of Asia Minor
The Datvn of European Civilization 237
Tiryns (Fig. 144) and Mycenae (Fig. 145). The Aegean princes who built such strongholds a little after 1500 B.C. imported works of Cretan and Egyptian art in pottery and metal (Fig. 140). These triumphs of Cretan art, with fragments of Egyptian glaze and wall decorations, still surviving in the ruins of palaces and tombs, are to-day the earliest tokens of a life of higher refinement on the continent of Europe. This period (about 1500 to 1200 B.C.) is commonly known as the Mycenaean Age, after Mycenae, where such civilization was first discovered (§ 36).
But the mainland still lagged behind the islands, for Cretan writing seems not to have
Fig. 144.' Restoration of the Castle and Palace of Tiryns. (After Lucken-bach)
Unlike the Cretan palaces, this dwelling of
an Mgean prince is massively fortified. A
rising road (A) leads up to the main gate (B),
where the great walls are double. An assault- 1
ing party bearing their shields on the left arm
must here (C, D) march with the exposed
right side toward the city. By the gate (E)
the visitor arrives in the large court (F) on
which the palace faces." The main entrance
of the palace (C) leads to its forecourt (H),
where the excavators found the place of the
household altar of the king (§ 423). Behind
the forecourt (H) is the main hall of the
palace (/). This was the earliest castle in 34®.
Europe with outer walls of stone. The vil- ^ardnessCof lages of the common people clustered about the European the foot of the castle hill. The whole formed mainland the nucleus of a city-state (§ 390) in the plain of Argos (see Plate III, p. 276)
349- Asiatic mainland: foundation of Troy (about 3000 B.C.)
238 Ancient Times
followed Cretan commerce, and there was as yet no writing prevalent on the continent of Europe. Regions of northern
Greece, such as Thessaly,
Fig. 145. The Main Entrance of the Castle of Mycen,e, called the Lion Gate
This shows us a good example of the heavy stone masonry with which were built the great gates of the two cities of the ^gean Grand Age, Tiryns and Mycenae, on the plain of Argos (§ 347). Above the gate is a large triangular block of stone, carved to represent two lions grouped on either side of a central column. The whole doubtless formed the emblem of the city, or the arms of its kings. It is of course a descendant of the two Babylonian lions of Lagash, showing a similar balanced arrangement with one on each side of the center (Fig. 86)
were covered with scattered settlements which had advanced but little beyond Late Stone Age civilization. Metal, although known, was not common in Thessaly until about 1500 B.C., and the cul-•tured Cretans had little influence here in the north.
Along the Asiatic side of the ^Egean Sea we find much earlier progress than on the European side, although this was but slightly due to the commerce from Crete, which seems to have ' had little effect along the shores of Asia Minor. In the days when Crete was first receiving metal (after 3000 B.C.), there arose at the northwest corner of Asia Minor a shabby little Late Stone Age village known as Troy. It was probably built by traders attracted by the profitable traffic which was already crossing back and forth between Asia and Europe at this point (see map, p. 2 5 2).
The Dawn of European Civilization 239
By 2500 B.C., some centuries after the first metal had been introduced, the rulers of Troy were wealthy commercial kings, and their, castle was the earliest fortress in the ^Egean world, for it was a thousand years older than the fortresses at Mycenae and Tiryns. During this thousand years (2500 to 1500 B.C.) Troy was rebuilt several times (Fig. 150), but it continued to flourish, and it finally must have controlled a kingdom of considerable extent in northwestern Asia Minor. Thus about 1500 B.C. the splendid and cultivated city of Troy was a powerful stronghold (Sixth City), which had grown up as a northern rival of that sumptuous Cnossus we have seen in the south. The two rival cities “faced each other from opposite ends of. the ^Egean, but we infer that Cnossus was superior in civilization, for it is still uncertain whether the Trojans of this age could write.
Inland from Troy and the /Egean world, across the far-stretching hills and mountains of Asia Minor, were the settlements of a great group of white peoples who were kindred of the ^Egeans in civilization, though not in blood. We call them Hittites. Although the ilarger part of their land lay outside of the ^Egean world, nevertheless, one end of it formed the eastern shores of the ^Egean Sea. Asia Minor, their land, is a vast peninsula from six hundred and fifty to seven hundred miles long and from three to four hundred miles wide, being about as large as the state of Texas. The interior is a lofty table-land, little better than a desert in its central region. Around most of this tableland rise mountain ridges, fringing both the table-land and the sea. On both sides of the mountain fringe are fertile valleys and plains, producing plentiful crops. The seaward slopes of the mountains, especially along the Black Sea, are clad with flourishing forests. The northern shores of Asia Minor, east of the Halys River, rise into ridges containing rich deposits of iron. The Hittites thus became the earliest distributors of iron when it began to displace bronze in the Mediterranean world and the East (§ 219).
350. Growth of Troy (25001500 B.C.)
351. Asia Minor, the land of the Hittites
352. The Hittites a link between the Fertile Crescent and the ^Egean
353- The
Hittites influence their neighbors both in east and west
240 Ancient Times
In discussing oriental influences in the .-Egean, we have already seen (§ 332) how Asia Minor formed a link between the ^Egean and the world of the Two Rivers. The people who made it such a link were these Hittites. For at the eastern end of their land they passed easily down the upper Euphrates to the Fertile Crescent, where they merged with the peoples
there whose history we have already studied. We recall, for example, how they held early Assur, in competition with Babylon (§ 202). We find also that the Hittites early borrowed the old Babylonian coat of arms, a lionheaded, or sometimes a doubleheaded, eagle. They handed it on across the
iEgean to later Europe, from which it passed to us in the United States as the "American ” eagle (Fig. 86).
Both in the ^Egean and in the Fertile Crescent, that is, at both ends of their land, the Hittites left their mark upon their neighbors. We recall the prominent aquiline nose of the Hit-tite people (Fig. 146). The same feature among the Hebrews shows how the Hittites drifted down the west end of the Fertile Crescent, until they reached Palestine (§291) in sufficient
Fig. 146. An Ancient Hittite and his Modern Armenian Descendant
At the left is the head of an ancient Hittite as carved by an Egyptian sculptor on the wall of a temple at Thebes, Egypt, over three thousand years ago. It strikingly resembles the profile of the Armenians still living in the Hittite country, as shown in the modern portrait on the right. The strongly aquiline and prominent nose (§ 146) of the Hittites was also acquired by the neighboring Semites along the eastern end of the Mediterranean, including the Canaanites (see headpiece, p. 197) and the Hebrews
The Dawn of European Civilization 241
numbers to affect the Hebrew type of face. On the west in the same way, Hittite life greatly influenced the cities along the yEgean coast of Asia Minor, where we shall find that even the later Greeks still bore marks of Hittite influence, especially in -important matters of business, like coinage (§ 458), but also in religion and architecture.
It was from their contact with the Fertile Crescent that the -Hittites received the first influences leading to a higher civilization. The most important of these was writing. The Babylonian caravans, passing up the Euphrates in the days of Hammurapi (§ 187) and earlier, brought into Asia Minor business and traffic, with bills and other commercial documents in cuneiform writing on clay tablets (Fig. 79). In this way, like other peoples in the West, the Hittites learned cuneiform by 2000 B.C. or earlier. Excavation in Asia Minor has even recovered fragments of the clay-tablet dictionaries used by the Hittites in learning to write and spell words in cuneiform. It was probably through the Hittites that the use of the clay tablet passed over to Crete (Fig. 137).
The Hittites profited by the Egyptian civilization also, as they received it through the cities of northern Syria, like Samal (Fig. 97). Here, under the influence of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, they devised a system of picture signs with phonetic values (Fig. 147). With these hieroglyphic signs they engraved great stone records like those of Egypt. These records (Fig. 147), cut into the face of rocky cliffs or masonry walls,
Fig. 147. An Inscription in Hittite Hieroglyphs
This example shows us the hieroglyphic writing devised by the Hittites in imitation of the Egyptian {§ 335). It was found at Carchemish on the Euphrates. The same writing may also be seen accompanying the scene in Fig. 148
354. Rise of Hittite civilization : Babylonian writing
355. Hittite hieroglyphic writing
242
Ancient Times
356. Hittite art and architecture
357- Hittite
religion
still look down upon the passing traveler throughout a great part of Asia Minor from the ./Egean to the Euphrates, and new ones are constantly being found by excavation. The Hittites thus used two methods of writing—cuneiform and hieroglyphic. Unfortunately, the Hittite records written in hieroglyphs carved on stone are not yet deciphered. Just as this book goes to press the decipherment of the Hittite cuneiform records has been accomplished by Hrozny, an Austrian scholar. When all these records have been read, like those of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, they will reveal to us many new and wonderful facts in the story of the ancient world.
At the same time the Hittites had made progress in building. The king’s palace front consisted of a porch in the middle, with its roof supported on two columns, while on either side of the porch was a square tower (Fig. 97, K). It was therefore called a " house of two towers.” This was the porch adopted from the Hittites by the great Assyrian emperors (§ 224). It finally reached even the Persians. It was adorned with great sentinel lions carved in stone on either side of the entrance, an idea suggested by the Egyptian sphinx. From the Hittite palaces this idea of protecting beasts on either side of the palace entrance passed also to Assyria. The Hittite palace porch was furthermore adorned with a dado, consisting of large flat slabs of stone carved with relief pictures (Fig. 148), probably suggested by similar Egyptian arrangements (Fig. 60). This idea, too, finally passed by way of the Hittites to Assyria, where we recall the long rows of stone pictures adorning the Assyrian palaces (Figs. 105 and 106, B). The Hittite sculptors, however, had little skill with the chisel. The Assyrians far surpassed them, and under Assyrian influence the Hittites improved somewhat.
In these scenes we find also evidences of religious influences from both Egypt and Babylonia, as we note among them the Babylonian eagle already mentioned and the winged sun-disk from the Nile. We should notice furthermore the devotion of the Hittites to the great Earth-Mother as their chief goddess,
The Dawn of European Civilization 243 1 \
whom we have also found in Crete (headpiece, p. 221), and
who later was revered by the Greeks (§ 416).
In the great days of the Egyptian Empire, while Cnossus 358. Rise of
was still in the Grand Age and Troy her nothern rival was Empire
building.the splendid Sixth City, that is, about 1500 B.C., one centmyB.c.)
of the Hittite kingdoms on the east of the Halys River (see
map, p. 100) was gaining great power. It had established
Fig. 148. A Hittite Prince hunting Deer
The prince accompanied by his driver stands in the moving chariot, shooting with bow and arrow at the fleeing stag. A hound runs beside the horses. Over the scene is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphs (§ 355)- The whole is sculptured in stone, and forms a good example of the rather crude Hittite art
a strong fortified capital at a city called Khatti (map, p. 100). This name is simply an ancient form of the modern name " Hittite.” The kings of Khatti erected imposing palaces and temples, and built a great wall about the city (Fig. 15 2). They succeeded in gaining control of the other Hittite kingdoms and combining them into an empire which included a large part of Asia Minor.
This Hittite Empire lasted for some two centuries and a half (about 1450 to 1200 B.C.). The Hittites had received the horse,
359- The
Hittite Empire (about I4S°~
1200 B.C.)
360. The Hittites contribute the first iron to the ancient world
361. Modem ignorance of JEgean civilization
244 Ancient Times
perhaps even earlier than the Babylonians (§ 197)1 and the kings of Khatti were able to muster large and powerful bodies of charioteers. They thus played a vigorous part in the great group of nations around the eastern end of the Mediterranean after Egypt established the first, empire there (Section 9). They had much to do with breaking down the Egyptian Empire (§ 122), and they survived to fight fierce battles with the Assyrians.
One of the most important things we should remember about the Hittites is the fact that they began working the iron mines along the Black Sea (§ 351). A clay-tablet letter written by one of the Hittite kings tells us that he was about to send a shipment of " pure iron ” to Ramses II, who had asked for it, and that meantime a sword of iron was being sent to the Egyptian king as a gift (thirteenth century b. c.). We shall soon see the Iron Age beginning in the iEgean (§ 392), and it was from the Hittite iron mines that the metal first became common in the eastern Mediterranean. While the Hittite civilization was inferior to that of Egypt and Babylonia, it played a very important part in the group of civilizations forming the oriental neighbors of the iEgeans.
Section 36. Modern Discovery in the Northern Mediterranean and the Rise of an Eastern Mediterranean World
We have been putting together the story of the rise and early history of civilization along the north side of the eastern end of the Mediterranean (see map, p. 252), extending from the ^Egean world at one end, through the Hittite country to the Two Rivers at the other. Only a few years ago this story was entirely unknown. Less than fifty years ago no one supposed that civilized people had lived in the ^Egean world before the Greeks arrived there. Much less did anyone dream that we would ever be able to find the actual handiwork of the predecessors of the
The Dawn of European Civilization 245
Greeks in the JEgean world. The discoverer of the y£gean civilization which we have been studying was Heinrich Schliemann.
Schliemann was an American citizen of German birth. In 362. Life his youth before coming to America he had' a romantic busi- schHemann ness career. After being shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, he began his business experience there while a mere lad, as a
Fig. 149. The Mound containing the Nine Cities of Ancient Troy (Ilium)
The process by which such artificial mounds grow up is explained in § 158. When Schliemann first visited this mound {see map, p. 254) in 1868, it was about 125 feet high, and the Turks were cultivating grain on its summit. In 1870 he excavated a pit like a crater in the top of the hill, passing downward in the course of four years through nine successive cities built each on the ruins of its predecessors. At the bottom of his pit (about 50 feet deep) Schliemann found the original once bare . - hilltop about 75 feet high, on which the men of the Late Stone Age (§ 349) established a small settlement of sun-baked brick houses about 3000 B.C. (see Fig. 150). Above the scanty ruins of this Late Stone Age settlement rose, in layer after layer, the ruins of the later cities, with the Roman buildings at the top. The entire depth of 50 feet of ruins represented a period of about thirty-five hundred years from the First City (Late Stone Age) to the Ninth City (Roman) at the top. The Second City (§ 350) contained the earliest copper found in the series; the Sixth City was that of the Trojan War and the Homeric songs (§ 410). Its masonry walls may be seen in Fig. 191
clerk in a little grocer’s shop. In the brief intervals of leisure between dealing out smoked herring and rolls of butter, he taught himself Greek and began to read Homer (§ 410). In the infatuated ears of this enthusiastic boy the shouts of the Greek heroes on the plain of Troy mingled with the jingle of small change and the rustle of wrapping paper in the dingy little' Dutch grocery. He had not lost this fascinating vision of
246
Ancient Times
363. Schlier mann’s* excavation and discovery of Troy
the early world, when years afterward he retired from business, after having won a large fortune in Russian petroleum.
It was therefore as the fulfillment of a dream of his youth that Schliemann led a body of Turkish laborers to begin excavations in the great mound of Troy in 1870 (see map, p. 252, and Fig. 149). In less than four years he uncovered the central
Temples above =Ttoman City (in ruins. 500, A.D.)
fyalfs i-Sixtk City. 1500, B.C (Homeric City)
Shaded /?
Walls ®
- Second City, 2500. B. C.
Fig. 150. Diagram of the Mound of Ancient Troy showing the Walls of the Second and Sixth Cities and the Roman Temple at the Top (Ninth City)
This diagram is much too high for its width, as you will see by comparing the width and height of the mound in Fig. 149. >It has been pushed together at the sides and narrowed to include it within the available space. Below is the native rock of the hill on which the Late Stone Age settlement was built. Then come the sloping walls of the Second City (shaded). Outside of these and rising much higher are the walls of' the Sixth City (black), which may be seen as they are to-day in Fig. 151. The other cities of the nine are less important and have been left out for the sake of clearness. Schliemann never saw the walls of the Sixth City, the real Homeric city, because as he dug down in the middle of the mound inside the ancient walls, he covered the walls of the Sixth City with the rubbish he dug out
portions of nine successive cities, each built upon the ruins of the next city beneath, which had preceded it (Fig. 150). A .towered gateway in the Second City contained a splendid treasure of golden jewelry, and Schliemann believed that he had here discovered the Troy of Homer’s Greek heroes (§ 408). But we now know that this Second City was built a thousand years before Homer’s Troy (the Sixth City (Fig. 150)).
The Dawn of European Civilisation - 247
The sensation aroused by these discoveries among the 364. Schlie-
scholars of Europe and America was mild compared with that ration^03
which followed when Schliemann, crossing to the mainland of Tiryns and Greece, began excavating the prehistoric fortress or castle of Mycenas
Fig. 151. The Walls of Homeric Troy (built about 1500 b.c.)
A section of the outer walls of the Sixth City in the mound of Troy (Fig. 150). The sloping outer surface of the walls faces toward the right; the inside of the city is on the left. These are the walls built in the days when Mycenas was flourishing — walls which protected the inhabitants of the place from the assaults of the Greeks in a remote war which laid it in ruins after 1200 B.C., a war of which vague traditions and heroic tales have survived in the Homeric poems (§408). These are the walls, scaled by the Greek heroes, which Schliemann never saw (compare description, Fig. 150). The walls of the houses of the Seventh City are visible here resting on those of the Sixth
Mycenae (Fig. 145). Beneath the pavement of the market place he found a group of stone tomb chambers containing a magnificent series of vessels and ornaments in gold, including an elaborate golden crown, indicating the royalty of one of the dead. Again Schliemann thought that these things belonged to the Greek heroes of the Trojan wars (§ 408), but in reality they
365. Excavations in Crete since 1900
366. Excavation and discovery in Asia Minor, the land of the Hittites
248 - Ancient Times
were older. At the neighboring prehistoric castle of Tiryns (Fig. 144 and § 347) Schliemann made similar discoveries. Thus within a few years an unskilled and untrained excavator disclosed to us a new and entirely unknown world of civilization in the JEgean, which had flourished for centuries before the Greeks appeared there.
The question of the original home of this early ./Egean civilization, however, was not settled, by Schliemann’s work. Since 1900 the excavations in Crete have shown this island to have been the place where /Egean civilization made its start, and the center from which it passed to the other islands and to the mainland of Greece at Tiryns and Mycenas (§ 347). In these discoveries American explorers have had an honorable share; but they have been due chiefly to the remarkable excavations of Sir Arthur Evans, the English archaeologist, at the city of Cnossus. Here Evans has uncovered the splendid Cretan palaces (Fig. 138), clearing out layer after layer of rubbish containing works of Cretan art and industry, which carry us back age after age to the rubbish of the Late Stone Age settlement deep down at the bottom of the mound, over which the first palace was built (§ 337).
At the same time exploration in Asia Minor has revealed increasing numbers of Hittite monuments. Of these discoveries the most important were those of the German expedition at Khatti (Fig. 152), beginning in the winter of 1906-1907. Lying just under the surface of the soil, where it was quite possible to kick them out with the heel of one’s boot, the explorers found the clay tablets which once filled the state record chambers in the palace of the Hittite kings at Khatti during the great days of their empire three thousand years ago. Here were letters to and from the kings of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and all the great powers of the oriental world which we have studied. Among them was the letter already mentioned, containing the Hittite king’s notice of the coming shipment of iron. Besides recovering the lost records, the German expedition gradually
Fig. 152. The Ancient Capital of the Hittites in Central Asia Minor (recently excavated)
The view at the top shows the ruins of the great walled city which covered a group of hills like those of Rome. A modern village close by, called Boghaz-Koi, has given the place its modern name; but the Hittites called the city Khatti. The view below shows a portion of the masonry walls of the city as they once were, when the Hittite
kings lived here in the thirteenth.century B.C.
250
Ancient Times
367. Modern recovery of early civilization entirely around the eastern end of the Mediterranean
368. Rise of an eastern Mediterranean world (30001500 B.C.)
369. Northern intruders
excavated the walls of the ancient city and its chief buildings, and recovered their architecture (cf. Fig. 152).
Although we are still unable to read the records of the Cretans and are only beginning to read those of the Hittites, the discoveries in their lands have revealed to us the earliest chapter of civilization on the north side of the eastern Mediterranean. If we connect these discoveries along the north side of the Mediterranean at its east end with the earlier story of discovery in the oriental lands east and south of the Mediterranean, the student will perceive how scholars and explorers have carried the work of excavation and discovery entirely around the east end of the Mediterranean, from the lower Nile valley, through the nations of the Fertile Crescent, to Asia Minor and the yEgean Sea (see map, p. 100).
These discoveries have begun to show us how the civilized peoples all^ around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, by their industries and commerce, were gradually creating a civilized world of which the JEgean Sea was merely a northern bay. We recall our first glimpse of this eastern Mediterranean world as we journeyed up the Nile and saw the Egyptian ships which crossed the eastern Mediterranean nearly 3000 B.C. (Fig. 41). But now we have studied the peoples on the east and north of the Mediterranean and have seen how, at the close of the Grand Age in Crete, the splendid TEgean civilization had been mingling for centuries with the older oriental civilizations, especially that of the Nile, but also with that of Hittite Asia Minor and through it with the civilization of the Fertile Crescent.
Into this civilized world of the eastern Mediterranean, with its arts, its industries, and its far-reaching commerce, the uncivilized peoples of the North behind the Balkan mountains and the Black Sea were now beginning to intrude. These uncivilized northerners were the Greeks. They were soon to overwhelm the eastern Mediterranean, and with these Northern intruders we must begin a new chapter in the history of the eastern Mediterranean world,
The Dawn of European Civilization 251
QUESTIONS
Section 33. At what point in their progress did we leave the Europeans when we first passed over to the Orient? What products of the eastern Mediterranean reached the Late Stone Age Europeans? How did these things reach Europe? Did the possession of metal raise the Europeans to a high civilization?
Section 34. Was there any part of Europe nearer the Orient than the JEgean world ? By what two ways was it connected with the Orient?. What island of the JEgean is nearest to Egypt? Describe the rise of civilization there. Can you mention some evidences of Egyptian influence there.?' Where did-the Cretan sea-kings arise? What survives to tell us of their power ? What industries flourished ? Can you mention some evidence of Cretan commerce ? What now happened to Cretan writing? Tell something of Cretan decorative art in the Grand Age; of the work of sculptor and goldsmith. Tell something of the life of the palace and of the peasants. Under what foreign power were the Cretans at this time? What three great civilizations now existed ? . *.
.Section 35. Had the European mainland advanced as fast as Crete in civilization ? Where do we find evidences of the first civilization on the continent of Europe, and what are they ? Date them. Was there yet any writing common in Europe? Where and when did civilization arise on the east side of the ^Egean ? What led men -to this point? What can you say about the history and civilization of Troy? What people occupied most of Asia Minor? Mention some things which they passed on to the West from the East. Recall some evidences of their influence in the East. What influences reached the Hittites from the Fertile Crescent and from Egypt? When did the Hittite Empire arise, and what can you say about its influence? What was the most important filing which the Hittites contributed to other peoples ?
Section 36. Who first discovered remains of people who had occupied the ALgean world before the Greeks? Tell something of his life. What did he find at Troy? in Greece £ What has excavation in Crete since shown ? What has excavation in Asia Minor revealed? With reference to the eastern end of the Mediterranean how far have excavation and dis.covery been carried ? What kind of a world has discovery revealed in the eastern Mediterranean ? What uncivilized Northerners were now intruding into this eastern Mediterranean world?
370- Southward advance of the Indo-European line in Europe
CHAPTER IX
THE GREEK CONQUEST OF THE AEGEAN WORLD
Section 3 7. The Coming of the Greeks
The people whom we call the Greeks were a large group of tribes of Indo-European race. We have already followed the Indo-European parent people until their diverging migrations finally ranged them iri% line from the Atlantic Ocean to northern India (§ 243 and Fig. 112). While their eastern kindred
Note. The above headpiece shows a line of captive warriors with their hands shackled before them or pinioned over their heads. They wear a tall feathered headdress, which shows them to be Philistines (§296), a tribe of Cretan warriors driven out of Crete by the Greeks (§ 379). Some of them, invading Egypt in their flight, were taken captive by Ramses III, the last of the Egyptian emperors, not long after 1200 B.C. He therefore placed this picture of them on the walls of his temple at Thebes, Egypt. Other pictures of them may be seen in Fig. 154, recognizable by their headdress.
252
ty^ropontis *
Khatt
(Boghaz
"chornenuSi
:hios.
Myceiwe., >. Tiryn^i 'lopofinesur
RHOOES
zphratcs
[CJnossus
■^0~day8 by caravan to Babylon
SCALE OF MILES
Map I T) ^ ^__
PRE-GREEK CIVILIZATION
IN THE
EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD TILL 1500 B.C.
'opontis *5
Khat
(Bogbaz
W/LESBCfc 'Z& ■SSJ^V^UBCEA e/cHlos/V \£
&VA o \\y; s'S Y/v^P^en % * Ephesih
*W 4«j£. SX«^ It ^sfeLOS 'V"‘
i, ft./ <*!?
>'0Tfbetn_tJw|
phoinToiiiT 4
to western
Mediternuiea
KHODES
w,'ph rates
■Cnossua
to Babylon
/Sidon £)\
•ascus
+++♦++ Routes of fleeing jEgoana l?ciisaletn especially Philistines
r ^Isw*
Slap IT :5^= GREEK CONQUEST OF THE JEGEAN WORLD (1500 TO 1000 B.C.)
4N1I THE 8PHEAI) OF
phcenician commerce
AFTER 1200 B.C.
(eater*
Lmph^gdi2E°^
Sequence Map of the Eastern Mediterranean World from the Grand Age of Cretan Civilization (about 1500 b.c.) to the Conquest of the /Egean by the Greeks
The Greek Conquest of the Aigean World 253
were drifting southward on the east side of the Caspian, the Greeks on the west side of the Black Sea were likewise mov-
JEgean not long after 2000 B.C.
ing southward from their broad pastures along the Danube (see map II, p. 252).
Driving their herds before them, with their families in rough 371. The carts drawn by horses, the rude Greek tribesmen must have- th^Gre^k1^
looked out upon ....................Pemnsula
the lair pastures of Thessaly, the snowy sumrp:i of Mount Olympus (Fig. 153), and the blue waters of the
The Greek peninsula which they had entered contains about twenty-five thousand square miles.1 It is everywhere c-’f up by mountains and inlets of the sea into small plains and peninsulas separated from each other either by the sea or the mountain ridges. No
Fig. 153. Mount Olympus — the Home of the Gods
Although Mount Olympus is on the northern borders of Greece, it can be seen from Attica and the south end of Euboea. It approaches 10,000 feet in height, and looks down upon Macedonia on one side and Thessaly on the -other (see map, p. 264). As we look at it here from the south, we have a portion of the plain of Thessaly in the foreground, where the first Greeks entered Hellas (§ 371), and where later the earliest Homeric songs of the Greek heroes were composed (§ 408)
less than five hundred islands are tered along its deeply indented eastern shores (map, p, and Plate III). On its climate and products see §331.
1 About one sixth smaller than South Carolina—so small that Mount Olympus on the northern boundary of Greece is visible over much of the peninsula. From the mountains of Sparta one can see from Crete to the mountains north of the Corinthian Gulf (see Fig. 163), a distance of two hundred and twenty-five miles.
254
Ancient Times
372. The barbarian Greek nomads and the settled vEgean civilization
373. The barbarian Greek nomads on the margin of the great oriental world
374. Achsean Greeks followed by Dorian Greeks in Peloponnesus by 1500 B.C.
The wandering shepherds whom we have seen so often invading the Fertile Crescent (§§ 135, 167, and 294) to find a settled and civilized town life there, furnish us the best possible illustration of the situation of the Greeks as they invaded the ^Egean towns and settlements like Tiryns and Mycenae (§ 347). As the newcomers looked out across the waters they could dimly discern the islands, where flourishing towns were carrying on busy industries, especially in pottery and metal, which a thriving commerce was distributing (§§ 339 and 345).
We can imagine the wonder with which these barbarian Greeks must have looked out upon the white sails that flecked the blue surface of the ^Egean Sea. It was to be long, however, before these inland shepherds would themselves venture timidly out upon the great waters which they were viewing for the first time. Had the gaze of the Greek nomads been able to penetrate beyond the yEgean isles, they would have seen a vast panorama of great and flourishing oriental states. Here on the borders of the great oriental world and under its influences the Greeks were now to go forward toward the development of a civilization higher than any the Orient had yet produced, the highest indeed which ancient man ever attained.
Gradually their vanguard (called the Achaeans) pushed southward into the Peloponnesus, and doubtless some of them mingled with the ^Egean dwellers in the villages which were grouped under the walls of Tiiyns and Mycenae (Figs. 144, 145. and Plate III), just as the Hebrew nomads mingled with the Canaanite townsmen (§ 294). Some of the Greek leaders may have captured these ^Egean fortresses, just as David took Jerusalem _(§ 297). But our knowledge of the situation in Greece is verji^meager because the peoples settled here could not yet write, herefore have left no written documents to tell the story. •It is evident, however, that a second wave of Greek nomads (called the Dorians) reached the Peloponnesus by 1500 B.C. and subdued their earlier kinsmen (the Achaeans) as well as the ^Egean townsmen, the original inhabitants of the region.
The Greek Conquest of the Aegean World 255
1 i ■<
The Dorians did not stop at the southern limits of Greece, but, learning a little navigation from their ^Egean predecessors, they passed over to Crete, where they must have arrived by 1400 b. c. Cnossus, unfortified as it was, and without any walled castle (§ 338), must have fallen an easy prey to the invading Dorians, who took possession of the island, and likewise seized the other southern islands of the ^Egean. Between 1300 and 1000 B.C. the Greek tribes took possession of the remaining^ islands, as well as the coast of Asia Minor — the Dorians in tl south, the Ionians in the middle, and the ^Eolians in the nortl Here a memorable Greek expedition in the twelfth centui B.C., after a long siege, captured and burned the prosperous"! city of Troy (§ 350), a feat which the Greeks never after/ forgot (§ 408). During the thousand years between 2000 and ) 1000 B.C. the Greeks thus took possession not only of the whole Greek peninsula but likewise of the entire ^Egean world
The interior of Asia Minor suffered likewise. Other Indo-Europeans, kindred of the Greeks, were pushing southward behind them. Some of these rearward Indo-European tribes found it easier to cross the Hellespont and invade Asia Minor than to push on into Greece. Probably before 1500 B.C. some of these invaders of Asia Minor had become so numerous among the Hittites, who were not originally Indo-Europeans, that the Hittite communities began to lose their own tongue and to speak the Indo-European language of the newcomers. Thus the Hittite cuneiform tablets (§354) are in a language which contains Indo-European words and grammatical forms akin to those in Greek, as the new decipherment (§ 355) has recently shown. By 1200 B.C. a second wave of Indo-Europeans, especially the Phrygians and the Armenians, were invading the Hittite country in Asia Minor.
The northern Mediterranean all along its eastern end was thus being absorbed by Indo-European peoples. The result was that both the ^Egeans and their Hittite neighbors in Asia Minor were overwhelmed by the advancing Indo-European
375- The
Greeks take possession of :he JEgean vorld; Dorians in Crete and southern JEgean
376. Phrygians and Armenians invade Asia Minor
377. Flight of the well-to-do Mgeans
256
Ancient Times
378. Egyptian repulse of the fugitive vEgeans
379. Cretan Philistines find a home in Southern Palestine
380. Fall of j^Egean civilization
line. The Hittite Empire (§ 359) completely collapsed. The splendid yEgean civilization which we saw rising -so prosperously was unable to repel the invaders. Probably few of the I common people of the yEgean towns were able to flee. On the other hand, the noble and well-to-do yEgean families, the class to which our elegantly dressed little Cretan lady of the statuette (Fig. 141) belonged, — forming, all told, considerable numbers, —• must have taken to the sea and fled. They looked back upon burning towns and villas, and they must have seen the splendid palace of Cnossus, with all its beautiful treasures . of Cretan art, going up in smoke and flame.
By 1200 b.c. the movement of the Greek or Indo-European invasion from the north had thus set in motion before it a wave of fleeing ^Egeans, which crossed the sea and broke upon the shores of the southeastern Mediterranean from the Nile Delta to the harbors of Phoenicia. It was this wave of yEgean fugitives which aided in overturning the tottering Egyptian Empire. An Egyptian relief scene shows us the earliest-known picture of a naval battle (Fig. 154)—a sea fight off the coast of Syria, in which the last of the Egyptian emperors beat off an ^Egean. fleet (§ 124).
The only region where the fleeing vEgeans were numerous enough to settle and to form a nation was in Southern Palestine. Here a tribe of Cretans called Philistines (headpiece, p. 252), although they had been beaten in the sea fight just mentioned, were able to establish themselves and build up a group of prosperous cities, in the twelfth century b. c. We recall how they nearly succeeded in crushing the young Hebrew nation just then emerging (§ 296). Curiously enough, it was these fugitives from the /Egean world who gave to Palestine its present name, for " Palestine ” is simply a later form of the name " Philistine.”
The Indo-European invasion of the ^Egean world thus broke up the prosperous and highly civilized communities which we have seen there, especially in Crete. By 1200 B.C. the splendid
The Greek Conquest of the JEgean World 257
^Egean civilization had been almost submerged by northern barbarism, little better than the Late Stone Age life which we have already seen in Europe. Some important things in ^Egean civilization perished entirely — among them Cretan
Fig. 154. Battle between a Fleet of Fleeing /Egeans and an Egyptian Fleet
This scene, sculptured on the walls of an Egyptian temple at Thebes (§ 124), is the earliest surviving picture of a naval battle. It shows us the Mediterranean peoples defeated by the last Egyptian emperor, Ramses III, not long after 1200 B.C., somewhere along the Syrian coast (§ 378). Of the nine ships engaged four are Egyptian (lion’s head on the prow)—three at the left and one in the lower right-hand corner. The remaining five are /Egean ships (goose-head on the prow). One j*Egean ship (middle, below) has been overturned. The j^geans are Philistines with feathered headdress (see headpiece, p. 252), and we see here how they passed from Crete to Palestine (§ 379). The iEgeans are armed only with round shields and spears or two-edged swords (§776), whereas the Egyptians are chiefly archers, who overwhelm the enemy with archery volleys at long range and then close in, taking Philistine prisoners who may be seen standing bound in the Egyptian ships
writing, which disappeared after the Greek invasion.. Enough of ^Egean industries survived, however, to form an essential part of the foundation upon which the barbarian Greeks were yet to build up the highest civilization of the ancient world.
Such of the ^Egean population as had not fled before the incoming Greeks mingled with their Greek conquerors, just as
381. Mingling of
jEgeans and Greeks
382. Triumph of Greek speech
258 Ancient Times
we have seen the civilized Canaanites of Palestine mingling with the invading Hebrew nomads (§ 294). This commingling of .^Egeans and Greeks produced a mixed race, the people known to us as the Greeks of history. How much ^Egean blood may have flowed in their veins we are unable to determine. But the supreme genius of the classical Greeks may well have been due, in some measure, to this admixture of the blood of the gifted Cretans, with their open-mindedness toward influences from abroad and their fine artistic instincts.
The mingling of Greek and ^Egean blood did not result in a similar mixture of speech, as English is made up of French and Anglo-Saxon. Greek, the language of the victorious invaders, gradually became the language of the JEgean world. At the same time Greek did not blot out every trace of the older sEgean language of the region. People continued to call the towns, rivers, and mountains, like Mount Parnassus, by the old JE gean names they found in use, just as we found Indian geographical names in America and continue to call our greatest river by its old Indian name, Mississippi (" Father of Waters ”). Such names in Greece are to-day surviving remnants of the lost JEgean language, now no longer anywhere spoken.1 It is interesting also to notice that a few .iEgean words for civilized conveniences, such as the Greek invaders did not possess, likewise survived. So the word " bathtub ” in Greek is really an old ^Egean word. For of course a race of wandering shepherds such as the Greeks had been, had no such luxuries: whereas we have recovered the actual bathtubs of the refined ^Egeans (§ 344), from whom the Greeks learned the name. Nevertheless, the Greek language was already de-. veloping as the richest and most beautiful instrument of speech man has ever possessed.
1 We do not know to what group of languages the old yEgean speech, now lost, belonged. The still undeciphered Cretan writings (§ 340) may yet reveal this secret. The claim made in America that one variety of Cretan hieroglyphic has been deciphered, and found to be Greek, is without foundation. The recent decipherment of Hittite cuneiform (§§ 355 and 376) should aid in solving the problem.
The Greek Conquest of the JEgean World 259
Section 38. The Nomad Greeks make the Transition to the Settled Life
In tranquil summer days one can pass from island to island and cross the entire JEgean Sea from Greece to Asia Minor in a rowboat. This is why a group of shepherd tribes like the Greeks had been able to cross and take possession of the islands of the ^Egean and the coast of neighboring Asia Minor. But we must not conclude that at this early stage of their history they had already taken to the sea and become a people of sailors. Centuries later we find the Greek peasant-poet Hesiod (700 B.C.) looking with shrinking eye upon the sea. Long after they had taken possession of the yEgean world the Greeks remained a barbarous people of flocks and herds, without any commerce by sea.
If we would understand the situation of the Greeks after their conquest of the civilized yEgean world, we must again recall nomad life as we have seen it along the Fertile Crescent in Asia (§ 136). We remember that the nomads possessed no organized government, for there was no public business which demanded it. Even to-day among such people no taxes are collected, for no one owns any land which can be taxed. There are no public officials, there are no cases at law, no legal business, and men are controlled by a few customs like the " blood revenge ” (§ 136). Such was exactly the condition of the nomad Greeks when they began a settled life in the yEgean world.
From their old wandering life on the grasslands they carried with them the loose groups of families known as tribes, and within each tribe an indefinite number of smaller groups of more intimate families called " brotherhoods.” A " council ” of the old men (" elders ”) occasionally decided matters in dispute, or questions of tribal importance, and probably once a year, or at some important feast, an " assembly ” of all the weapon-bearing men of the tribe might be held, to express its
383. Early
Greeks not a maritime people
384. Earliest social institutions of the Greeks
385. Tribes, K council,” and "assembly ”
26o
Ancient Times
386. Rise of Greek kings
387. Greeks begin agriculture
388. Rise of land ownership and its consequences in government and society
opinion of a proposed war or migration.' These are the germs of later European political institutions and even of our own in the United States to-day.1
It was perhaps after they had found kings over such yfigean cities as Mycenee (§ 347) that the Greeks (like the Hebrews, §. 296) began to want kings themselves. Thus the old-time nomad leaders whom they had once followed in war, religion, and the settlement of disputes became rude shepherd kings of the tribes.
Meantime the Greek shepherds slowly began the cultivation of land. This forced them to give up a wandering life to build houses and live in permanent homes. Nomad instincts and nomad customs were not easily rooted out however. War and the care of flocks continued to be the occupation of the men, as it had been for centuries on the Northern grasslands; while the cultivation of the fields was at first left to the women. Furthermore, flocks and herds continued to make up the chief wealth of the Greeks for centuries after they had taken up agriculture.
As each Greek tribe settled down and became a group of villages, the surrounding land was divided among the families by lot, though the tribe as a whole long continued to be the only real owner of the land. Nevertheless, private ownership of land by families gradually resulted. As a consequence there arose disputes about boundaries, about inheritances in land (§ 452), and much other legal business, which as it increased required more and more attention by those in authority. The settlement of such business tended to create a government. During the four centuries from 1000 to 600 B.C. we see the Greeks struggling with the problem of learning how to transact the business of settled landholding communities, and how to
1 Compare the House of Lords (= the above "council”) and the House of Commons (= the above ” assembly ”) in England, or the Senate (derived from the Latin word meaning " old man ”) and the House of Representatives in the United States,
The Greek Conquest of the Aigean World 261
adjust the ever-growing friction and strife between the rich and the poor, the social classes created by the holding of land and the settled life (cf. § 31).
We have seen the Semitic nomads struggling with the same problems on the Fertile Crescent (§ 167). But for them the situation was in one important particular much easier. They found among their settled predecessors a system of writing which they quickly learned (§ 167). But the old Cretan writing (§ 340), once used by the iEgean predecessors of the Greeks, had perished. No one had ever yet written a word of the Greek language in this age when the Greeks were adopting the settled agricultural life. This lack of writing greatly increased the difficulties to be met as a government arose and its transactions began. There arose in some communities a "rememberer,” whose duty it was to notice carefully the terms of a contract, the amount of a loan, or the conditions of a treaty with a neighboring people, that he might remember these and innumerable other things, which in a more civilized society are recorded in writing.
In course of time the group of villages forming the nucleus of a tribe grew together and merged at last into a city. This was the most important process in Greek political development; for the organized city became the only nation which the Greeks ever knew. Each city-state was a sovereign power; each had its own laws, its own army and gods, and each citizen felt a patriotic duty toward his own city and no other. Overlooking the city from the heights in its midst was the king’s castle (Fig. 144), which we call the "citadel/’ or "acropolis.” Eventually, the houses and the market below were protected by a wall. The king had now become a revered and powerful ruler of the city, and guardian of the worship of the city. gods. King and Council sat all day in the market and adjusted the business and the disputes between the people. Though crude, corrupt, and often unjust, these continuous sessions for the first time created a state and an uninterrupted government.
389. Lack
of writing among the early Greeks
390. Rise of the city-state
262
Ancient Times
391. Rise of Greek civilization in the Age of the Kings (1000 750 B.C.)
There were hundreds of such city-states throughout the mainland of Greece and the coasts and islands of the yiCgean. Indeed the yEgean world was' made up of such tiny nations after the Greeks had made the transition to the settled life there. It was while the Greeks were thus living in these little city-kingdoms under kings that Greek civilization arose. While there were Greek kings long before 1000 B.C., it is especially after that date, during the last two and a half centuries of the rule of the kings (1000—750 B.C.), that we are able to follow the rise of Greek civilization.
QUESTIONS
Section 37. To what race did the Greeks belong? Had they always lived in Greece ? Whence did they come ? Were they accustomed to settled town life? What kind of surroundings as to civilization did they now enter ? Describe their settlement and spread in the Mgean world; in Asia Minor. What was the effect upon the predecessors of the Greeks in the ^Egean? in Asia Minor? Mention evidence of the flight of the ^Egeans. Who were the Philistines and where did they settle ? What happened to JEgean civilization ? to architecture ? to industries ? to writing ? What became of the ^Egeans who remained behind? Describe the results as to language.
Section 38. Did the Greeks at once take to the sea? Did they take up town life at once? What other nomad peoples have we found in the same situation? What social institutions did the Greeks bring with them ? What can you say of the social effects of agriculture and landownership ? How did the Greeks get along without writing? What became of the villages around each Greek town? Did the Greek towns all unite into one great nation including all the Greeks? What was each Greek nation? Toward what did the Greek feel patriotism ? Describe a Greek city-state. Were there many of them? Was there a nation including all the JEgean world? Who was at the head of each city-state ? What was the form of government when Greek civilization arose ? Date the period when we are able to trace the rise of Greek civilization.
CHAPTER X
GREEK CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF THE KINGS
Section 39. The JEgean Inheritance and the Spread of Phoenician Commerce
In one very important matter the Greek invaders were more fortunate than their iEgean predecessors. The iron which we have seen spreading in the Orient from the Hittite country (§360) had at the same time (thirteenth century B.C.) also begun to reach the Greeks. It was of course a matter of some centuries before iron tools and weapons entirely displaced those of bronze, just as the automobile will be a long time in entirely banishing the horse from among us. Indeed, after iron had been in common use among the Greeks for over five hundred years, the Greek poet ^Eschylus (§ 578) called it the " stranger from across the sea,” or " the Chalybean stranger,” the Chalybean region being the iron district of Asia Minor (see
Note. The above headpiece is a Greek vase-painting showing a battle scene from the Trojan War. In the middle is the fallen Achilles, for the possession of whose body a desperate combat is going on (§ 407). Here we see the armor of the early Greek warriors — a round shield on the left arm, a long spear in the right hand. A heavy two-edged sword was also carried, but the bow was not common. Only one warrior here uses it. The face is protected by a heavy helmet crowned by a tall plume of horsehair, and the body is covered by a bronze corselet, a jacket of metal reaching from the neck to the waist. Below the knees the legs are protected by bronze fronts called greaves. At the extreme left a comrade binds up a wounded warrior, on whose shield is the bird of his family arms’ (cf. Fig. 27). Behind him the goddess Athena watches the combat. The painting is done in the older style of black figures on a red ground (contrast Fig. 170). The artist has inserted the names of the warriors, some written from left to right and some in the other direction (cf. headpiece, p. 282).
263
392. Beginning of the Iron Age (about IOOO B.C.)
264
Ancient Times
393. Memories of y£gean civilization, and the dawn of Greek civilization
394. Oriental influences: clothing
map, p. 100). By 1000 B.C. iron was common in Greece. The Bronze Age had therefore lasted about two thousand years, that is, about as long as the career of the ^Egean civilization. We may say indeed that the period of y£gean civilization coincided with the Bronze Age (3000-1000 B.C.), while the civilization of the Greeks arose at the incoming of the Iron Age (about 1000 B.C.).
Long after 1000 B.C. the life of the Greeks continued to be rude and even barbarous. Memories of the old JEgean splendor lingered in the plain of Argos. Above the Greek village at Mycenae still towered the massive stone walls (Fig. 145) of the ancient yEgean princes, who had long before passed away. To these huge walls the Greeks looked up with awe-struck faces and thought that they had been built by vanished giants called Cyclops. Or with wondering admiration they fingered some surviving piece of rich metal work wrought by the skill of the ancient JEgean craftsmen (Fig. 140). The tradition that Crete was the earliest home of their civilization never died out among the Greeks. Without any skill in craftsmanship, the Greek shepherds and peasants were slow to take up building, industries, and manufacturing on their own account. Their slowness is also evident in the matter of writing, which the Greeks, as we have seen (§ 389), failed to learn from their JEgean predecessors. For a long time even the dwellings of the Greek kings were usually but simple farmhouses of sun-dried brick, where the swine wandered unhindered into the court or slumbered in the sunshine beside the royal doorway. They made a beginning at pottery, and the rude paintings with which they decorated this rough ware (Fig. 155) show that the same methods employed by the yEgean potters in producing their fine ware in Crete a thousand years earlier (Fig. 136) were still lingering on in a decadent state.
When we remember the experience of the JEgean peoples (§§ 332—333), we perceive that the Greeks were now exposed to the same oriental influences which had so strongly affected early
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 265
Fig. 155. Primitive Greek Art as shown in a Painted Vase of the Age of the Kings
This very fine specimen, over 3! feet high, one of the few well-preserved primitive Greek vases, was recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of New York. It represents Greek art in its beginnings in the eighth century B.C. We see that the beautiful flowers, sea plants, and other natural objects employed by the ^igeans in their decorative art were abandoned by the early
JE gean civilization. The Greek townsmen had now put off the shaggy sheepskin of their former nomad life in favor of a shirtlike garment of woven wool. They had no name for it in Greek, but they heard the foreign merchants of whom they bought it calling it in their'language a kiton (ke ton') (Fig. 156).
To purchase articles like this, which they did not themselves make, the townsmen often went down to the seashore, where they and their women gathered about a ship drawn up with stem on the beach. Black-bearded traders, who overlooked the crowd from the high stem
Greek vase-painters, in favor of bands of geometrical designs. The two rows of scenes show a funeral above, with the body lying on a high bier. Below is a procession of warriors with dumb-bell-shaped shields, and four-wheeled chariots each with three horses very rudely drawn. Compare the fine horses painted by the Greeks only a century and a half later (Fig. 164) and the magnificent steeds painted four and a half centuries later (Fig. 202). The practical working method employed in this work by the primitive Greek potter and vase-painter was wholly borrowed from his yEgean predecessors (§ 393)
395- The
wares of the
Phoenician
merchants
396. Expansion of Phoenician commerce
266 Ancient Times
of the ship, tempted the Greeks with glass or alabaster perfume
bottles from Egypt (Fig. 49) and rich blue Porcelain dishes' If the women did not bid'for these, they were quite unable to resist certain handsome ivory combs carved with lions in openwork (Fig. 157), and polished till they shone in the sun.
Wealthy Greeks were attracted by furniture elaborately inlaid with ivory carvings (Fig. 108), and especially by magnificent large round platters of bronze or even of silver, richly engraved (Fig. 158). Splendid purple robes hanging over the stem of the ship enriched the display of golden jewelry with flashes of brilliant color. Here too were the kitons, as we would have heard these swarthy strangers from the sea calling them. They were Phoenicians, and the word for the new garment adopted by the Greeks was a Phoenician word (see map II, p. 252).
We see then that with the fall of the Egyptian Empire (after 1200 B.C.) the ships of Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean had disappeared. The same fate had at the same time overtaken the fleets of the ^Egeans. Thus the eastern Mediterranean was left unoccupied by merchant fleets, and by 1000 B.C. the Phoenician cities (Fig. T59) were taking advantage of this opportunity. Once dwellers in the desert like the Hebrews, we remember that the Phoenicians had early occupied the towns along the Syrian coast (§ 141), where they became clever navigators. The Greek craftsmen were as yet quite unable to produce such wares as the Phoenician merchant offered, and hence these oriental traders did a thriving business wherever they landed.
Fig. 156. Phcenician Garment adopted by the Greeks
The Greeks called this garment a kiton (early pronounced ke ton'; later, chi ton') (see §§ 394-395)-The garments of women may be seen in Fig. 170
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 267
Nor did the Phoenicians stop with the yEgean world. They sought markets also in the West, and they were the discoverers of the western Mediterranean.
They finally planted settlements even as far away as the Atlantic coast of Spain (Fig. 157). Their colony of Carthage (map, p. 288) became the most important commercial state in the western Mediterranean and the most dangerous rival of Rome, as we shall see (Sections 77 f.). For some three centuries after 1000 B.C. they were the greatest merchants in the Mediterranean, and their far-reaching traffic was beginning the slow creation of a great mercantile Mediterranean world. They had no armies, however, and little political organization. * The only Phoenician colony that ever became a strong state was Carthage.
The Phoenicians learned the methods of manufacturing their goods, in almost all cases, from Egypt. There they learned to make glass and porcelain, to weave linen and dye it, to cast and hammer and- engrave metal.
On the other hand, we find that the designs employed in their art were international. Their metal platters (Fig. 158) they engraved with designs which they found in both Egypt and Asia. The art of Phoenicia was thus a kind of oriental composite or combination, drawn' chiefly from the Nile and the Two Rivers.
Fig. 157. Ancient Phoenician Comb of Carved Ivory
Such wares, manufactured at Sidon and Tyre, were distributed by the Phoenician merchants through the Mediterranean (§395) as far west as Spain, where combs like this have been found in ancient graves. The lion adorning this comb is the form that developed in Syria (cf. Plate II). Phoenician craftsmen doing such work were also kept by the Assyrian emperors at Nineveh, and pieces of their work have been found there (Fig. 108) bearing Phoenican signs
397. The
Phoenicians the earliest explorers of the western Mediterranean
398. Growth of Phoenician art and industries ; their composite international character
268
Ancient Times
399. Oriental decorative art reaches Europe
We remember that it was Phoenician workmen whom the Assyrian kings employed to make furniture and metal work for the royal palace (Fig. 108). King Solomon likewise employed Phoe-
' ' work-
Fig. 158. Ancient Phoenician Platter of Engraved and Beaten Work
This silver platter, now in the Berlin Museum, is of beautiful workmanship. A circular stream of water surrounds a rosette in the middle. On the water are four Nile boats (one of them in the form of a swan), outside of which is a circular border of papyrus flowers. The Phoenicians were very skillful in such metal work, which they thus adorned with Egyptian and Assyrian designs. Pieces of it have been found as far west as Spain and as far east as Nineveh, whither they were carried by the Phoenician merchants
nician men to build for him the Hebrew temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings, v). After 1000 B.C. the Phoenicians were thus the artistic manufacturers of a great world extending from Nineveh on the east to Greece on the west.
On the metal platters and» the furniture of carved ivory landed from the Phoenician ships (§ 395), the Greek craftsmen found
decorations made up of palm trees, lotus flowers, hunting scenes along the Nile, the Assyrian tree of life (Fig. 102), and many other picturesque things, but especially those strange winged creatures of oriental fancy, the sphinx, the gryphon, the winged horse. The Greeks soon began to imitate these things in their
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 269
own work. Thus the whole range of oriental decorative art entered Greek life, to fill forever after a large place in the decorative art of all civilized peoples of the West, including our own to-day. At the same time it is highly probable that in the Phoenician workshops in the JEgean islands the Greeks could work side by side with the Phoenician craftsmen and learn how
Fig. 159. The Ancient Phcenician Harbor of Sidon as it now appears
It was from this harbor that the Phcenician colonists sailed forth to establish new cities in the western Mediterranean, especially Carthage (§ 397)- In the Homeric poems the Phoenicians are often called Sido-nians. The town seen across the harbor is entirely modern, for the ancient city was again and again destroyed and rebuilt. Here the Phcenician ships were loaded with the goods manufactured in the city (Figs. 157 and 158), to be carried to the Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples; and here an alphabet first came into common use (§ 400)
to make hollow bronze casts, an art invented in Egypt, and to manufacture many other things which were bringing such commercial success to the Phcenician merchants. Nevertheless, so little of the refined JEgean art of the Grand Age had survived that there are products of the Greeks in this period that are hardly as good as the work of the Middle Stone Age (compare the horses in Figs. 155 and 10, 6).
270
Ancient Times
400. The
Phoenicians devise an alphabet (about 1000 B.C.)
401. The
Phoenicians arrange their new letters in a fixed order and give them names
Section 40. The Phoenicians bring the First Alphabet to Europe
But styles of dress, decorative art, and the practical methods of the craftsman were not the only things which the Phoenician merchants were bringing into Greece. For the Greeks now received from the Phoenicians a priceless gift, far more valuable than all the manufactured wares of the Orient. Indeed it was the most important contribution that ever reached Europe from abroad. This new gift was an alphabet. By 1000 B.C. the Phoenicians had long since given up the inconvenient clay tablet of Babylonia (Fig. 7 9). Indeed a century before this date they were already importing great quantities of papyrus paper from Egypt. Then they devised their own system of twenty-two signs (Fig. 160, column I) for writing their own language. It contained no signs for syllables, but each sign represented a single consonant. There were no signs for the vowels, which therefore remained unwritten. The Phoenicians were thus the first people to devise a system of writing containing nothing but alphabetic signs ; that is, true letters. This great achievement of the Phoenicians was largely due to Egyptian influences.
The Phoenicians arranged their new letters in a convenient order, so that the whole twenty-two might form a fixed list (Fig. 160, column I), easily learned. Such a list could not be learned without giving to each letter a name. They called the first letter of the alphabet ox, because the Phoenician word for ox, that is, aleph, began with the first letter. The second letter of the alphabet they called house, because beth, the Phoenician word for house, began with the second letter, and so on. This was not unlike our old primers, where our parents learned to say : 'lA is for ' Axe 7; B is for ' Bed,’ ” etc. When the children of the Phoenician merchants learned their letters, and were called upon to repeat the alphabet, they therefore began: "Aleph, beth," etc., as if our children were to say: "Axe, Bed,” etc., instead of " A, B,” etc.
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 271
The Phoenicians seem to have had little literature, but their 402. Phce-merchants kept all their business records in this new and con- bet'firsf'seen venient writing on papyrus. Just as the Arameans carried the b>' Greeks Phoenician alphabet from the Mediterranean eastward through Asia to India (§ 205), so now the Phoenicians themselves carried it through the Mediterranean westward to Europe. The Greeks whom we have seen crowding around the Phoenician ships often found the Phoenicians handling bits of pale-yellow paper, on which were written bills and lists of merchandise in strange black signs. These the Greeks at first viewed with misgivings, as mysterious and dangerous symbols. One of their ancient songs of this age speaks of them as " baneful signs.1' Here and there a Greek merchant, thumbing the Phoenician tradesman’s papyrus bills, finally learned the alphabet in which they were written, and slowly began to .note down Greek words spelled with Phoenician letters.
Here the Greeks early displayed the mental superiority 403. Greeks
. , * , ■ •, adopt and
which, as we shall soon discover, they possessed. 1 hey noticed perfect Phce-
that there were no Phoenician letters standing for vowels-, tet'by adding
They also noticed in the Phoenician alphabet a few letters ™^sc()about
representing consonants which did not exist in Greek speech.
These letters they began to use for the Greek vowels (Fig. i6o;-
cf. columns I and II). They thus took the final step in the
process of devising a complete system of alphabetic writing.
It slowly spread among the Greek states, beginning in Ionia.
For a long time it remained only a convenience in business and
administration. For centuries the nobles, unable to read or write,
continued to regard writing with misgivings. But even the
painters of pottery jars had learned to use it by 700 B.C., when
we find it on their decorated vases (see headpiece, p. 282).
Shortly after this it was common among all classes. Literature
nevertheless long remained an oral matter and was much
slower than business to resort to writing.
The Greek children, in learning to read, used for the letters the same names which had been employed in Phoenicia. The
272
Ancient Times
404. Phoenician origin of the'alphabets of the civilized world
Greeks, not knowing what these strange names meant, altered them somewhat; but the Greek children began to pronounce
the foreign names of the letters in the fixed order already settled in Phoenicia, saying "Alpha, beta,” etc. (instead of "Aleph, beth,” etc.) (§ 401). As a child of to-day is said to be learning his A B C’s, so the Greek child learned his Alpha Beta’s, and thus arose our word *' alphabet.” The word " alphabet,” therefore, should remind us of the great debt we owe to the Orient, and especially to the Phoenicians, for the priceless gift of alphabetic writing. For the Phoenician alphabet spread from Greece to Italy and at last throughout Europe. Indeed, every alphabet of the civilized world has descended from the Phoenician alphabet.
|
I |
11 |
III |
IV |
V |
|
K < 0 55 W X |
Early Greek read frnm right to left |
Later Greek read from left to right |
Latin |
X z HI |
|
K |
A |
A |
A |
A |
|
$ |
S 9 |
6 |
B |
B |
|
7 |
1 |
■ < |
CG |
C.G |
|
A |
A |
A |
D |
D |
|
3 |
■a |
6 |
E |
E |
|
r |
Y |
F V |
F.V.U | |
|
=e |
I |
X |
Z | |
|
w |
E |
8 |
H |
E.H |
|
© |
® |
® |
TH.PH | |
|
=1 |
* |
1 |
1 | |
|
>1 |
K |
K.KH | ||
|
c |
✓ H1 |
U/* |
L |
L |
|
V |
"1 |
r |
M |
M . |
|
1 |
N |
N |
N | |
|
# |
5 |
X |
X | |
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
■ 0 |
0 |
|
1 |
1 |
n |
p |
P |
|
y |
M |
S | ||
|
«? |
q> |
9 |
Q |
Q |
|
<1 |
P |
R |
R | |
|
w |
i |
? |
S |
S |
|
X |
T |
T |
T |
T |
Fig. 160. Table showing Phoenician Letters passed Greek and Latin Forms
their Present English Forms *
how THE through
TO REACH
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 273
Along with the alphabet, the equipment for using it — that is, pen, ink, and paper—for the first time came into Europe. Paper also brought in with it its oriental names. For the Greeks received from abroad the word papyros, designating the Egyptian paper on which they wrote, and we remember that this word has in its English form become " paper" (see § 58). Much of the papyrus used by the Greeks was delivered to them by Phcenician merchants from Byblos, a famous Phcenician city._ Just as we apply the word "china” to a kind of table ware which first came to us from China, so the Greeks often called papyrus ■byblos after the Phcenician city from which it came. Thus when they began to write books on rolls of such paper (Fig. 191) they called them biblia. It is from this term that we received our word " Bible ” (literally " book ” or " books ”). Hence the English word " Bible,” once the name of a Phoenician city, is another living evidence of the origin' of books and the paper of which they are made in the ancient Orient, from which the Greeks received so much.
Section 41. Greek Warriors and the Hero Songs
The Greek nobles of this age loved war and were devoted to fighting and plundering. It was a frequent sight to see the Greek warrior waving farewell to his family before the pillared porch of his home, as he mounted the waiting chariot and rode forth to battle. The vase-painters have often left us pictures
* Column I contains the Phoenician alphabet made up exclusively of consonants (§ 400). The Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and hence the Greeks at first wrote in the same direction. The names of the warriors in the vase-painting (headpiece, p. 263) are several of them written in this way; hence column II shows letters like B "backward,” as we say. The Greeks then gradually changed and wrote from left to right, and the next column (III) shows the letters facing as they do in our present alphabet (see B in column III). The transition from these later forms of the Greek letters (column III) to the Latin forms (column IV) was very easy, and the Latin forms hardly differed from those which we still use (column V).
405. Oriental origin of the words paper” and " Bible ”
406. The equipment of the Greek warrior in the Age of the Kings
274
Ancient Times
407. Battle and the customs of war in the Age of the Kings
408. Rise of the hero songs
of such warriors (headpiece, p. 263). While their protective armor was of bronze, their weapons were at this time commonly of iron, although bronze weapons still lingered on, and in their tales of the great wars of the past the Greeks still told how the heroes of older days fought with bronze weapons.
It was only men of some wealth who possessed a fighting outfit like this. Thjey were the leading warriors. The ordinary troops, lacking armor, were of little consequence in battle, which consisted of a series of single combats, each between two heroes. Their individual skill, experience, and daring won the battle, rather than the discipline of drilled masses. The victor seized his fallen adversary’s armor and weapons; and having fastened the naked body of the vanquished to his chariot, he dragged it triumphantly across the field, only to expose it to be devoured by birds of prey and wild animals. There was thus many a savage struggle to rescue the body of a fallen hero (headpiece, p. 263). When a Greek town was captured, its unhappy people were slaughtered or carried away as slaves, and its houses plundered and burned. There was savage joy in such treatment of the vanquished, and such deeds were thought to increase the fame and glory of the victors.
Men delighted to sing of valiant achievements on the field of battle and to tell of the stirring deeds of mighty heroes. In the pastures of Thessaly, where the singer looked up at the cloud-veiled summit of Mount Olympus (Fig. 153), the home of the gods, there early grew up a group of such songs telling many a story of the feats of gods and heroes, the earliest literature of the Greeks. Into these songs were woven also vague memories of remote wars which had actually occurred, especially the war in which the Greeks had captured and destroyed the splendid city of Troy (§ 375 and Fig. 151). Probably by 1000 B.C. some of these songs had crossed to the coasts and islands of Ionia on the Asiatic side of the ^Egean Sea.
Here arose a class of professional bards who graced the feasts of king and noble with songs of battle and adventure
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 275
recited to the music of the harp. Framed in exalted and ancient forms of speech, and rolling on in stately measures,1 these heroic songs resounded through many a royal hall — the oldest literature born in Europe. After the separate songs had greatly increased in number, they were finally woven together by the bards into a connected whole — a great epic ' cycle especially clustering about the traditions of the Greek expedition against Troy. They were not the work of one man, but a growth of several centuries by generations of singers, some of whom were still living even after 700 B.C.
It was then that they were first written down.
Among these ancient singers there seems to have
been one of great fame whose name was Homer (Fig. 161). His reputation was such that the composition of the whole cycle of songs, then much larger than the remnant which has come down to us, was attributed to him. Then as the Greeks themselves later discerned the impossibility of Homer’s authorship of them all, they credited him only with the Iliad,2 the story of the Greek expedition against Troy; and the Odyssey,
Fig. 161. An Ideal Portrait of Homer
This head, from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is a noble example of the later Greek sculptor’s ability to create an ideal portrait of a poet whom he had never seen. Such work was unknown in the archaic days of Greece; it was produced in the Hellenistic Age
409. The
Ionian
singers
410. Homer
1 These were in hexameter; that is, six feet to a line. This Greek verse is the oldest literary form in Europe.
2 So named after Ilium, the Greek name of Troy.
276
Ancient Times
411. The
Homeric songs our earliest literary record of the Greeks
412. The Homeric songs and Greek religion
413. Primitive Greek religion before the Homeric songs
or the tale of the wanderings of the hero Odysseus on his return from Troy. These are the only two series of songs that have entirely survived, and even the ancient world had its doubts about the Homeric authorship of the Odyssey.
These ancient bards not only gave the world its greatest epic . in the Iliad, but they were, moreover, the earliest Greeks to put into permanent literary form their thoughts regarding the world of gods and men. .At that time the Greeks had no other sacred books, and the Homeric songs became the veritable Bible of Greece. They gave to the disunited Greeks a common literature and the inspiring belief that they had once all taken part in a common war against Asia.
Section 42. The Beginnings and Early Development of Greek Religion
Just as devout Hebrews were taught much about their God by the beautiful tales of Him in the narrative of the great Unknown Historian (§ 302), so the wonderful Homeric songs brought vividly before the Greeks the life of the gods. Homer became the religious teacher of the Greeks. To us too he reveals a great chapter in the story of Greek religion. For like that of the Hebrews, the religion of the Greeks was a slow growth, passing gradually from a low stage to ever higher and nobler beliefs. There was, therefore, a chapter of Greek religion earlier than the Homeric songs. Let us look for a moment at the religion, of Greece before the Homeric songs.
Every Greek, like all primitive men,.once thought that the trees and springs, the stones and hilltops, the birds and beasts, were creatures possessed of strange and uncanny powers. He thought- there was such a spirit in the dark recesses of the earth which made the grain sprout and the trees flourish; in the gloomy depths of the waters also, he believed there dwelt a like spirit which swayed the great sea; while still another ruled the far sweep of the overhanging sky. As the Greek peasant,
Plate III. The Plain of Argos and the Sea viewed from the Castle of Tiryns
A typical Greek landscape with plain and mountain and sea (§ 371). Before us is one of the harbors of Argos, which looked southward directly upon Crete, whence came the first civilization that reached the mainland of Europe (§ 347) and created the cities of Tiryns {Fig. 144) and Mycenae {Fig. 145)
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 277
terrified by the jagged lightning and the rolling thunder, or grateful for the gently falling rain, looked up into the misty cloudland of the sky, he often saw the solitary eagle soaring across the vast and lonely expanse. To him the lofty, mysterious bird seemed to be the mighty spirit of the sky, who dwelt there and in his wrath smote the great trees with fire, or in kinder moods sent down the refreshing rain. Thus to some Greeks the sky spirit seemed to be an eagle.
Each such spirit, friendly or hostile, dwelt in a limited region, and it was believed possible to gain his favor or avoid his anger by simple gifts, especially food. The earth spirit might be reached by slaying a sheep and letting the blood flow into the earth; while the sky spirit would be won by burning a thigh of the sheep so that its odor might rise to the sky with the soaring smoke. Thus these spirits of the world around the early Greeks became gods and goddesses, and thus arose worship with its sacred customs and usages. There were no temples or houses of worship, and all the simple usages of religion went on out of doors in a grove or in the open air in the court of the house.
We remember that the Hebrews never lost their belief in their great-God Yahweh, whom they brought with them into the land of Palestine; and so the Greeks likewise brought into Greece various ideas of the great Sky-god whom they had already worshiped in the old days on the grasslands. He had different names; in one valley they called him " Rain-giver,” in another “Thunderbolt” (§ 413). But he was finally known to all as Zeus, which was simply the Greek form of an old word for "sky” in the language-of the Indo-European parent people. He became the highest god among all the numerous gods and goddesses revered by the Greeks.
But Greek religion continued to grow after the Greeks had reached the ^Egean world. Here they found the ^Egeans worshiping the great earth spirit, the Earth-Mother, or the Great Mother, who made the earth bring forth her grain and fruit
414. The rise of worship and its customs
415. The
Greeks bring Zeus the Sky-god into the /Egean world
416. Divinities of the /Egean world accepted by the Greeks
278
Ancient Times
417. The gods gain human form; surviving traces of old animal forms
418. Zeus and tKe"clwell-ing of the gods on Mount Olympus ;• Apollo
as the food of man (headpiece, p. 221). From the yEgeans the Greeks learned to revere her also, so that she became one of the great goddesses of Greek religion. The Greeks thus accepted the gods and goddesses whom they found in the iEgean world, just as many of the Hebrews accepted the Canaanite Baals which they found already in Palestine (§ 300).
The Homeric songs, as we have said, reveal to us a second chapter in Greek religion, when the Greeks were gaining higher ideas about their gods. To be sure, even Homer has here and there an ancient reference which betrays their earlier animal forms, as when he speaks of a goddess as " owl-faced ” or even "cow-faced.” Likewise the Satyrs, merry spirits of the forest, always had goat’s hoofs and horns; while the Centaurs were men with the bodies of horses. But those nature spirits, which gained a high place as gods and goddesses, appeared in the Homeric songs as entirely human in form and in qualities. Of course they possessed more power than mortals, and at the same time they enjoyed the gift of immortality.
In the Homeric songs and in the primitive tales about the gods, which we call myths, the Greeks heard how the gods dwelt in veiled splendor among the clouds on the summit of Mount Olympus. There, in his cloud palace, Zeus the Sky-god, with the lightning in his hand, ruled the gods like an earthly king. Each of the gods controlled as his own a realm of nature or of the affairs of men. Apollo, the Sun-god, whose beams were golden arrows, was the deadly archer of the gods. ** But he also shielded the flocks of the shepherds and the fields of the plowman, and he was a wondrous musician. Above all he knew the future ordained by Zeus and could, when properly consulted, tell anxious inquirers what the future had in store for them. These qualities gave him a larger place in the hearts of all Greeks than Zeus himself, and in actual worship he became the most beloved god of the Greek world.
Athena, the greatest goddess of the Greeks, seems in ttfe beginning to have ruled the air, and swayed the destroying
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 279
tempests that swept the Greek lands. Such power made her a warrior goddess, and the Greeks loved to think of her with shining weapons, protecting the Greek cities. But she held out her protecting hand over them also in times of peace, as the potters shaped their jars, the smiths wrought their metal, or the women wove their wool. Athena too had brought them the olive tree, as they believed, and thus she became the wise and gracious protectress of the peaceful life of industry and art. Of all her divine companions she was the wisest in counsel, and an ancient tale told how she had been born in the very l^rain of her father Zeus, from whose head she sprang forth full-armed. As the divine foster mother of all that was best in Greek life, she was the loveliest of the protecting' powers which the quick and sensitive imagination of the Greeks felt everywhere watching over the life and work of men. These three then, Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, became the leading divinities of the Greek world.
At the same time a further group of ancient nature spirits had risen to be great gods, each controlling some special realm. In a brazen palace deep under the waters, Poseidon ruled the sea. The ancient Earth-Mother, whom they called Demeter, still brought forth the produce of the soil. At the same time they looked also to another earth god, Dionysus, for the fruit of the grapevine, and they rejoiced in the wine which he gave them. An old moon spirit had now become Hermes the messenger of the gods, with winged feet, doing the bidding of the gods, but he was also the patron of the intercourse of men, and hence the god of trade and commerce. Some of the Greeks, however, in the old days, seeing the moon above the forest margin, had believed it to be a goddess, a divine huntress riding through the forests at night. They called her Artemis. Others, however, had fancied the moon to belong in the sky as the wife of Zeus, whom they called Hera, and she became the protectress of marriage. The Semitic goddess of love, whom we have met on the Fertile Crescent as Ishtar (§ 191), had
419. Athena, protectress of Greek cities
420. Poseidon, Demeter, Dionysus, Hermes, Artemis, Hera, and Aphrodite
280
Ancient Times
421. The Greek gods at first show human defects of character
422. Greek beliefs about the dead
now passed over from the Syrian cities by way of Cyprus, to become likewise the Greek goddess of love, whom the Greeks called Aphrodite.
All these divinities and some others less important, the Greeks now pictured in human form. It was but natural, too, that they should be thought of as possessing human traits. Homer pictures to us the family quarrels between the august Zeus and his wife Hera, just as such things must have occurred in the household life of the Greeks, and certainly in a manner absurdly undignified for such exalted divinities. The Greeks thought of the gods therefore as showing decidedly human defects of character. They practiced all sorts of deceit and displayed many other human frailties. Such gods were not likely to require anything better in the character of men. Religion was therefore not yet an influence leading to good conduct and right character. In this particular, then, the Greeks were passing through an early stage of an uncompleted development, just such as we have found in the civilizations of the Orient.
One reason why the Greeks did not yet think that the gods required right conduct of men was their notion of life after death. They believed that all men passed at death into a gloomy kingdom beneath the earth (Hades), where the fate of good men did not differ from that of the wicked. Here ruled Pluto as king, and his wife, the goddess Persephone. As a special favor of the gods, the heroes, men of mighty and godlike deeds, were endowed with immortality and permitted to enjoy a life of endless bliss in the beautiful Elysian Fields, or the Islands of the Blest, somewhere in the Far West, toward the unexplored ocean. The Greeks seem to have brought with them from their earlier wanderings the custom of burning their dead. They continued this custom on reaching Greece, but they adopted also the yEgean usage of preserving the body as in Egypt -and burying it. The primitive notion that the dead must be furnished with food and drink still survived. The
Greek Civilization in the Age of the Kings 281
tombs of the ancestors-thus became sacred places where gifts of food and drink were regularly brought and offered to the dead.
Every household in the little Greek towns felt that the safety of the house was in the hands of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth. But in the Age of the Kings the symbols of the great gods were set up in every house, while in the dwelling of the king there was a special room which served as a kind of shrine for them. There was also an altar in the forecourt where sacrifices could be offered under the open sky (Fig. 144). In so far as the gods had any dwellings at all, we see that they were in the -houses of men, and there probably were no temples as yet. Here and there in some communities men were to be found who were thought to possess rare knowledge of the desires of the gods. As these men were more and more often consulted by those who felt ignorant of the proper ceremonies of sacrifice and worship, such men gradually became priests.
QUESTIONS
Section 39. What important metal came in at the rise of Greek civilization? What had happened to the arts and crafts of the yEgeans? Did the Greeks possess any craftsmen? What do you think of the horses on the Greek vase of the Age of the Kings? Compare it with Middle Stone Age carving? From whom did the Greeks chiefly buy manufactured products? What can you tell about this commerce ? What did it teach the Greeks ?
Section 40. What else did the Phoenicians bring in besides manufactured goods ? Tell about the Phoenician alphabet. How did it reach Greece ? What is the origin of the word ".alphabet ” ? How far has the Phoenician alphabet spread ?
Section 41. Describe early Greek arms and warfare. What was the relation of valiant- deeds and song ? Around what event did such songs cluster? Tell of Homer and the poems attributed to him.
Section 42; How did the Homeric songs affect religion ? What can you say of Greek religion before the Homeric songs arose? Did the Greeks bring in some gods when they entered Greece? Name the leading Greek divinities, and tell something of each. Discuss Greek beliefs about the dead; customs and places of worship.
423. Lack of temples; rise of priests
CHAPTER XI
424. Geographical influences against a union of all Greeks in one nation
THE AGE OF THE NOBLES AND GREEK EXPANSION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
Section 43. The Disappearance of the Kings and the Leadership of the Nobles
We haye seen Greek civilization beginning under oriental influences. In its political development, however, the Greek world showed striking differences from what we have seen in the Orient. There we watched the early city-states finally
Note. The headpiece above is of an early Greek sea fight in the days of the kings. This Greek vase-painting shows us the Greek nobles in the days when they were taking to the water as pirates (§ 431). The warriors are armed as on land (see headpiece, p. 263). As to the model of the ships, see Fig. 162. Aris-tonothos, the artist who made this vase-painting, has inserted his name over the standard at the right, in the lower row, where the letters run to the right and drop down. It reads " Aristonothos made it.” This is not only the earliest-signed vase, but is likewise the earliest-signed work of art, crude though it may be, in Europe. It shows us that the Greek artist was gaining increasing pride in his work* and it is one of the earliest signs of individuality in Greek history $b<}ut 7oqb*c.
282
The Age of the Nobles 283
uniting into two large and powerful nations, one on the Nile and another on the Two Rivers. In Greece, however, there were influences which tended to prevent such a union of the Greeks into one nation. In the first place the country was cut up by mountain ridges and deep bays, so that the different communities were quite separated. The cities of Greece were likewise separated from their kindred in the islands and in Asia Minor.
Furthermore, no recollection of their former unity on the grasslands survived, even in their oldest traditions. They had now lived so long in separated communities that they had developed permanent local habits and local dialects, as different ' as those of North and South Germany or even more differerit than those between our own Louisiana and New England. The various Greek communities thus displayed such intense devotion to their own town and their own local gods that a union of all the Greek city-states into one nation, such as we have seen in the Orient, failed to take place. As a result of these separative influences we find in Greece after 1000 B.C. scores of little city-states such as we have already described (§ 390). Not only did the islands and the Greek city-states of Asia Minor fail to unite, but on the island of Crete alone there were more than fifty such small city-states.
Four regions on the mainland of Greece, each forming a pretty clearly outlined geographical whole, like the peninsula of Laconia or that of Attica (see map, p. 264), permitted the union of city-states into a larger nation. The oldest of these four nations seems to have been Argos (map, p. 264). In this plain the town of Argos subdued the ancient strongholds of Mycenae and Tiryns (Figs. 144 and 145) and others in the vicinity, forming the nation of Argos and giving its name to the plain (Plate III, p. 276). In the same way the kings of Sparta conquered the two peninsulas on the south of them and finally also the land of the Messenians on the west. The two kingdoms of Argos and Sparta thus held a large part of the Peloponnese.
425. Other influences operating against political unity
426. The four unions: Argos and Sparta
284
Ancient Times
427. Athens and Thebes
428. Internal development of the Greek state contrasted with the Orient
429. The
Greek state and the' struggle toward democracy
430. Rise of a noble class, the eupatrids
In the Attic peninsula, likewise, the little city-kingdoms were slowly absorbed by Athens, which at last gained control of the entire peninsula. On the northern borders of Attica the region of Boeotia fell under the leadership of Thebes, but the other Boeotian cities were too strong to be wholly subdued. Boeotia, therefore, did not form a nation but a group of city-states in alliance, with Thebes at the head of the alliance. Elsewhere no large and permanent unions were formed. Sparta and Athens, therefore, led the most important two unions among all the Greeks. Let it be borne in mind that such a nation remained a city-state in spite of its increased territory. The nation occupying the Attic peninsula was called Athens, and every peasant in Attica was called an Athenian. The city government of Athens covered the whole Attic peninsula.
In the matter of governing such a little city-state the Greeks about 750 B.C. entered upon a new stage of their development, which was again very different from that which we have found in the Orient. However discontented the common people of an oriental state might become, their discontent never accomplished more than the overthrow of one king and the enthronement of another. The office of king was never abolished, nor did any other form of government than that of monarchy ever arise in the ancient East (§ 322).
Among the Greeks, too, the common people struggled for centuries to better their lot. As we shall see, this long and bitter struggle finally resulted in giving the people in some Greek states so large a share in governing that the form of the government might be called democracy. This is a word of Greek origin, meaning " the rule of the people,” and the Greeks were the first people of the ancient world to gain it.
The cause of this struggle was not only the corrupt rule of the kings but also the oppression of the nobles. We have watched these men of wealth buying the luxuries of the Phoenician merchants. They now stood in the way, opposing the rights of the peasants. By fraud, unjust seizure of lands,
/
The Age of the Nobles
285
union of. families in marriage,' and many other influences, the strong men of ability and cleverness were able to enlarge their lands. Thus there had arisen a class of hereditary nobles — large landholders and men of wealth, called eupatrids.
Their fields stretched for some miles around the city and its neighboring villages. In order to be near the king or secure membership in the Council (§ 385) and control the government, these men often left their lands and lived in the city. Such was the power of the eupatrids that the Council finally consisted only of men of this class. Wealthy enough to buy costly weapons, with leisure for continual exercise in the use of arms, these nobles had also become the chief protection of the State in time of war (§ 407). They were also continual marauders on their own account: As they grew more and more accustomed to the sea (headpiece, p. 282), they coasted from harbor to harbor, plundering and burning, and returned home laden with rich spoil. Piracy at last became the common calling of the nobles, and a great source of wealth.
Thus grew up a sharp distinction between the city community and the peasants living in the country. The country, peasant was obliged to divide the family lands with his brothers.' His fields were therefore small, and he was poor. He went about clad in a goatskin, and his labors never ceased. Hence he had no leisure to learn the use of arms, nor any way to meet the expense of purchasing them. He and his neighbors were therefore of small account in war (§ 407). Indeed, he was fortunate if he could struggle on and maintain himself and family from his scanty fields. Many of his neighbors sank into debt, lost their lands to the noble class, and themselves became day laborers for more fortunate men, or, still worse, sold themselves to discharge their debts and thus became slaves. These day laborers and slaves had no political rights and were not permitted to vote in the Assembly.
If the peasant desired to exert any influence in government, he was obliged to go up to the city and attend the Assembly
431. Political and military power of the eupatrids
432. Misery and weakness of the peasants
286
Ancient limes
433. The
weakness of the Assembly
434. The
decline and disappearance of the kings (800650 B.C.)
of the people there. When he did so, he found but few of his fellows from the countryside gathered there — a dingy group, clad in their rough goatskins. The powerful Council in beautiful oriental raiment (§ § 394 and 395) was backed by the whole class of wealthy nobles, all trained in war and splendid in their glittering weapons. Intimidated by the powerful nobles, the meager Assembly, which had once been a muster of all the weapon-bearing men of the tribe, became a feeble gathering of a few peasants and lesser townsmen, who could gain no greater recognition of their old-time rights than the poor privilege of voting to concur in the actions already decided upon by the king and the Council. The peasant returned to his little farm and was less and less inclined to attend the Assembly at all.
It was, however, not alone the people whose rights the nobles were disregarding; for they also began to consider themselves the equals of the king, whose chief support in war they were. The king could not carry on a war without them or control the state without their help. By 750 B.C. the office of the king was in some states nothing more than a name. -While the king was in some cases violently overthrown, in most states the nobles established from among themselves certain elective officers to take charge of matters formerly controlled by the king. Thus in Athens they appointed a noble to be leader in war, while another noble was chosen as " archon,” or ruler, to assist the king in attending to the increasing business of the State. Thus the Athenian king was gradually but peacefully deprived of his powers, until he became nothing more than the leader of the people in religious matters. In Sparta the power of the Jdng was checked by the appointment of a second king, and on this plan Sparta continued to.retain-her kings. Elsewhere in the century, between 750 and 650 B.C., the kingship quite generally disappeared, although it lingered on in some states until long after this time. The result of the political and social struggle was thus the triumph of the nobles, who were henceforth in control in many states. ,
The Age of the Nobles
287
With the disappearance of the king, the royal castle (Fig. 144) was of course vacated. As it fell into decay, the shrines and holy places which it contained (§ 423) were still protected and revered as religious buildings, and, as we shall see in discussing architecture, they became temples. In this way the castle of the ancient Attic kings on the citadel mount, called the Acropolis of Athens (Figs. 182 and 183), was followed by the famous temples there.
Section 44. Greek Expansion in the Age of the Nobles
The Age of the Nobles witnessed another great change in Greek life. Sea-roving and piracy, as we have seen (§ 431), were common among the nobles. At length, as the Greek merchants gradually took up sea trade, the demand for ships led the Greek mechanics to undertake shipbuilding. They built their new craft on Phoenician models (see Fig. 162, A and JT), the only ones with which they were acquainted. When the Phoenician merchants entered the ./Egean harbors they now found them more and more occupied by Greek ships. Especially important was the traffic between the Greek cities of the Asiatic coast on the east and Attica and Euboea on the European side. Among the Asiatic Greeks it was the Ionian cities which led in this commerce. The JEgean waters gradually grew familiar to the Greek communities, until the sea routes became far easier lines of communication than roads through the same number of miles of forest and mountains (§ 330). •
The oppressive rule of the nobles, and the resulting impoverishment of the peasants, was an important influence, leading the Greek farmers to seek new homes and new lands beyond the /Egean world. Greek merchants were not only trafficking with the northern ./Egean, but their vessels had penetrated the great northern sea, which they called the " Pontus,” known to us as the Black Sea (see map, p. 288). Their trading stations
435. Survival or the shrines in the old palaces
436. Beginnings of commerce and shipbuilding among the Greeks
437. Greek colonies in the Black Sea
288
Ancicnt Times
438. Greek colonies in the East — southern Asia Minor and Cyprus
among the descendants of the Stone Age peoples in these distant regions offered to the discontented farmers of Greece plenty of land with which to begin life over again.' Before 600 e.c. they girdled the Black Sea with their towns and settlements, reaching the broad grainfields along the lower Danube, and the iron mines of the old Hittite country on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea (§ 360). But no such development of Greek genius took place in this harsher climate
Fig. 162. An Early Greek Ship and the Phcenician Ship after which it was modeled
The earliest ships in the Mediterranean, those of Egypt, were turned up at both ends (Fig. 41), and the early ^Egean ships were copies of this Egyptian model (Fig. 154). The Phoenicians, however, introduced a change in the model, by giving their ships at the bow a sharp projecting beak below water. Such a Phoenician ship used by the Assyrian king Sennacherib is shown here in a drawing from one of his palace reliefs (B). The Greeks did not adopt the old .Egean form, turned up at both ends, but took up the Phoenician form with beaked prow, as shown in the vase-paintings, from which the above drawing of an eighth-century Greek ship (A) has been restored
of the North as we shall find in the ^Egean. Not a single great artist or writer ever came from the North. Although the Pontus became the granary of Greece, it never contributed anything to the higher life of the Greeks.
In the East, along the southern coasts of Asia Minor, Greek expansion was stopped by the Assyrian Sennacherib (§ 214) when he defeated a body of Greeks in Cilicia about 700 B.C., in the earliest collision between the Hellenes and a great power of the oriental world. The Greek colonies of Cyprus long remained
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Phoenicians and Phcenician Colonies
Greeks and Greek Colonies
U.OCB
Phoenician Influence
Greek Influence
& Phoenician.Cities
Greek Cities
from 25° Greenwich 30c
IP0 Longitude 15:
Colonial Expansion of the Greeks and Phoenicians down to the Sixth Century b.c.
The Age of the Nobles
289
the easternmost outposts of the Greek world. In the South they found a friendly reception in Egypt, suid there in the Nile Delta they were permitted to establish a trading city at Naucratis (Mistress of Ships), the predecessor of Alexandria. West of the Delta also they eventually founded Cyrene (map, p. 288).
It was the unknown West, however, which became the America of the early Greek colonists. Many a Columbus pushed his ship into this strange region of mysterious dangers on the distant borders of the world, where the heroes were believed to live in the Islands of the Blest. Looking westward from the western coast of Greece the seamen could discover the shores of the heel of Italy, only fifty miles distant. When they had once crossed to it, they coasted around Sicily and far into the West. Here was a new world. Although the Phoenicians were already there (§ 397), its discovery was as momentous for the Greeks as that of America for later Europe (see map, p. 288).
By 750 B.C. their colonies appeared in this new Western world, and within a century they fringed southern Italy from the heel to a point well above the instep north of Naples, so that this region of southern Italy came to be known as " Great Greece ” (see map, p. 484). Here the Greek colonists looked northward to the hills crowned by the rude settlements which were destined to become Rome. They little dreamed that this insignificant town would yet rule the world, making even the proud cities of their homeland its vassals. As the Greeks were superior in civilization-to all the other dwellers in Italy, the civilized history of that great peninsula begins with the advent of the Hellenes. They first brought in such things as writing, literature, architecture, and art (Section 76, Fig. 219, and Plate VII, p. 56,0).
The Greek colonists crossed over also to Sicily (Plate VII), where they drove out the Phoenician trading posts except at the western end of the island, where the Phoenicians held their own. These Greek colonists in the West shared in the higher life of the homeland; and Syracuse, at the southeast corner of the Island of Sicily, became at one time the most cultivated,
439. Discovery of the West
440. Greek colonies in the West— southern Italy
441. Sicily and the Far "West
290
Ancient Times
442. Racial aspects of ancient colonization in the Mediterranean
443. Tendency toward creation of a Mediterranean world; what civilization was to conquer it?
444. Influences leading: toward unity: athletic games
as well as the most powerful, city of the Greek world. At Massilia (Marseilles), on the coast of later France, the Western Greeks founded a town which controlled the trade up the Rhone valley; and they reached over even to the Mediterranean coasts of Spain, attracted by the silver mines of Tartessus.
Thus, under the rule of the nobles, the Greeks expanded till they stretched from the Black Sea along the north shore of the Mediterranean almost to the Atlantic. In this imposing movement we recognize a part of the far outstretched western wing of the Indo-European line (see § 243); but at the same time we remember that in the Phoenician Empire of Carthage, the Semite has likewise flung out his western wing along the southern Mediterranean, facing the Indo-European peoples on the northt (Fig. 112 and § 397 ; see map, p. 288).
This wide expansion of Greeks and Phoenicians (§ 397) tended at last to produce a great Mediterranean world. Was the leading civilization in that Mediterranean world to be Greek, springing from the Greeks and their colonies, or was it to be oriental, carried by the Phoenician galleys and spread by their far-reaching settlements ? That was the great question, and its answer was to depend on how Greek civilization succeeded in its growth and development at home in the JEgean, to which we must now turn.
Section 45. Greek Civilization in the Age of the Nobles
We have already noticed the tendencies which kept the Greek states apart and prevented their union as a single nation (§ 425). There were now, on the other hand, influences which tended toward unity. Among such influences were the contests in arms and the athletic games, which arose from the early custom of honoring the burial of a hero with such celebrations. In spite of the local rivalries at such contests, a sentiment of unity was greatly encouraged by the celebration
The Age of the Nobles
291
and common management of these athletic games. They finally came to be practiced at stated seasons in honor of the gods. As early as 776 B.C. such contests were celebrated as public festivals at Olympia.1 Repeated every four years, they finally aroused the interest and participation of all Greece.
Religion also became a strong influence toward unity, because there were some gods at whose temples all the Greeks worshiped., The different city-states therefore formed several religious councils, made up of representatives from the various Greek cities concerned. They came together at stated periods, and in this way each city had a voice in such joint management of the temples. These councils, were among the nearest approaches to representative government ever devised in the ancient world. The most notable of them were the council for the control of the Olympic games, another for the famous sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (Fig. 172), and also the council for the great annual feast of Apollo in the island of Delos.
These representatives spoke various Greek dialects at their meetings. They could understand each other, however, just as in our own land a citizen from Maine understands another from Louisiana, though they may laugh at each other’s oddities of speech. Their common language thus helped to bind together the people of the many different Greek cities. A sentiment of unity also arose under the influence of the Homeric songs (§ 410) with which every Greek was familiar — a common inheritance depicting all the Greeks united against the Asiatic city of Troy (Fig. 151).
Thus bound together by ties of custom, religion, language, and common traditions, the Greeks gained a feeling of race unity, which set them apart from other races. They called all men not of Greek blood " barbarians,” not originally a term of reproach for the non-Greeks. Then the Greek sense of unity found expression in the first all-inclusive term for themselves.
445. Greek
unity favored by religious councils (amphic-tyonies)
446. Greek unity furthered by language
447. Barbarians and Hellenes
* 1 Every schoolboy knows that these Olympic games have been revived in modem times as an international project
292
Ancient Times
448. Greek unity and trade
449. Architecture and sculpture
They gradually came to call themselves " Hellenes/7 and found pleasure in the belief that they had all descended from a common ancestor called Hellen. But it shpuld be clearly understood that this new designation did not represent a Greek nation or state, but only the group of Greek-speaking peoples or states, often at war with one another.
The lack of political unity evident in such wars was also very noticeable in trade relations. No merchant of one city had any legal rights in another city where he was not a citizen. Even his life was not safe, for no city made any laws protecting the stranger. He could secure protection only by appealing to the old desert custom of " hospitality,” after he had been received by a friendly citizen as a guest. For the reception of any stranger who might have no such friend to be his host, a city might appoint a citizen to act as its official host. These primitive arrangements are a revelation of the strong local prejudice of each Greek city. The most fatal defect in Greek character was the inability of the various states to forget their local differ-’ ences and jealousies and to unite into a common federation or great nation including all Greeks.1 *
In spite of oriental luxuries, like gaudy clothing and wavy oriental wigs (§ 39.5), Greek life in the Age of the Nobles was still rude and simple. The Greek cities of which we have been talking were groups of dingy sun-dried-brick houses, with narrow wandering streets which we would call alleys. On the height where the palace or castle of the king had once stood was an oblong building of brick, like the houses of the town below. In front it had a porch with a row of wooden posts, and it was covered by a " peaked ” roof with a triangular gable at each end. This rude building was the earliest Greek temple. As for sculpture in this age, the figure of a god consisted merely
1 We may recall heie how slow were the thirteen colonies of America to suppress local pride sufficiently to adopt a constitution uniting all thirteen into a nation. It was local differences similar to those among the Greeks which after-* ward caused our Civil War.
The Age of the Nobles
293
of a wooden post with a rough-hewn head at the top. When draped with a garment it could be made to serve its purpose.
While there were still very few who could read, there was here and there a man who owned and read a written copy of Homer. Men told their children quaint fables, representing the animals acting like human creatures, and by means of these tales with a moral made it clear what a man ought or ought not to do. The Greeks were beginning to think about human conduct. The old Greek word for virtue no longer meant merely valor in war, but also kindly and unselfish conduct toward others. Duty towards a man’s own country was now beginning to be felt in the sentiment we call patriotism. Right conduct', 3s it seemed to some, was even required by the gods, and it was finally no longer respectable for the nobles to practice piracy (§ 431).
Under these circumstances it was natural that a new literature should arise, as the Greeks began to discuss themselves and their own conduct. The old Homeric singers never referred to themselves; they never spoke of their own lives. They were absorbed in describing the valiant deeds of their heroes who had died long before. The heroic world of glorious achievement in which the vision of these early singers moved had passed away, and with, it passed their art. Meanwhile the problems of the present began to press hard upon the minds of men; the peasant farmer’s distressing struggle for existence (see § 432) made men conscious of very present needs. Their own lives became a great and living theme.
The voices that once chanted the-hero songs therefore died away, and now men heard the first voice raised in Europe on behalf of the poor and the humble. Hesiod, an obscure farmer v v under the shadow of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sang of the dreary and hopeless life of the peasant — of his ownJ&it as he struggled on under a burden too heavy for,his shoulders. We even hear how his brother Persis seized the lands left by their father, and then bribed the judges to confirm him in their possession. 1
450. Rise of ’written literature ; moral progress; patriotism
451. Transference of literary interest to the
Present
452. Hesiod and the earliest cry for social justice in Europe (750700 li.C.)
294
Ancient Times
This earliest European protest against the tyrannies of wealthy town life was raised at the very moment when across the comer of the Mediterranean the once nomad Hebrews were passing through the same experience (see §§ 303-304). The voice of Hesiod raising the cry for social justice in Greece sounds like an echo from Palestine. But we should notice that in Palestine the cry for social justice resulted finally in a religion of brotherly kindness, whereas in Greece it resulted in democratic institutions, the rule of the people who refused longer to submit to the oppressions of the few and powerful. In the next chapter we shall watch the progress of the struggle by which the rule of (he people came about.
QUESTIONS
Section 43. Were the geographical influences in Greece favorable to a political union of all Greeks ? How many important unions arose? Name them and describe the leading two. How did the political development of the Orient differ from that of Greece ? What is a democracy? Where did democracies first arise ? What was the attitude of the nobles toward democracy ? Describe their political power; their military power. What was the situation of the peasants ? What happened to the Assembly? What happened to the kings? What became of the shrines in the palace ?
Section 44. On what models did the Greeks build their first ships? Tell about Greek colonization in the North; in the East; in the South; in the West. What competing race had already colonized in the West ? To what extent had the world of sea commerce thus expanded?
Section 45. Discuss athletic games as an influence toward unity. How did religion favor Greek unity? language? What names for Greeks and non-Greeks arose ? What can you say about the attitude of Gregk cities toward Greeks who were not citizens ? Describe the earliest Greek temples. Were literature and reading now common? What thoughts about conduct were arising? As men began to think about themselves rather than the ancient heroes, what was the effect upon literature? Tell about Hesiod. To what struggle were the feelings of such men as Hesiod leading ?
CHAPTER XII
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE AGE OP THE TYRANTS
Section 46. The Industrial and Commercial Revolution
The remarkable colonial expansion of the Greeks, together with the growth of industries in the home cities, led to profound changes. The new colonies not only had needs of their own, but they also had dealings with the inland, which finally opened up extensive regions of Europe as a market for Greek wares. The home cities at once began to meet this demand for goods
Note. The above headpiece shows us the ruins of the temple of Hera Olympia, the oldest temple in Greece. The remains of columns which surrounded the outside of the building (cf. Fig. 185) are of different sizes and proportions; for they were inserted at different times to replace the old wooden ones with which the temple was first built (§ 449). They are of the Doric style (Fig. 167). The walls were of sun-dried brick (§449), and have therefore disappeared. In their fall they covered up the magnificent statue of Hermes by Praxiteles (Fig. 187), which was thus preserved until modem excavators found it.
295
453* Growth of Greek commerce and industry
296 Ancient Times
of all sorts. The Ionian cities led the way as formerly, but the islands also, and finally the Greek mainland, felt the new impulse. Corinth first (Fig. 163), and then Athens, began to share
Fig. 163. The Isthmus of Corinth, the Ljnk between the Peloponnesus and Northern Greece
The observer stands on the hills south of ancient Corinth (out of range on the left) and looks northeastward along the isthmus, on both sides of which the sea is visible. On the left (west) we see the tip of the Gulf of Corinth (see map, p. 352), and on the right (east) the Saronic Gulf. The commerce across this isthmus from the Orient to the West made the Gulf of Corinth an important center of traffic westward, and Corinth early became a flourishing commercial city. Through this sole gateway of the Peloponnesus (see map, p. 264) passed back and forth for centuries the leading men of Greece, and especially the armies of Sparta, some 60 miles distant (behind the observer). The faint white line in the middle of the isthmus is the modern canal—a cut from sea to sea, about 4 miles long and nearly 200 feet deep at the crest of the watershed
in the increased Greek trade. Ere long the commercial fleets of the Hellenes were threading their way along all the coasts of the northern, western, and southeastern Mediterranean, bearing to
The Industrial Revolution
distant communities Greek metal work, woven goods, and pot-teiy. They brought back either raw materials and foodstuffs, such as grain, fish, and amber, or finished products like the magnificent utensils in bronze from the cities of the Etruscans in northern Italy (§ 787 and Fig. 231). At the yearly feast and market on the island of Delos the Greek householder found the Etruscan bronzes of {he West side by side with the gay carpets of the Orient.
To satisfy the increasing demands of trade, and to meet Phoenician competition, the Greek craftsmen greatly improved their work. During the seventh century Greek industries were still unequal to those of the Orient, but after 600 b.c. the
Fig. 164. An Athenian Painted Vase of the Early Sixth Century b.c.
This magnificent work (over 30 inches high)
was found in an Etruscan tomb in Italy (see
map, p. 484), whither it had been exported by
the Athenian makers in the days of Solon
(§§ 468 ff.). It is signed by the potter Ergo-
timos, who gave the vase its beautiful shape,
and also by the painter Clitias, whose skillful
hand executed the sumptuous painted scenes
extending in bands entirely around the vase.
On the wide distribution of the works of these ,
• p ^ mi 1 454*
two artists see § 456. These decorations rep- industry be-
resent the final emancipation of the Greek gins to shake
painter from oriental influences and the onental
. , , , . . ......influence
triumph of his own imagination in depicting
scenes from Greek stories of the gods and heroes. Before the end of this century (the sixth) the vase-painters had begun to blacken the whole vase and then to put on their paintings in red on the black background. This enabled them to add details in black within the figures, and greatly improved their work (see Fig. 170). The Greeks were now the best draftsmen in the world. Note the progress in two hundred years (compare above horses and those in Fig. 155)
298
Ancient Times
455. Greeks introduce industrial slave labor
456. Expansion of Athenian commerce
457* Improvement and enlargement of ships
Greeks began to surpass their oriental teachers. In Samos they learned to make hollow bronze castings, like those of the Egyptians. They painted pottery with their own decorative scenes, taken from the lives of gods and men, and these more and more displaced the rows of oriental figures, half animal, half - human (Fig. 164). Thus in industry Greece began to emancipate herself from the Orient.
At the same time, growing trade obliged every Greek craftsman to enlarge his small shop — once, perhaps, only large enough to supply the wants of a single estate. Unable to find the necessary workmen, the proprietor who had the means bought slaves, trained them to ■ the work, and thus enlarged his little stall into a factory with a score of hands. Henceforth industrial slave labor became an important part of Greek life.
Athens entered the field of industry much later than the Ionian cities, but when she did so, she won victories not less decisive than her later triumphs in art, literature, philosophy, or war. The potters early required an extensive quarter of the town to accommodate their workshops (see plan, p. 352). The Athenian factories must have assumed a size quite unprecedented in the Greek world, for of the painted Greek vases — discovered by excavation — which are signed by the artist, about half are found to have come from only six factories at Athens. It is not a little impressive at the present day to see the modem excavator opening tombs far toward the interior of Asia Minor and taking out vases bearing the signature of the same Athenian vase-painter whose name you may also read on vases dug out of the Nile Delta in northern Africa, or taken from tombs in the cemeteries of the Etruscan cities of Italy (Fig. 164). We suddenly gain a picture of the Athenian manufacturer in touch with a vast commercial domain extending far across the ancient world.
Soon the shipbuilder, responding to the growing commerce, began to build craft far larger than the old "fifty-oar” galleys. The new ' merchantmen ” were driven only by sails, an
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299
Egyptian invention of ages before (Fig. 41). They were so large that they could no longer be drawn up on the strand as before. Hence sheltered harbors were necessary, and for the same reason the anchor was now invented. The protection of such merchant ships demanded more effective warships, and the distinction arose between a " rnan-o’-war,1' or battleship, and a " merchantman.” Corinth boasted the production of the first decked warships, a great improvement, giving the warriors above more room and better footing, and protecting the oarsmen below. For warships must be independent of the wind, and hence they were still propelled by oars. The oarsmen were arranged in three rows, three'men on the same bench, each man wielding an oar, and thus the power of an old " fifty-oar " could be multiplied by three without much increasing the size of the craft. These innovations were all in common use by 500 B.C. With their superior equipment on the sea, and the marked improvement of their industries, the Hellenes were soon beating the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean markets.
Meantime Greek business life had entered upon a new epoch due to the introduction of coined money. From the peoples of inner Asia Minor the Ionians had learned to use the precious metals by weight in making business payments after the oriental manner (§ 189). The basis of weight was the Babylonian " mina.” Sixty such minas (pounds) made a talent, and a talent of silver was worth about $1125. Not long after 700 B.C., the kings of Lydia in Asia Minor (see map, p. 264) began to cut up silver into lumps of a fixed weight, small enough to be of convenient size and value. These they stamped with some symbol of the king or State to show that the State guaranteed their value, and such pieces formed the earliest-known coins (Fig. 165).
The Ionian cities soon took over this great convenience, and it quickly passed thence to the islands and the European Greeks. The Athenians divided the mina of silver into a hundred parts. A lump of silver weighing the hundredth part of
458. Precious metals and coinage in the Orient (700 B.C.)
459. Adoption of coinage by the Greeks (early seventh century B.C.)
300
Ancient Times
Fig. 165. Specimens illustrating the Beginning of Coinage
a mina was worth from eighteen to twenty cents. This became the ordinary small unit of value, and it still survives as such for large sections of Europe in the French franc, Italian lira, and Austrian krone, all worth somewhat less than twenty cents (cf. § 790). The Athenians called this coin a drachma, meaning a "handful,” because it was equal in value to a " handful ” of small change consisting of little rods of iron or copper used by the common people, like our copper cents. Our American dollar is simply five of these drachmas, and the Athenians themselves issued a four-drachma piece (Fig. 165, 4) which served as their dollar. The purchasing power of a drachma was in ancient times very much greater than in our day. For example, a sheep cost one drachma, an ox five drachmas, and
These are rough lumps of silver such as were long before used in the Orient (§ 189), flattened by the pressure of the*stamp. Two of the examples (/ and 2) are marked by the bench tool which held the lump while the stamp was struck upon it. This defect was slowly overcpme, and the coins became round as the stamp itself was made round instead of square, 1, both sides of a Lydian coin (§ 458) (about 550 B.C.); 2, both sides of a coin of the Greek island of Chios (500 B.C.),
showing how the Greeks followed the Lydian model (/); j, both sides of a Carian coin of Cnidus (650-550 B.C.), an example of the square stamp; 4, both sides of a four-drachma piece of Athens (sixth century B.C.), bearing head of goddess Athena and an owl with olive branch (square stamp). The inscription contains the first three letters of " Athens”
The Industrial Revolution 301
a landowner with an income of five hundred drachmas ($100) a year was considered a wealthy man.
Greek wealth had formerly consisted of lands and flocks, but now men began to accumulate capital in money. Loans were made and the use of interest came in from the Orient. The usual rate was 18 per cent yearly. Men who could never have hoped for wealth as farmers were now growing rich. For the growing industries and the commercial ventures on the seas rapidly created fortunes among a class before obscure. There arose thus a prosperous industrial and commercial middle class who demanded a voice in the government. They soon became a political power of much influence, and the noble class were obliged to consider them. At the beginning of the sixth century b.c. even a noble like Solon could say, "Money makes the man.”
The prosperity we have sketched was still insufficient to produce large cities as we now have them. Athens and Corinth probably had about 25,000 inhabitants each. In spite of commercial prosperity the Greeks were still dependent on agriculture as their greatest source of income. But here again the farms and estates were from our point of view very small. The largest farms contained not over a hundred acres, while a man who had fifty acres was classed among the rich.
Section 47. Rise of the Democracy and the Age of the Tyrants
While the prosperous capitalistic class was thus arising, the condition of the peasant on his lands grew steadily worse. His fields were dotted with stones, each the sign of a mortgage, which the Greeks were accustomed to mark in this way. The wealthy creditors were foreclosing these mortgages and taking the lands, and the unhappy owners were being sold into foreign slavery or were fleeing abroad to escape such bonds. The nobles in control did nothing as a class to improve the situation; on the contrary, they did all in their
460. Rise of a capitalistic class
461. Greek cities and estates
462. Decline, of the peasantry
302
Ancient Times
463. Power of the people increased by prosperity of the commercial class and by military changes
464. Disunion among nobles and rise of tyrants
465. The
tyrant and public opinion of his office
power to take advantage of the helplessness of the peasants and small farmers (see § 432).
But new enemies now opposed the noble class. In the first place, the new men of fortune (§ 460) were bitterly hostile to the nobles; in the second place, the improvement in Greek industries had so cheapened all work in metal that it was possible for the ordinary man to purchase weapons and a suit of armor. Moreover, the development of tactics under the leadership of the Spartans had produced close masses of spearmen, each mass (phalanx) standing like an unbroken wall throughout the battle (cf. Fig. 87). The war chariot of the individual hero of ancient times could not penetrate such a battle line. The chariot disappeared and was seen only in chariot races. These changes increased the importance of the ordinary citizen in the army and therefore greatly increased the power of the lower classes in the State.
At the same time the nobles were far from united. Serious feuds between the various noble families often divided them into hostile factions. The leader of such a faction among the nobles often placed himself at the head of the dissatisfied people in real or feigned sympathy with their cause. Both the peasants and the new commercial class of citizens often rallied around such a noble leader. Thus supported, he was able to overcome and expel his rivals among the noble class and to gain undisputed control of the State. In this way he became the ruler of the State.
Such a ruler was in reality a king, but the new king differed from the kings of old in that he had no royal ancestors and had seized the control of the State by violence. The people did not reverence him as of ancient royal lineage, and while they may have felt gratitude to him, they felt no loyalty. The position of such a ruler always remained insecure. The Greeks called such a man a " tyrant,” which was not at that time a term of reproach, as it is with us. The word " tyranny ” was merely a term for the high office held by such a ruler.
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303
Nevertheless, the instinctive feeling of the Greeks was that they were no longer free under such a prince, and the slayer of a tyrant was regarded as a hero and a savior of the people.
By 650 B.C. such rulers had begun to appear, but it was especially the sixth century (from 600 to 500 b. c.) which we may call,the Age of the Tyrants. They arose chiefly in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor and the islands; also Eubcea, Athens, Corinth, and the colonies of Sicily — that is, in all the progressive Greek city-states where the people had gained power by commercial prosperity. Their rise was one of the direct consequences of the growing power of the people, and in spite of public opinion about them, they were the first champions of democracy. Such men as Periander of Corinth and Pisis-tratus of Athens looked after the rights of the people, curbed the nobles, gave great attention to public works like harbor improvements, state buildings, and temples, and cultivated art, music, and literature.
Hitherto all law, so long ago reduced to writing in the Orient (Fig. 93), had been a matter of oral tradition in Greece. It was very easy for a judge to twist oral law to favor the man who gave him the largest present (§ 452). The people were now demanding that the inherited oral laws be put into writing (Fig. 166). After a long struggle the Athenians secured such a written code, arranged by a man named Draco, about 624 B.C. It was an exceedingly severe code — so severe, in fact, that the adjective " Draconic has passed into our language as a synonym for " harsh.”
Meantime the situation in Athens was much complicated by hostilities with neighboring powers. The merchants of Megara had seized the island of Salamis, overlooking the port of Athens (Fig. 177). The loss of Salamis and the failure of the nobles to recover it aroused intense indignation among the Athenians. Then a man of the old family to which the ancient kings of Athens had belonged, a noble named Solon, who had gained wealth by many a commercial venture on the seas, roused his
466. Age of the Tyrants (sixth century B.C.)
467. Earliest written Greek codes of law
468. Foreign complications of Athens
304
Ancient Times
469, Solon elected archon; his financial reforms
countrymen by fiery verses, calling upon the Athenians not to endure the shame of such a loss. Salamis was recovered, and Solon gained great popularity with all classes of Athenians.
Fig. 166. Ruins of the Ancient Courthouse of Gortyna and the Early Greek. Code of Laws engraved on its Walls
This hall at Gortyna in Crete, dating from the sixth century B.C., was a circular building about 140 feet across, which served as a courthouse. If any citizen thought himself unjustly treated, he could appeal to the great code engraved in twelve columns on the inside of the stone wall of the building. It covers the curved surface of the wall for about 30 feet, but extends only as high as would permit it to be read easily. It forms the longest Greek inscription now surviving. This code shows a growing sense of justice toward a debtor and forbids a creditor to seize a debtor’s tools or furniture for debt; this illustrates the tendency among the Greeks in the age of Solon (§ 469)
The result was Solon’s election as archon (§ 434) in 594 B.C. He was given full power to improve the evil condition of the peasants. He declared void all mortgages on land and all claims of creditors which endangered the liberty of a citizen.
The Industrial Revolution ' 305
But Solon was a true statesman, and to the demands of the lower classes for a new apportionment of lands held by the nobles he would not yield. He did, however, set a limit to the amount of land which a noble might hold.
Solon also made a law that anyone who, like Hesiod (§ 452), had lost a lawsuit, could appeal the case to a jury of citizens over thirty years of age selected by lot. This change and some others greatly improved a citizen’s chance of securing justice. Solon’s laws were all written, and they formed the first Greek code of laws by which all free men were given equal rights in the courts. Some of these laws have descended to our own time and are still in force.
Furthermore, Solon proclaimed a new constitution which gave to all a voice in the control of the State. It made but few changes. It recognized four classes of citizens, graded according to the amount of their income. The wealthy nobles were the only ones who could hold the highest offices, and the peasants were permitted to hold only the lower offices. The government thus remained in the hands of the nobles, but the humblest free citizen could now be assured of the right to vote in the assembly of the people.
Solon is the first great Greek statesman of whom we obtain an authentic picture, chiefly through his surviving poems. The leading trait of his character was moderation, combined with unfailing decision. When all expected that he would make himself " tyrant ” he laid down his expiring archonship without a moment’s hesitation and left Athens for several years, to give his constitution a fair chance to work.
Solon saved Attica from a great social catastrophe, and it was largely due to his wise reforms that Athens achieved her industrial and commercial triumphs. But his constitution gave the prosperous commercial class no right to hold the leading offices of government. They continued the struggle for power. Hence Solon’s work, though it deferred the humiliation, could not save the Athenian State from subjection to the tyrant.
470. Solon’s 'new code of laws
471. Solon’s new constitution
472. Estimate of Solon
473. Failure of Solon’s work to prevent the rise of a tyrant in Attica
3°6
Ancient Times
474. Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens (540528 B.C.)
475. Fall of the sons of Pisistratus
476. The
reforms of Clisthenes reduce the power of the nobles
477. Ostracism
Returning from exile, backed by an army of hired soldiers, Pisistratus, a member of one of the powerful noble families, finally held control of the Athenian State. He ruled with great sagacity and success, and many of the Athenians gave him sincere support. Having built a war fleet of probably forty-eight ships, he seized the mouth of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). This control of the gateway to the Black Sea proved of enormous value to Athens in later days (§ 616). He carried out many public improvements at Athens, and transferred to the city the old peasant spring feast of Dionysus, from which were yet to come the theater and the great dramas of Athens (§ 484). Athenian manufactures and commerce flourished as never before, and when Pisistratus died (in the same year as Cyrus the Persian, 528 B.C.) he had laid a foundation to which much of the later greatness of Athens was due.
In spite of their great ability, the sons of Pisistratus, Hipparchus and Hippias, were unable to overcome the prejudice of the people against a ruler on jyhom they had not conferred authority. One of the earliest exhibitions of Greek patriotism is the outburst of enthusiasm at Athens when two youths, Har-modius and Aristogiton (Fig. 169), at the sacrifice of their own lives, struck down one of the tyrants (Hipparchus). Hippias, the other one, was eventually obliged to flee. Thus, shortly before 500 B.C., Athens was freed from her tyrants.
The people were now able to gain new power against the nobles by the efforts of Clisthenes, a noble friendly to the lower classes. He broke up the old tribal divisions on the basis of blood relationship, and established purely local lines of division. He thus cut up the old noble clans and assigned the fragments to different local divisions, where they were in the minority. This prevented the nobles from acting together and broke their power.
In order to avoid the rise of a new tyrant, Clisthenes established a law that once a year the people might by vote declare any prominent citizen dangerous to the State and banish him
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for ten years. To cast his vote against a man, a citizen had only to pick up one of the pieces of broken pottery lying about the market place, write upon it the name of the citizen to be banished, and deposit it in the voting urn. As such a bit of pottery was called an " ostracon ” (headpiece, p. 336), to " ostracize ” a man (literally to " potsherd ” him) meant to interrupt his political career by banishment. Although the nobles were still the only ones to whom the high offices of government were open, the possession of other forms of wealth besides land gave a citizen important political rights, and Athens had thus (about 500 B.C.) gained a form of government giving the people a high degree of power. The State was in large measure a democracy.
Meantime Sparta also had greatly increased in power. The Spartans had pushed their military successes until they held over a third of the Peloponnesian peninsula. The result was that long before 500 B.C. the Spartans had forced the neighboring states into a combination, the " Spartan league,” which included nearly the whole of the Peloponnese. As the leader of this league, Sparta was the most powerful state in Greece. It had no industries, and it therefore did not possess the prosperous commercial class which had elsewhere done so much to overthrow the nobles and bring about the rise of the tyrants. For this and other reasons Sparta had escaped the rule of a tyrant. While it had divided the power of its king by appointing two kings to rule jointly, it was opposed to the rule of the people, and it looked with a jealous eye on the rising democracy of Athens.
Section 48. Civilization of the Age of the Tyrants
Although the nobles of Athens had been forced to yield much of their political power to the people, nevertheless, as we have seen, they still held the exclusive right to be elected to the important offices in the government. They continued also to
478. Expansion of Sparta; foundation of the Spartan " league ”
479. The
nobles continue to be the social leaders; athletic games
308
Ancient Times
480. Education
481. Music, instrumental
be the leaders in all those matters which we call social. They created the social life of the time, and they were the prominent figures on all public occasions. The multitudes which thronged to the public games looked down at the best-born youths of Greece contesting for.the prizes in the athletic matches (§ 444), and the wealthier nobles put the swiftest horses into -the chariot races. To the laurel wreath which was granted the winner at the Olympian games Athens added a prize of five hundred drachmas when the winner was an Athenian. He was also entitled to take his meals at tables maintained by the State. Not seldom the greatest poets of the time, especially Pindar (§ 482), celebrated the victors in triumphant verses.
In the matter of education, noble youths might be found spending the larger part of the day practicing in the public inclosure devoted to athletic exercises. To be sure, writing was now so common that a young man could not afford to be without it, and hence he submitted to some instruction in this art — a discipline which he was probably very reluctant to exchange for the applause of the idlers gathered around the gymnastic training ground. The women had no share in either the education or the social life of the men, and one of the greatest weaknesses of Greek civilization was the very limited part played by women in the life of the nation.
The education of the time was not complete without some instruction also in music. It was in the Age of the Tyrants that the music of Greece rose to the level of a real art. A system of writing musical notes, meaning for music what the alphabet meant for literature, now arose. The flute had been brought from Egypt t° Crete in early times, and from the Cretans the Greeks had received it. Long a favorite instrument, it was now much more cultivated, and one musician even wrote a composition for the flute which was intended to tell the story of Apollo’s fight with the dragon of Delphi. The lyre, which formerly had but four strings, was now made with eight, and compositions for the lyre alone were popular. Either of these instruments might be
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played as the accompaniment of song, or both together, with choruses of boys and girls. Here we have the beginnings of orchestral music as the accompaniment of choruses.
Music had a great influence on the literature of the age, for the poets now began to write verses to be sung with the music of the lyre, and hence such verses are called " lyric poetry. From serious discussions like those of Solon (§ 468) the poets passed to songs of momentary moods, longings, dreams, hopes, and fiery storms of passion. Each in his way found a wondrous world within himself, which he thus pictured in short songs. Probably the greatest of these poets was Pindar of Thebes. Proud of his noble birth, the friend and intimate of tyrants and nobles, but also their fearless ad-monisher, Pindar gloried both in the pleasures and the responsibilities of wealth and rank. He sang in praise of pomp and splendor with a vividness which makes us see the chariots flashing down the course and hear the shouting of the multitude as the proud victor receives the laurel wreath of triumph. In exalted speech, often difficult to understand,, Pindar delighted thus to glorify the life and rule of the nobles. At the same time his immortal word pictures of their life and their triumphs are always suffused with the beauty of unquestioning belief in the gods, especially Apollo, for whom Pindar seemed to speak almost as a prophet. He was the last great spokesman of a dying order of society, the rule of the nobles, which was to give way to the rule of the people. Another great lyric singer of the age was the poetess Sappho, the earliest woman to gain undying fame in literature. Indeed, she was perhaps the greatest poetess the world has ever seen.
A favorite form of song was the chorus, with which the country folk loved to celebrate their rustic feasts (headpiece, p. 221). The poet Stesichorus, who lived in Sicily, began to write choruses which told the stories of the gods as they were found in the old myths. The singers as they marched in rustic procession wore goatskins, and their faces were concealed by masks.
482. Lyric poetry : Pindar and Sappho
483. Festival choruses become drama
3io
Ancient Times
484. Origin
of the theater
485. Architecture
Some of the songs were sung responsively by the chorus and their leader. For the diversion of the listening peasants the leader would illustrate with gestures the story told in the song. He thus became to some extent an actor, the forerunner of the actors on our own stage. After Pisistratus introduced the spring feast of Dionysus at Athens (§ 474)1 this form of presentation made rapid progress. A second leader was introduced, and dialogue between the two was then possible, though the chorus continued to recite most of the narrative. Thus arose a form of musical play or drama, the action or narrative of which was carried on by the chorus and two actors. The Greeks called such a play a tragedy, which means "goat’s play,” probably because of the rustic disguise as goats which the chorus had always worn.
The grassy circle where the chorus danced and sang was usually on a slope in the hills, from which the spectators had a fine view of the country and the sea beyond. At Athens the people sat on the slope of the Acropolis, and as they watched the play they could look far across the sea to the heights of Argos. Here, under the southern brow of the Acropolis, where Pisistratus laid out the sacred precinct of Dionysus (see plan, p. 352), the theater began to take form and furnished the arrangements which have finally been inherited by us in our theaters (see Fig. 189).
The tyrants were so devoted to building that architecture made very important advances. The Greek cities, including the buildings of the government, were still simply groups of sun-dried-brick buildings. Great stone buildings such as we have seen on the Nile had been unknown in Europe since the time of the j-Egeans (Fig. 145), but now the rough Greek temples of sun-dried brick were rebuilt in limestone by the tyrants. Indeed, the front of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was even 'built of marble. At no other time before or since were so many tfemples erected as in the Greek world in the Age of the Tyrants. In Sicily and southern Italy a number of the noble temples of this age still stand to display to us the beauty and
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simplicity of Greek architecture when it was still at an undeveloped stage (Fig. 219). Instead of the wooden posts of the Age of the Nobles (§ 449), these temples were surrounded by lines of plain stone columns (colonnades) in a style which we call Doric (Fig. 167). Although the architects of the tyrants borrowed the idea and the form of these colonnades from Egypt, they improved them until they made them the most beautiful columns ever designed by early architects. Like those on the Nile, these Greek temples were painted in bright colors (see p. 340).
Such temples were adorned, in the triangular gable end, with sculptured relief figures of the gods, grouped in scenes representing incidents in the -- myths.
Although at first very much influenced by oriental reliefs, the sculptor soon produced works of real beauty and independence (Fig. 169). In meeting the demand for
Fig. 167. An Old Egyptian Col- ,
486. Sculp-
UMN AND THE DORIC COLUMN DE- ture RIVED FROM IT
The earliest form of column used by the Greeks was a fluted shaft of stone (B) closely resembling the simplest form (A) which we found in Egypt, dating nearly 2000 B.C. (Fig. 57). Not only the whole idea of a rhythmic row of piers but also the form of each shaft was thus taken by the Greeks from Egypt. The Greeks gave this form completeness and increased beauty by adding a capital and shaping it with great refinement of line and contour. We should recall that colonnades were not in use in the Asiatic Orient until the Persians introduced them there (Fig. 116). See also diagram, p. 340
A 3
Fig. i 68. Early Greek Statue and Egyptian Portrait Statue by which it was influenced
The Egyptian portrait (B) is over two thousand years older than the Greek figure (A). The noble [B], one of those whose estate we visited on the Nile (§ 80), stands in the customary posture of such figures in Egyptian art, with the arms hanging down and the left foot thrust forward. The Greek figure (A) stands in the same posture, with the left foot thrust forward. Both look straight ahead, as was customary in undeveloped art. The Greek figure shows clearly the influence of Egyptian sculpture
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statues of the victors at the games, the Greek sculptors were also much influenced by the Egyptian figures they had seen. Their earliest figures in stone were therefore still stiff and ungraceful (Fig. 168). Moved by patriotic impulses, however,
Fig. 169. Monument of the Tyrant Slayers of Athens, Harmodius and Aristogiton, from Two Points of View
On the slopes of the Areopagus (see plan, p. 352, and Fig. 182) overlooking the market place, the Athenians set up this group, depicting at the moment of attack the two heroic youths who lost their lives in an attempt to slay the two sons of Pisistratus and to free Athens from the two tyrants (514 B.C.) (§475)- The group was carried off by the Persians after the battle of Salamis; the Athenians had another made to replace the first one. It was afterward recovered in Persia by Alexander or his successors and restored to its old place where both groups stood side by side. Our illustration is an ancient copy in marble, probably reproducing the later of the two groups
the Athenian sculptors went still farther and attempted a kind of work which never had arisen in the Orient. They wrought a noble memorial of the two youths who endeavored to free Athens from the sons of Pisistratus. It was in the form of a group depicting the two at the moment of their attack on the tyrants, and although it still displayed some of the old stiffness, it also showed remarkable progress toward free and
3M
Ancient Times
487. Painting
vigorous action of the human body (Fig. 169). These figures were cast in bronze.
Similar progress was made by the painters of the age. Just as the poets had begun to call upon their own imagination-for subject matter, so the vase-painters now began to depict not only scenes from the myths of the gods and heroes, but also pictures from the everyday life of the times (see the school,
Fig. 170. Greek Vase-Painting, showing the Home Life of Women
A maidservant at the right presents to'her mistress an Egyptian alabaster perfume bottle (see the same shape in glass, Fig. 49). The mistress sits arranging her hair before a hand mirror. Behind her approaches another woman. At the left a lady is working at an embroidery frame, while a visitor in street costume watches her work. Behind stands a lady with a basket. Notice the grace and beauty of the drawing. It was at this time done in red color on a black background, in contrast with the older method of using black on a red background
Fig. 181). At the same time they improved their method greatly (cf. Fig. 170). They made drawings of the human figure that were more natural and true than early artists had ever before been able to do. Their skill in depicting limbs shortened by being seen from one end was surprising. These problems, called foreshortening and perspective, were first solved by the Greek painters. The vases of this age are a wonderful treasury of beautiful scenes from Greek life (Fig. 170), reminding us of our glimpses into the life of Egypt two thousand five hundred years earlier, in the tomb-chapel scenes of the Nile.
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Literature and painting show us that the Greeks of this asre-' were intensely interested in the life of their own time 1 Iii the first place, they were thinking more deeply than ever before about conduct, and they were better able to distinguish between right and wrong. Men could no longer believe that the gods led the evil lives pictured in the Homeric songs. Stesichorus (§ 483) had so high an idea of womanly fidelity that he could not accept the tale of the beautiful Helen’s faithlessness, and in his festival songs he told the ancient story in another way. Men now felt that even Zeus and his Olympian divinities must do the right. Mortals too must do the same, for men had now come to believe that in the world of the dead there was punishment for the evildoer. Hades became a place of torment for the wicked, guarded by Cerberus, a monstrous dog, one of those sentinel animals of the Orient of which the Sphinx of Gizeh (Fig. 54), also guarding the dead, is the oldest example.
Likewise it was believed that there must be a place of blessedness for the good in the next world. Accordingly, in the temple at Eleusis scenes from the mysterious earth life of Demeter and Dionysus, to whom men owed the fruits of the earth, were presented by the priests in dramatic form before the initiated, and he who viewed them mysteriously received immortal life and might be admitted into the Islands of the Blessed, where once none but the ancient heroes could be received. Even the poorest slave was permitted to enter this fellowship and be initiated into the " mysteries,” as they were called.
More than ever, also, men now turned to the gods for a knowledge of the future in this world. Everywhere it was believed that the oracle voice of Apollo revealed the outcome of every untried venture, and his shrine at Delphi (Figs. 171 and 172) became a national religious center, to which the whole Greek world resorted.
Some thoughtful men, on the other hand, were rejecting the beliefs of older times, especially regarding the world and
488. Growing sense of right and wrong; punishment hereafter
489. Blessedness hereafter;
" mysteries of Eleusis
490. Oracles
316
Ancient Times
491. Thales and his prediction of an eclipse (585 B.C.)
Jts control by the gods. The Ionian cities, long the commerce, leaders of the ^Egean, now likewise led the way in
thinking of these new problems. In constant contact with Egypt and the Phoenician cities, they gained the beginnings of mathematics and astronomy as known in the Orient, and one of the Ionian thinkers had indeed set up an Egyptian shadow clock (Fig. 74). At Miletus, the leader of these Ionian cities, there was an able statesman named Thales, who had traveled widely, and received from Babylonia a list of observations of the heavenly bodies. From such lists the Babylonians had already learned that
Fig. 171. View over the Valley and Ruins of Delphi to the Sea
This splendid gorge in the slopes of Mount Parnassus on the north side of the Corinthian Gulf (see map, p. 352) was very early sacred to Apollo, who was said to have slain the dragon Pytho which lived here. The white line of road in the foreground is the highway descending to the distant arm of the Corinthian Gulf. On the left of this road the cliff descends sheer 1000 feet, and above the road (on its right) on the steep slope are the ruins of the sacred buildings of ancient Delphi, excavated by the French in recent years. We can see the zigzag road leading up the hill among the ruins just at the right of the main road (cf. also Fig. 172)
eclipses of the sun
occurred at periodic intervals (§ 239). With these lists in his hands Thales could calculate when the next eclipse would occur. He therefore told the people of Miletus that they might
Fig. 172. The Buildings of Delphi restored. (After Homolle-Tournaire)
Beginning with the seventh century B.C. this place became a national sanctuary of the Greeks, where all Greece and-many foreigners came to hear the oracles of the revered Apollo (§ 490). His temple, many times rebuilt, was a Doric structure which we see rising in the middle of the inclosure. A zigzag way (cf. Fig. 171) passed up from the lower right-hand comer of this inclosure, and on each side of this way were ranged the treasuries containing the votive offerings of the Greeks to the great god — the statues and victorious trophies, many of them of gold and silver, presented by states, kings, and individuals. The value of these things proved fatal. It was finally plundered by the Romans (§ 1043), but although the Roman emperor Nero (54-68 a.d.) removed five hundred statues, there were still three thousand left here when Pliny visited the place some years later. Part of a magnificent tripod taken away from here by the Romans to adorn Constantinople may be seen in Fig. 269
318
Ancient Times
492. Natural law versus the gods; rise of science and philosophy among the Ionians
493. Ionian geography and history
expect an eclipse of the sun before the end of a certain year. When the promised eclipse (585 B.C.) actually occurred as he had predicted, the fame of Thales spread far and wide.
The prediction of an eclipse, a feat already accomplished by the Babylonians (§ 239), was not so important as the consequences which followed in the mind of Thales. Hitherto men had believed that eclipses and all the other strange things that happened in the skies were caused by the momentary angry whim of some god. Now, however, Thales boldly proclaimed that the movements of the heavenly bodies were in accordance with fixed laws. The gods were thus banished from control of the sky-world where the eagle of Zeus had once ruled (§ 413). So also when a Greek traveler like Thales visited the vast buildings of the Orient, like the pyramids of Gizeh, then over two thousand years old, he at once saw that the gods had not been wandering on earth a few generations before his own time. This fact seemed to banish the gods from the past, and from the beginning of the world likewise.
Hence another citizen of Miletus, perhaps a pupil of Thales, explained the origin of animals by assuming a development of higher forms from the lower ones, in a manner which reminds us of the modern theory .of evolution. He studied the forms of the seas and the countries, and he made a map of the world. It is the earliest world map known to us, although maps of a limited region were already in use in Egypt and Babylonia. A little later another geographer of Miletus, named Hecatseus, traveled widely, including a journey up the Nile, and he wrote a geography of the world. In this book, as in the map just mentioned, the Mediterranean Sea was the center, and the lands about it for a short distance back from its shores were all those which were known to the author (see his map, p. 319). Hecatseus also put together a history made up of the mythical stories of early Greece and the tales of the past he had heard in the Orient. After the Unknown Historian of the Hebrews (§ 302), he was the first historical writer of the early world.
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Another Ionian thinker, who migrated to southern Italy, was Pythagoras. He investigated mathematics and natural science. He or his pupils discovered that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a rightangled triangle. They also found out that the length of a musical string is in exact mathematical relation to the height of its tone. They likewise discovered that the earth is a sphere which possesses its own motion.
Another of these Ionians, in his account of the origin of the earth, called attention to the presence of petrified sea plants and fish in the rocks, to prove that the sea had at one time covered the land.
Thus these Ionian thinkers, having gradually abandoned the old myths, took the natural world out of the hands of the gods. They therefore became the forerunners of natural scientists and philosophers, for they strove to discern what were the natural laws which in the beginning had brought the world into existence, and still continued to control it. At this point in their thinking they entered upon a new world of thought, which we call science and philosophy — a world which had never dawned upon the greatest minds of the early East. This step, taken by Thales and the great men of the Ionian cities, remains and
494. Ionian mathematics and natural science
495- The
great step taken by the Ionian thinkers
320
Ancient Times
496. Summary and end of the Age of the Tyrants
will forever remain the greatest achievement of the human intellect — an achievement to call forth the reverence and admiration of all time.
The Age of the Tyrants was therefore one of the great epochs of the world’s history. Under the stimulus of the keen struggle for leadership in business, in government, and in society, the minds of the ablest men of the time were wonderfully quickened, till they threw off the bondage of habit and entered an entirely new world of science and philosophy. The inner power of this vigorous new Greek life flowed out in statesmanship, in literature and religion, in sculpture and painting, in architecture and building. As a group the leaders of this age, many of them tyrants, made an impression which never entirely disappeared, and they were called " the Seven Wise Men.” They were the earliest statesmen and thinkers ,of Greece. The people loved to quote their sayings, such as " Know thyself,” a proverb which was carved over the door of the Apollo temple at Delphi (Fig. 172); or Solon’s wise maxim, " Overdo nothing.” After the overthrow of the sons of Pisistratus, however, the tyrants were disappearing, and although a tyrant here and there survived, especially in Asia Minor and Sicily, Greece at this time (about 500 B.C.) passed out of the Age of the Tyrants.
QUESTIONS
Section 46. How did the new colonies of the Greeks influence manufacturing at home ? What can you tell of commerce and manufactures? What step toward freedom from foreign influences did Greek manufactures take ? What evidence have we of the extent of Athenian commerce? Discuss the effect upon shipbuilding. What new business convenience came in from the East ? How did coinage arise ? What leading coins did Athens possess ? How did coinage affect business and the accumulation of wealth? From our point of view did the Greeks have any large cities or farms ?
Section 47. What was now happening to the Greek farmers in the matter of wealth ? in the matter of military and political power ?
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Were the nobles all united? What attitude toward the common people did a leading noble often take? What was the result? How did the Greeks feel toward a tyrant ? When may we date the period of the tyrants?
In what form had Greek laws thus far existed? What did the people now demand? What code of laws was made at Athens? Who now aroused Athens to meet her foreign difficulties ? What did Solon accomplish after he was elected archon ? What can you say of his character.? Did his work save Athens from the rule of a tyrant ?
What did Pisistratus accomplish ? When did he die ? What happened to his sons ? How did Clisthenes aid the people ? What was ostracism? What was meantime happening in Sparta? How did Sparta feel toward Athens ?
Section 48. Describe the social position of the nobles in the Age of the Tyrants. What was their attitude toward the athletic games ? What can you say of education in this age ? Discuss instrumental music; vocal music. What was lyric poetry ? Who was the leading lyric poet, and what can you say of his poetry ? Of what class was he the spokesman ? Who was the greatest poetess ? How did festal choruses lead to drama ? What was the origin of the theater ?
Had the Greeks any fine buildings in this age? What was the building material ? Had they never seen any stone buildings ? In what style of architecture were the temples erected ? Where did the form of the Doric column arise? Did the Greeks improve these columns ? Did they color them ? What other adornment of his temples did the Greek architect employ? Under what influences did Greek sculpture arise? What progress does the monument of the tyrant-slayers show?
Discuss Greek vase-painting in this age. What subjects did the vase-painters select? Compare the human figures in Fig. 170 and those in Fig. 155 and express your opinion of the progress made in two and a half centuries. How was the method of vase-painting improved ? What progress was made in ideas of conduct ? Discuss the ideas of the hereafter; oracles. What did Thales do? Was he the first to make such a calculation ? What conclusions did he make about the gods and their control of the world? Tell about the first maps of the world. What new world had the Ionian thinkers entered upon ? What can you say of the Age of the Tyrants as a whole ?
CHAPTER XIII
497. Rise of Lydia in Asia Minor
498. Fall of Lydia and advance of Persia to the /Egean
THE REPULSE OF PERSIA
Section 49. The Coming of the Persians
The leadership gained by the Ionian cities in the Age of the Tyrants was now seriously checked by their neighbors in Asia Minor. Here still lived the descendants of the Hittites (§ 351), mingled with later invaders (§ 376). The kings of Lydia, their leading kingdom, where we have already met Croesus (§ 260), made their capital, Sardis, the strongest city of Asia Minor (Fig. 173). From them the practice of coinage had passed to the Greeks (§ 458). The Lydians had finally conquered all the Greek cities along the yEgean coast of Asia Minor except Miletus, which still resisted capture.
The Lydians had been strong enough to halt the Medes, but we remember that when Cyrus the Persian invaded Asia Minor, he defeated Croesus and captured Sardis (§ 260). In the midst
Note. The above headpiece represents a scene sculptured in relief on a doorway in the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis (Fig. 116). It shows us Xerxes as he was accustomed to appear when enthroned before his nobles, with his attendants and fan-bearers. At Salamis he took his station on the heights of TEgaleos overlooking the bay (§ 513), and as he sat there viewing the battle below him, he must have been enthroned as we see him here.
322
The Repulse of Persia
323
of the most remarkable progress in civilization (§§ 491-496), the Ionian cities thus suddenly lost their liberty and became the subjects of Persia, a despotic oriental power. Moreover, the sudden advance of Persia to the Aegean made this power at one stroke a close neighbor of the Greek world now arising there.
Fig. 173. Sardis, the City of Crcesus, in Course of Excavation
The natural drainage from the mountain slope in the background has covered the ruins of the city with earth. The bank showing the edge of this earth and the limit of the excavations can be seen behind the columns of the temple rising in the middle. These excavations, which have produced very important results, are an American enterprise under the direction of Professor Howard Crosby Butler, to whose kindness the author owes this photograph
As we have already learned, the Persians represented a high civilization and an enlightened rule; but, on the other hand, the Orient lacked free citizenship, and in place of science the Orientals felt complete subjection of the mind to religious tradition. Persian supremacy in Greece would therefore have
499. The
coming conflict and the revolt of the Ionians
500. First Persian invasion of Europe
501. Second Persian invasion
502. Consternation in Athens and Greece
324 Ancient Times
, t
checked the free development of Greek genius along its own exalted lines. There seemed little prospect that the tiny Greek states, even if they united, could successfully resist the vast oriental empire, controlling as it did all the countries of the ancient East, which we have been studying. Nevertheless the Ionian cities revolted against their Persian lords.
During the struggle with Persia which followed this revolt, ■ the Athenians sent twenty ships to aid their Ionian kindred. This act brought a Persian army of revenge, under Darius, into Europe. The long march across the Hellespont and through Thrace cost the invaders many men, and the fleet which accompanied the Persian advance was wrecked in trying to round the high promontory of Mount Athos (492 B.C.). This advance into Greece was therefore abandoned for a plan of invasion, by water across the ^Egean.
In the early summer of 490 B.C. a considerable fleet of transports and warships bearing the Persian host put out from the Island of Samos, sailed straight across the iEgean, and entered the straits between Euboea and Attica (seej.map I, p. 344, and Fig. 174). The Persians began by burning the little city of Eretria, which had also sent ships to aid the Ionians. They then landed on the shores of Attica, in the Bay of Marathon (see map, p. 352, and Fig. 174), intending to march on Athens, the greater offender. They were guided by the aged Hippias, son of Pisistratus, once tyrant of Athens, who accompanied them with high hopes of regaining control of his native city.
All was excitement and confusion among the Greek states. The defeat of the revolting Ionian cities, and especially the Persian sack of Miletus, had made a deep impression throughout Greece. An Athenian dramatist had depicted in a play the plunder of the unhappy city and so incensed the Athenians that they passed weeping from the theater to prosecute and fine the author. Now this Persian foe who had crushed the Ionian cities was camping behind the hills only a few miles northeast
The Repulse of Persia
325
of Athens. After dispatching messengers in desperate haste to seek aid in Sparta, the Athenian citizens turned to contemplate the seemingly hopeless situation of their beloved city.
Fig. 174. The Plain of Marathon
This view is taken from the hills at the south end of the plain, and we look northeastward across a corner of the Bay of Marathon to the mountains in the background, which are on the large island of Eubcea (see map, p. 352). The Persian camp was on the plain at the very shore line, where their ships were moored or drawn up. The Greeks held a position in the hills overlooking the plain (just out of range on the left) and commanding the road to Athens, which is 25 miles distant behind us. When the Persians began to move along the -shore road toward the right, the Greeks crossed the plain and attacked. The memorial mound (Fig. 175) is too far away to be visible from this point
Thinking to find the Athenians unprepared, Darius had not sent a large army. The Persian forces probably numbered no more than twenty thousand men, but at the utmost the Athenians could not put more than half this number into the field. Fortunately for them there was among their generals a skilled and experienced commander named Miltiades, a man
503. The
armies and
Greek
leadership
326
Ancient Times
504. The
Greek position
505. The
battle of Marathon (490 B.C.)
of resolution and firmness, who, moreover, had lived on the Hellespont and was familiar with Persian methods of fighting. To his judgment the commander-in-chief, Callimachus, yielded at all points. As the citizen-soldiers of Attica flocked to the city at the call to arms, Miltiades was able to induce the leaders not to await the assault of the Persians at Athens, but to march across the peninsula (see map, p. 352) and block the Persian advance among the hills overlooking the eastern coast and commanding the road to the city. This bold and resolute move roused courage and enthusiasm in the downcast ranks of the Greeks.
Nevertheless, when they issued between the hills and looked down upon the Persian host encamped upon the Plain of Marathon (Fig. 174), flanked by a fleet of hundreds of vessels, misgiving and despair chilled the hearts of the little Attic army made up as it was of citizen militia without experience in war, and pitted against a Persian army of professional soldiers of many battles. But Miltiades held the leaders firmly in hand, and the arrival of a thousand Greeks from Plataea revived the courage of the Athenians. The Greek position overlooked the main road to Athens, and the Persians could not advance without leaving their line of march exposed on one side to the Athenian attack.
Unable to lure the Greeks from their advantageous position after several days’ waiting, the Persians at length attempted to march along the road to Athens, at the same time endeavoring to cover their exposed line of march with a sufficient force thrown out in battle array. Miltiades was familiar with the Persian custom of massing troops in the center. He therefore massed his own troops on both wings, leaving his center weak. It was a battle between bow and spear. The Athenians undauntedly faced the storm of Persian arrows (§ 259 and 113), and then both wings pushed boldly forward to the line of shields behind which the Persian archers were kneeling. In the meantime the Persian center, finding the Greek center
The Repulse of Persia 327
weak, had pushed it back, while the two Greek wings closed in on either side and thrust back the Persian wings in confusion. The Asiatic army crumbled into a broken multitude between the two advancing lines of Greeks. The Persian bow was useless, and the Greek spear everywhere spread death and terror. As the Persians fled to their ships they left over six thousand
Fig. 175. Mound raised as a Monument to the Fallen Greeks on the Plain at Marathon
The mound is nearly 50 feet high. Excavations undertaken in 1890 disclosed beneath it the bodies of the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian citizens who fell in the battle. Some of their weapons and the funeral vases buried with them were also recovered
dead upon the field, while the Athenians lost less than two hundred men (Fig. 175). When the Persian commander, unwilling to acknowledge defeat, sailed around the Attic peninsula and appeared with his fleet before the port of Athens, he found it unwise to attempt a landing, for the victorious Athenian army was already encamped beside the city. The Persians therefore retired, and we can imagine with what feelings the Athenian citizens watched the Persian ships as they disappeared.
328
Ancient Times
506. Rise of Themistocles
507. Xerxes inherits the Persian quarrel with the Greeks
Section 50. The Greek Repulse of Persians
AND PHCENICIANS
Among the men who stood in the Athenian ranks at Marathon was Themistocles, the ablest statesman in Greece, a man who had already occupied the office of archon, the head of the Athenian state. He was convinced of the necessity of building up a strong navy —■ a course already encouraged by Pisistratus (§ 474). As archon, Themistocles had therefore striven to show the Athenians that the only way in which Athens could hope to meet the assault of Persia was by making herself undisputed mistress of the sea. He had failed in his effort. But now the Athenians had seen the Persians cross the /Egean with their fleet and land at Marathon. It was evident that a powerful Athenian navy might have stopped them. They began to listen to the counsels of Themistocles to make Athens the great sea power of the Mediterranean.
Darius the Great, whose remarkable reign we have studied (§§ 267-273), died without having avenged the defeat of his army at Marathon. His son and successor Xerxes therefore took up the unfinished task. Xerxes planned a far-reaching assault on Greek civilization all along the line from Greece to Sicily. This he could do through his control of the Phoenician cities. The naval policy of his father Darius (§ 270) had given the Persians a huge Phoenician war fleet. In so far as the coming attack on Greece was by sea it was chiefly a Semitic assault. At the same time Xerxes induced Phoenician Carthage to attack the Greeks in Sicily. Thus the two wings of the great Semitic line represented by the Phoenicians in east and west (Carthage) were to attack the Indo-European line (Fig. 112) represented in east and west by the Greeks. Xerxes was induced by his general Mardonius to adopt the Hellespont route (map I, p. 344).
Meantime the Greeks were making ready to meet the coming Persian assault. They soon saw that Xerxes’ commanders were cutting a canal behind the promontory of Athos, to secure a
The Repulse of Persia
329
short cut and thus to avoid all risk of such a wreck as had overtaken their former fleet in rounding this dangerous point. When the news of this operation reached Athens, Themistocles was able to induce the Athenian Assembly to build a great fleet of probably a hundred and eighty triremes. The Greeks were then able for the first time to meet the Persian advance by both sea and land (see map I, p. 344).
Themistocles’ masterly plan of campaign corresponded exactly to the plan of the Persian advance. The Asiatics were coming in combined land and sea array, with army and fleet moving together down the east coast of the Greek mainland. It was as if the Persian forces had two wings, a sea wing and a land wing, moving side by side. The design of Themistocles was to meet the Persian sea wing first with full force and fight a decisive naval battle as soon as possible. If victorious, the Greek fleet commanding the Aigean would then be able to sail up the eastern coast of Greece and threaten the communications and supplies of the Persian army. There must be no attempt of the small Greek army to meet the vast land forces of the Persians, beyond delaying them as long as possible at the narrow northern passes, which could be defended with a few men. An attempt to unite all the Greek states was not successful, but Sparta and Athens combined their forces to meet the common danger. Themistocles was able to induce the Spartans to accept his plan only on condition that Sparta be given command of the allied Greek fleets.
In the summer of 480 B.C. the Asiatic army was approaching the pass of Thermopylae (Fig. 176), just opposite the westernmost point of the Island of Euboea (see map, p. 352). Their fleet moved with them. The Asiatic host must have numbered over two hundred thousand men, with probably as many more camp followers, while the enormous fleet contained presumably about a thousand vessels, of which perhaps two thirds were warships. Of these ships, the Persians lost a hundred or two in a storm, leaving probably about five hundred warships
508. Themistocles induces the Athenians to build a fleet
<09. Third Persian invasion—Themistocles’ plan of campaign
510. Persians enter Greece
33°
Ancient Times
available for action. The Spartan king Leonidas led some five thousand men to check the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae, while the Greek fleet of less than three hundred triremes was endeavoring to hold together and strike the Persian navy at
Fig. 176. The Pass of Thermopylae
In the time of the Persian invasion the mountains to the left dropped steeply to the sea, with barely room between for a narrow road. Since then the rains of twenty-four hundred years have washed down the mountainside, and it is no longer as steep as formerly, while the neighboring river has filled in the shore and pushed back the sea several miles. Otherwise we would see it here on the right. The Persians, coming from beyond the mountains toward our point of view, could not spread out in battle array, being hemmed in by the sea on one side and. the cliff on the other. It was only when a traitorous Greek led a Persian force by night over the mountain on the left, and they appeared behind the Greeks in the pass, that Leonidas and his Spartans were crushed by the simultaneous attack in front and rear {§§ 510—511)
Artemisium, on the northern coast of Eubosa. Thus the land and sea forces of both contestants were face to face.
After several days’ delay the Persians advanced to attack on both land and sea. The Greek fleet made a skillful and creditable defense against superior numbers, and all day the dauntless
The Repulse of Persia
331
Leonidas held the pass of Thermopylae against the Persian host. Meantime the Persians were executing two flank movements by land and by sea — one over the mountains to strike Leonidas in the rear, and the other with two hundred ships around Euboea to take the Greek fleet likewise from behind. A storm destroyed the flanking Persian ships, and a second combat between the two main fleets was indecisive. The flank movement by sea therefore failed; but the flanking of the pass was successful. Taken in front and rear, the heroic Leonidas died fighting at the head of his small force, which the Persian host completely annihilated. The death of Leonidas stirred all Greece. With the defeat of the Greek land forces and the advance of the Persian army, the Greek fleet, seriously damaged, was obliged to withdraw to the south. It took up its position in the Bay of Salamis (see map, p. 352*, and Fig. 177), while the main army of the Spartans and their allies was drawn up on the Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 163), the only point at which the Greek land forces could hope to make another defensive stand.
As the Persian army moved southward from Thermopylae, the indomitable Themistocles gathered together the Athenian population and carried them in transports to the little islands of Salamis and yEgina and to the shores of Argolis (see map, p. 352, and PI. Ill, p. 276). Meantime the Greek fleet had been repaired; and with reinforcements numbered over three hundred battleships. Nevertheless it shook the courage of many at Salamis as they looked northward, where the far-stretching Persian host darkened the coast road, while in the south they could see the Asiatic fleet drawn up off the old port of Athens at Phalerum (see map, p. 352). High over the Attic hills the flames of the burning Acropolis showed red against the sullen masses of smoke that obscured the eastern horizon and told them that the homes of the Athenians lay in ashes. With masterly skill Themistocles held together the irresolute Greek leaders, while he induced Xerxes to attack by the false message that the Greek fleet was about to slip out of the bay.
511. The
battles of Thermopylae; and Arte-misiurn
512. Persian advance into Attica and burning of Athens
332
Ancient Times
513. Battle
of Salamis (480 B.Cp)
On the heights overlooking the Bay of Salamis the Persian king, seated on his throne (headpiece, p. 322) in the midst of his brilliant oriental court, took up his station to watch the battle.
Fig. 177. Piraeus, the Port of Athens, and the Strait and Island of Salamis
The view shows the very modern houses and buildings of this flourishing harbor town of Athens (see map, p. 352). The mountains in the background are the heights of the island of Salamis, which extends also far over to the right (north), opposite Eleusis (see map, p. 352). The four steamers at the right are lying at the place where the hottest fighting in the great naval battle here (§ 513) took place. The Persian fleet advanced from the left (south) and could not spread out in a long front to enfold the Greek fleet because of the little island just beyond the four steamers, which was called Psyttaleia. The Greek fleet lying behind Psyttaleia and a long point of Salamis came into action from the right (north), around Psyttaleia, and met the front of the Persian fleet about where the four steamers lie. A body of Persian troops stationed by Xerxes on Psyttaleia were all slain by the Greeks
The Greek position between the jutting headlands of Salamis and the Attic mainland (see map, p. 352, and Fig. 177) was too cramped for the maneuvers of a large fleet. Crowded and hampered by the narrow sea room, the huge Asiatic fleet soon fell into confusion before the Greek attack. There was no room
The Repiclse of Persia
333
for retreat. The combat lasted the entire day, and when darkness settled on the Bay of Salamis the Persian fleet had been almost annihilated. The Athenians were masters of the sea, and it was impossible for the army of Xerxes to operate with the same freedom as before. By the creation of its powerful fleet Athens had saved Greece, and Themistocles had shown himself the greatest of Greek statesmen.
Xerxes was now troubled lest he should be cut off from Asia by the victorious Greek fleet. Indeed, Themistocles made every effort to induce Sparta to join with Athens in doing this very thing; but the cautious Spartans could not be prevailed upon to undertake what seemed to them so dangerous an enterprise. Had Themistocles’ plan of sending the Greek fleet immediately to the Hellespont been carried out, Greece would have been saved another year of anxious campaigning against the Persian army. With many losses from disease and insufficient supplies, Xerxes retreated to the Hellespont and withdrew into Asia, leaving his able general Mardonius with an army of perhaps fifty thousand men to winter in Thessaly. Meantime the news reached Greece that the army of Carthaginians which had crossed from Africa to Sicily had been completely defeated by the Greeks under the leadership of Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse. Thus the assault of the Asiatics upon the Hellenic world was beaten back in both east and west in the same year (480 B.C.).
The brilliant statesmanship of Themistocles, so evident to us of to-day, was not so clear to the Athenians as the winter passed and they realized that the victory at Salamis had not relieved Greece of the presence of a Persian army, and that Mardonius would invade Attica with the coming of spring. Themistocles, whose proposed naval expedition to the Hellespont would have forced the Persian army out of Greece, was removed from command by the factions of his ungrateful city. Nevertheless the most tempting offers from Mardonius could not induce the Athenians to forsake the cause of Greek liberty and join hands with Persia.
514. Retreat of Xerxes in the East ; defeat of Carthage in the W est
515. Reaction against Themistocles
334
Ancient limes
516. Persians again in Attica
517. Battle" of Plataea; final defeat of Persia (479 B-C-)
■518. Athenian fleet victorious in Ionia and the North
As Mardonius, at the end of the winter,rains, led his army again into Attica, the unhappy Athenians were obliged to flee as before, this time chiefly to Salamis. Sparta, always reluctant and slow when the crisis demanded quick and vigorous action, was finally induced to put her army into the field. When Mardonius in Attica saw the Spartan king Pausanias advancing through the Corinthian Isthmus and threatening his rear, he withdrew northward, having for the second time laid waste Attica far and wide. With the united armies of Sparta, Athens, and other allies behind him, Pausanias was able to lead some thirty thousand heavy-armed Greeks of the phalanx, as he followed Mardonius into Bceotia.
In several days of preliminary movements which brought the two armies into contact at Platsea, the clever Persian showed his superiority, out-maneuvering Pausanias and even gaining possession of the southern passes behind the Greeks and capturing a train of their supply wagons. But when Mardonius led his archers forward at double-quick, and the Persians, kneeling behind their line of shields, rained deadly volleys of arrows into the compact Greek lines, the Hellenes never flinched, although their comrades were falling on every hand. With the gaps closed up, the massive Greek phalanx pushed through the line of Persian shields, and, as at Marathon, the spear proved invincible against the bow. In a heroic but hopeless effort to rally his broken lines, Mardonius himself fell. The Persian cavalry covered the rear of the flying Asiatic army and saved it from destruction.
Not only European Greece, but Ionia too, was saved from Asiatic despotism ; for the Greek triremes, having meantime crossed to the peninsula of Mycale on the north of Miletus, drove out or destroyed the remnants of the Persian fleet. The Athenians now also captured and occupied Sestus on the European side of the Hellespont, and thus held the crossing from Asia into Europe closed against further Persian invasion. Thus
The Repulse of Persia
335
the grandsons of the men who had seen Persia advance to the ^Egean had blocked her further progress in the West and thrust her back from Europe. Indeed, no Persian army ever set foot in European Greece again.
QUESTIONS
Section 49. What was the leading kingdom of Asia Minor beyond the fringe of Greek coast cities ? What had happened to these Greek cities in the middle of the sixth century B.C.? Who was the last king of Lydia ? Who crushed the Lydian kingdom ? When ? What great oriental power thus advanced to the east side of the jEgean?' What do you think of the prospects for Greek resistance?
What did the Ionian cities of Asia do? What part did Athens take in their revolt? How did the Persians respond? When? Who was their king? Where did they land in Greece? How far is Marathon from Athens? What did the Athenians do? Discuss the numbers of the two armies. Did the Athenians wait for the Persians at Athens? Who was their leader? What position did the Greeks take up, and what advantages were thus gained ? Describe the battle of Marathon.
Section 50. What great Greek statesman had fought at Marathon ? What was his policy for the future defense of Athens ? Describe the plans of Xerxes for the subjection of Greece. What did the Athenians do? Describe Tbemistocles’ plan of campaign. What first two battles took place? Describe them. What was the next move of the Persian army? Describe the battle of Salamis.
What did Xerxes do after the battle of Salamis ? What move did Themistocles urge ? What was the result of the Greek failure to accept Themistocles’' advice? What victory did the Greeks win in Sicily at the same time ? What racial conflict do these victories represent ? What happened to Themistocles ? What did the Persian commander now do ? Who was he ? Where did the final battle take place? Describe it. What final results were obtained by the Greeks at sea ?
519. Athenian feeling after Salamis
520. Spartan
soldier-
citizens
CHAPTER XIV
THE GROWING RIVALRY BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA, AND THE RISE OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Section 51. The Beginnings of the Rivalry between Athens and Sparta
As the Athenians returned to look out over the ashes of what was once Athens, amid which rose the smoke-blackened heights of the naked Acropolis (Fig. 182), they began to realize the greatness of their deliverance and the magnitude of their, achievement. With the not too ready help of Sparta, they had met and crushed the hoary power of Asia. They felt themselves masters of the world. The past seemed narrow and limited. A new and greater Athens dawned upon their vision.
Of all this the Spartans, on the other hand, felt very little. The Spartan citizens were all soldiers and devoted themselves exclusively to military training. The State maintained public meals, where each soldier-citizen ate with a group of about fif: teen friends, all men, at the same table every day. Each citizen contributed to the support of these meals, and as long as he paid this contribution he retained his citizenship. His lands
Note. The above headpiece represents a potsherd bearing the name of Themistocles, which is scratched in the surface of this fragment of a pottery jar (ostracon, § 477). It was written there by some citizen of the six thousand who desired and secured his ostracism in 472 B.C., or may have setved a similar purpose in the earlier but unsuccessful attempt to ostracize him.
336
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 337
were cultivated for him by slaves, and his only occupation was military drill and exercise. The State thus became a military machine.
The number of such Spartan soldier-citizens was quite limited, sometimes being all together only a few thousand. As distinguished from the large non-voting population of the other towns in the Laconian peninsula, the citizens of Sparta formed a small superior class. Thus their rule of the larger surrounding population was the tyranny of a limited military class devoted to war and almost without commerce or any interest in the arts and industries. So old-fashioned were they, and so confident in their own military power, that they would not surround their city with a wall (Fig. 178). Sparta remained a group of straggling villages, not deserving the name of city and entirely without fine public buildings or great monuments of any kind.-Like a large military club or camp, it lived off its own slave-worked lands and from the taxes it squeezed out of its subject towns without allowing them any vote. In case of war the two kings (§ 478) were still the military leaders.
We can now -understand that the stolid Spartans, wearing the fetters of a rigid military organization, and gifted with no imagination, looked with misgivings upon the larger world which was opening to Greek life. Although they desired to lead Greece in military power, they shrank from assuming the responsibilities of expansion. They represented the past and the privileges of the few. Athens represented the future and the rights of the many. Thus Greece fell into two camps as it were: Sparta (Fig. 178), the bulwark of tradition and limited privileges; Athens (Fig. 182), the champion of progress and the sovereign people. Thus the sentiment of union born in the common struggle for liberty, which might have united the Hellenes into one Greek nation, was followed by an unquenchable rivalry between the two leading states of Hellas, which went on for another century -and finally cost the Greeks the supremacy of the ancient world.
521. Spartan
soldier-citizens as a ruling class
522. Conservative Sparta and progressive Athens
338-
Ancient Times
523. The-mistocles and the fortification of Athens
Fig. 178, The Plain where once Sparta stood
The olive groves now grow where the Spartans once had their houses. The town was not walled until long after the days of Spartan and Greek power were over. From the mountains (nearly 8000 feet high) behind the plain the visitor can see northeastward far beyond Athens, almost to Euboea; 100 miles northward to the mountains on the north of the Corinthian Gulf (see map, p, 264); and 125 miles southward to the island of Crete, This view shows also how Greece is cut' up by such mountains
Themistocles was now the soul of Athens and her policy of progress and expansion. He determined that Athens should no longer follow Sparta. He cleverly hoodwinked the Spartans and, in spite of their objections, completed the erection of strong
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 339
walls around a new and larger Athens. At the same time he fortified the Pirasus, the Athenian port (see map, p. 352, and F'g- 177)- When the Spartans, after the repulse of Persia, relinquished the command of the combined Greek fleets, the powerful Athenian fleet, the creation of Themistocles, was master of the ^Egean.
Section 52. The Rise of the Athenian Empire and the Triumph of Democracy
\ -
As the Greek cities of Asia still feared the vengeance of the Persian king, it was easy for the Athenians to form a permanent defensive -league with the cities of their Greek kindred in Asia and the ^Egean islands. The wealthier of these cities contributed ships, while others paid a sum of money each year into the treasury of the league. Athens was to have command of the combined fleet and'collect the money. She placed in charge of the important task of adjusting all contributions of the league and collecting the tribute money a patriotic citizen named Aristides, whose friends called him " the Just ” because of his honesty. He had opposed the naval plans of Themistocles and when defeated had been ostracized, but he had later distinguished himself at Salamis and Platsea. In spite of his former opposition to Themistocles’ plans, he now did important service in vigorously aiding to establish the new naval league. The treasure he collected was placed for protection in the temple of Apollo, on the little island of Delos. Hence the federation was known as the Delian League. It was completed within three years after Salamis. The transformation of such a league into an empire, made up of states subject to Athens, could be foreseen as a very easy step (see map II, p. 344). All this was therefore viewed with increasing jealousy and distrust by Sparta.
Under the leadership of Cimon, the son of Miltiades the hero of Marathon, the fleet of the league now drove the Persians entirely out of the region of the Hellespont. Cimon did not
524. Establishment of' the Delian League (478477 B.C.)
525. Rise of Cimon
Sima
Cornice
Pediment or gable
Cornice
Frieze (alternate metopes and tri glyphs)
Architrave
Capital
Channeled shaft (with section cut out to save space)
No base
Stylobate
Sima
Cornice
Pediment
Cornice
Architrave
Capital
Channeled shaft (with section cut out to save space)
Base
Stylobate
Comparative Diagram of the two Leading Greek. Styles of Architecture, the Doric (A and B) and the Ionic (C and D)
The little Doric building (Z?) is the treasury of the Athenians at Delphi (Fig. 172), containing their offerings of gratitude to Apollo. On the low base at the left side of the building were placed the trophies from the battle of Marathon. Over them on the walls ai'e carved hymns to Apollo with musical notes attached, the oldest musical notation surviving. The beautiful Ionic building (D) is a restoration of the Temple of Victory on the Athehian Acropolis (Fig. 183, B, and headpiece, p. 378). Contrast the slender columns with the sturdier shafts of the Doric style, and it will be seen that the Ionic order is a more delicate and graceful style, A and C show details of both styles. (After Luckenbach)
340
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 341
understand the importance of Athenian supremacy in Greece, but favored a policy of friendship and alliance with Sparta. Hence political conflict arose at Athens over this question. Noble and wealthy and old-fashioned folk favored Cimon and friendship with Sparta, but progressive and modern Athenians followed Themistocles and his anti-Spartan plans.
Themistocles was unable to win the Assembly; he was ostracized (headpiece, p. 336), and at length, on false charges of treason, he was condemned and obliged to flee for his life. The greatest statesman in Athenian history spent the rest of his life in the service of the Persian king, and he never again saw the city he had saved from the Persians and made mistress of an empire.
In a final battle Cimon crushed the Persian navy in the west (468 B.C.), and returned to Athens covered with glory. In response to a request from the Spartans for help in quelling a revolt among their own subjects, Cimon urged the dispatch of troops to Sparta. Herein Cimon overestimated the good feeling of the Spartans toward Athens; for in spite of the continuance of the revolt, the Spartans after a time curtly demanded the withdrawal of the very Athenian troops they had asked for. Stung by this rebuff, to which Cimon’s friendly policy toward Sparta had exposed them, the Athenians voted to ostracize Cimon (461 B.C.).
The overthrow of Cimon was a victory of the people against the nobles. They followed it up by attacking the Council of Elders, once made up only of nobles (§ 431). It was called the Areopagus and used to meet on a hill of that name by the market place (Fig. 182, and plan, p. 352). The people now passed new laws restricting the power of the Areopagus to the trial of murder cases and the settlement of questions of state religion, thus completely depriving it of all political power. Meantime a more popular council of five hundred members had grown up and gained the power to conduct most of the government business. This it did by dividing itself into ten
526. Fall of
Themistocles
(472-471B.C.)
527. Fall of Cimon
528. Overthrow of the Council of the Areopagus; leadership of the popular council and the citizen-juries
342
Ancient Times
529. Office of archon open to all except laboring class
530. Political power still possible to the elective strategus
groups of fifty each, each group serving a little over a month once a year. At the same time the citizen-juries introduced by Solon as a court of appeal (§ 470) were enlarged until they contained six thousand jurors divided into smaller juries, usually of five hundred and one each. Such-a juiy was really a group or court of temporary judges deciding cases brought before them. The poorest citizens could not afford to leave their work to serve on these juries, and so the people passed laws granting pay for jury service. These citizen-courts were at last so powerful that they formed the final lawmaking body in the State, and, in cooperation, with the Assembly, they made the laws. The people were indeed in control.
Furthermore, the right to hold office was greatly extended. All citizens were permitted to hold the office of archon except members of the laboring class entirely without property. With one exception there was no longer any election of the higher officers, but they were now all chosen by lot from the whole body of eligible citizens. The result was that the men holding the once influential positions in the State were now mere chance " nobodies ” and hence completely without influence. But at the same time the public services now rendered by so large a number of citizens were a means of education and of veiy profitable experience. Athens was gaining a more intelligent body of citizens than any other ancient state.
There was one kind of officer whom it was impossible to choose by lot, and that was the military commander (strategus). This important office remained elective and thus open to men of ability and influence, into whose hands the direction of affairs naturally fell. There were ten of these generals, one for each of the ten tribes established by-Clisthenes (§ 476), and they not only led the army in war but they also managed the war department of the government, had large control of the government treasury and of the Empire, including foreign affairs. The leader, or president, of this body of generals was the most powerful man in the State, and his office was elective. ' It thus
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 343
Fig. 179. The Pnyx, the Athenian Place of Assembly
The speakers’ platform with its three steps is immediately in the foreground, The listening Athenian citizens of the Assembly sat on the ground now sloping away to the left, but at that time probably level. The ground they occupied was inclosed by a semicircular wall, beginning at the further end of the straight wall seen here on the right, extending then to the left, and returning to the straight wall again behind our present point of view (see semicircle on plan, p. 352). This was an open-air House of Commons, where, however, the citizen did not send a representative but came and voted himself as he was influenced from this platform by great Athenian leaders, like Themis-tocles, Pericles, or Demosthenes. Note the Acropolis and the Parthenon, to which we look eastward from the Pnyx (see plan, p, 352)* The Areopagus is just out of range on the left (see Fig. 182)
became more and more possible for a noble with military training to make himself a strong and influential leader, and if he was a man of persuasive eloquence, to lay out a definite series of plans for the nation, and by his oratory to induce the Assembly of the Athenian citizens on the Pnyx (Fig. 179) to accept them.
344
Ancient Times
531. The
leadership of Pericles
532. Commercial supremacy of the Greeks after the Persian wars; rise of Pirasus, the new port of Athens
After the fall of Cimon there came forward a handsome arid brilliant young Athenian named Pericles, a descendant of one of the old noble families of the line of Clisthenes. He desired to build up the splendid Athenian Empire of which Themistocles had dreamed. He put himself at the head of the party of progress and of increased power of the people. He kept their confidence year after year, and thus secured his continued reelection as strategus. The result was that he became the actual head of the State in power, or, as we might say, he was the undisputed political " boss ” of Athens from about 460 B.C. until his untimely death over thirty years later.
LjCt? —
Section 53. Commercial Development and the Opening of the Struggle between Athens and Sparta
A period of commercial prosperity followed the Persian wars, which gave the Greeks a leadership in trade like that of the English before the Great War of 1914. Corinth and the little island of Mgina at the front door of Attica, and visible from Athec~ (Fig. 177), rapidly became the most flourishing trading cities in Greece. They were at once followed, however, by the little harbor town of Pirseus (Fig. 177), built by the foresight of Themistocles as the port of Athens. Along its busy docks were moored Greek ships from all over the Mediterranean world, for the defeat of the Phoenicians in East and West had broken up their merchant fleets and thrown much of their trade into the hands of the Greeks. Here many a Greek ship from the Black Sea, laden with grain or fish, moored alongside the grain ships of Egypt and the mixed cargoes from Syracuse. For Attica was no longer producing food enough for her own need, and it was necessary to import it. The docks were piled high with goods from the Athenian factories, and long lines of perspiring porters were loading them into ships bound for all the harbors of the Mediterranean. Scores of battleships stretched far along the shores, and the busy
JYcrxes' Canal
Dodona
lagnesia
Sardis -p
chios:
CEPHALL]
'Ephe9U9
Map I
WESTERS LIMITS OF
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
AND TJIE
GREEK STATES IN THE PERSIAN WARS (490 to 479 B.C.)
DEL09
'.NAXOS
iLaccdiemo1
Spidaurus
| ~~ |Pers?an Empire
: |Greek -States which submitted to Peraif
Rhodes
.reek States which were neutral
Route of Darius' Fleet (490 B.C.) Route of Xerxes' Army (481-480 B.C ) Route of Xerxes' Fleet (481-480 B C.)
SCALE OF MILES
Xcrxci' Canal
/OlynthS'^
S . Do dona
JT0L1A
BCEOTrA
ITHACA®
tlaoj
CHIOS
CEPHALL!
irathon
>hesus
SAMOS'^
{CADIAi
Map II \
THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
AND TJHE (
GREEK STATES S
AT THE OPENING OP THE
2d PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431 B.C.)
Mitetus
DELOH
NAXOS
nassus
iidaurua
[Athenian Empire and its Allies Sparta and ita Allies
IODES
feutral Greek States
Persian Empire
Sequence Map showing Western Limits of the Persian Empire and the Greek States from the Persian Wars (beginning 490 n.c.) to the Beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War (431 u.c.)
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 345
shipyards and dry docks were filled with multitudes of workmen and noisy with the sound of many hammers.
In spite of much progress in navigation, we must not think of these ancient ships of Greece as very large. A merchant vessel carrying from two hundred and fifty to three hundred tons was considered large in fifth-century Greece (contrast Fig. 61). Moreover, the Greek ships still clung timidly to the shore, and they rarely ventured to sea in the stormy winter season. They had no compass or charts, there were no lighthouses, and they were often plundered by pirates, so that commerce was still carried on at great risks. Moreover, ships did not last as long as with us, because the Greeks had no oil paint and the Egyptian invention of painting with hot wax was probably too expensive.
On the other hand, the profits gained from sea-borne commerce might be very large. A vessel which reached the north shores of the Black Sea or the pirate-infested Adriatic might sell out its cargo so profitably as to bring back to the owner double the first cost of the goods, after paying all expenses. Plenty of men were therefore willing to risk their capital in such ventures, and indeed many borrowed the money to do so. Interest was lower than in Solon’s day, and money could be borrowed at 10 and 12 per cent. The returns from manufacturing industry were also high, even reaching 30 per cent.
To. measure this increased prosperity of Athens we must not apply the scale of modern business. A fortune of ten thousand dollars was looked upon as considerable, while double that amount was accounted great wealth. The day laborer’s wages were from six to ten cents a day, while the skilled craftsman received as much as twenty cents a day. Greek soldiers were ready to furnish their own arms and enter the ranks of any foreign king at five dollars a month. Men of intellect, like an architect, received only from twenty to thirty cents a day, while the tuition for a course in rhetoric lasting several years cost the student from sixty to eighty dollars.
533. Limitations of navigation and shipbuilding
534. Profits from commerce and industry
535. Wealth and wages
S3<5- Increase in population of Athens and Attica
537. Money and prices
538. Cost of government; salaries, temples, and religious services
346 Ancient Times
For nearly thirty years after the Persian wars it was easy to obtain Athenian citizenship. Some thirty thousand strangers therefore soon settled in Athens to share in its prosperity. Its population rose to above a hundred thousand in the days of Pericles (cf. § 461), while the inhabitants of Attica numbered over two hundred thousand. This included probably eighty thousand slaves, still the cheapest form of labor obtainable.
As .a result of increased business the volume of money in Athens had also greatly increased. The silver tribute (§ 524) and the Attic silver mines furnished metal for additional coinage. In all the markets of the Mediterranean, Athenian silver money was the leading coin, and many Persian darics of gold (worth about five dollars) also came in. Just as with us, as money became more plentiful its value decreased, and a given sum would not buy as much as formerly. That is to say, prices went up. A measure of barley cost twice as much, and a sheep five times as much, as in Solon’s day (§ 459). Nevertheless living would be called very cheap from our point of view. Even the well-to-do citizen did not spend over ten or twelve cents a day in food for his family, and a man of wealth was very extravagant if he owned furniture to the amount of two hundred dollars.
Money had now become very necessary in carrying on the government. Formerly service to the State had been without pay. This was quite possible in a nation of peasants and shepherds; but with the incoming of coined money and steady employment in factories, it was no longer possible for a private citizen to give his time to the State for nothing. Many a citizen of Athens bought the bread his family needed for the day with the money he had earned the day before. The daily salaries to thousands of jurymen (§ 528) and to the members of the Council of Five Hundred, who were also paid, amounted to not less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Large sums, even sums that would be large to-day, were also required for building the sumptuous marble temples now
The Growing Rivalry between Athens and Sparta 347
frequently dedicated to the gods ; while the offerings, feasts, and celebrations at these temples also consumed great sums.
Greater than all the other expenses of tha- State, however, was the cost of war. The cost of arming citizens who could not undertake this expense themselves and of feeding the army in the field, of course, fell upon the State. The war fleet was, however, the heaviest of all such expenses. Besides the first cost of building and equipping the battleships, there was always the further expense of maintaining them. A trireme, manned with about two hundred sailors and oarsmen, receiving daily half a drachma (nearly ten cents) per man, cost nearly six hundred dollars per month. A fleet of two hundred triremes therefore required nearly a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a month for wages.
The problem of securing the funds for maintaining and defending a nation had become a grave one. As for Athens, the Attic silver mines, however helpful, were far from furnishing enough to support the government. The bulk of the State funds had to be raised by taxation. The triumphant democracy disliked periodic taxes, and they assessed taxes only when the treasury was very low, especially in war time. Besides taxes the treasury received a good income from the customs duty on all goods imported or exported through Pirasus. The Athenians kept these duties low, assessing only one per cent of the value of the goods until forced by war expenses to raise them. We have already mentioned the contributions (tribute) of the subject states of the empire (§ 524). The total income of the Athenian State hardly reached three quarters of a million dollars in the days of Pericles.
Small as this seems to us of modern times, no other Greek state could raise anything like such an annual income. Least of all could Sparta hope to rival such resources. Without the enterprise to enter the new world of commercial competition, Sparta clung to her old ways. She still issued only her ancient iron money and had no silver coins. To be sure, the standing
539. Cost of government: war
540. Income of the State : mines, taxes, customs duties
541. Sparta financially inferior to Athens
348
Ancient 'limes
542. New defenses of Athens; Long Walls
543. First
war between Athens and Sparta (459446 B.C.)
544- War
with Persia; the Egyptian expedition
army of Sparta was always ready without expense to the government (§ 520)) but when she led forth the combined armies of the Peloponnesian League, she could not bear the expense longer than a few weeks. The still greater expense of a large war fleet was quite impossible either for Sparta or her League. In so far as war was a matter of money, the commercial growth of Athens was giving her a constantly growing superiority over all other Greek states. We can understand then with what jealousy and fear Sparta viewed Athenian prosperity.
Pericles had won favor with the people by favoring a policy of hostility to Sparta (§ 525). Foreseeing the coming struggle with Sparta, Pericles greatly strengthened the defenses of Athens by inducing the people to connect the fortifications of the city with those of the Piraeus harbor by two Long Walls, thus forming a road completely walled in, connecting Athens and her harbor (plan, p. 352).
Not long after Pericles gained the leadership of the people, the inevitable war with Sparta broke out. It lasted nearly fifteen years, with varying fortunes on both sides. The Athenian merchants resented the keen commercial rivalry of ^Egina, planted as the flourishing island was at the very front door of Attica (see map, p. 352). They finally captured the island after a long siege. Pericles likewise employed the Athenian navy in blockading for years the merchant fleets of the other great rival of Athens and friend of Sparta, Corinth (Fig. 163), and thus brought financial ruin on its merchants.
At the same time Athens dispatched a fleet of two hundred ships to assist Egypt, which had revolted against Persia. The Athenians were thus fighting both Sparta and Persia for years. The entire Athenian fleet in Egypt was lost. This loss so weakened the Athenian navy that the treasury of the Delian League was no longer safe in the little island of Delos, against a possible sea raid by the Persians. Pericles therefore shifted the treasury from Delos to Athens, an act which made the city more than ever the capital of an Athenian empire.
The Growing Rivalry between A thens and Sparta 349
When peace was concluded (445 B.C.) all that Athens was able to retain was the island of ^Egina, though at the same time she gained control of the large island of Eubcea. It was agreed that the peace should continue for thirty years. Thus ended what is often called the First Peloponnesian War with the complete exhaustion of Athens as well as of her enemies in the Peloponnesus. Pericles had not shown himself a great naval or military commander in this war. The Athenians had also arranged a peace with Persia, over forty years after Marathon. But the rivalry between Athens and Sparta for the leadership of the Greeks was still unsettled. The struggle was to be continued in another long and weary Peloponnesian War. Before we proceed with the story of this fatal struggle we must glance briefly at the new and glorious Athens now growing up under the leadership of Pericles.
QUESTIONS
Section 51. Describe the Spartan State. What can you say of the reasons for rivalry between Athens and Sparta? What did Themistocles now do ?
Section 52. What combination did Athens now make with the eastern Greek cities? What part did Aristides play? To what might the Delian League easily lead? What policy did Cimon favor? What was Themistocles’ attitude toward Cimon’s policy? What then happened to Themistocles? to Cimon? What new victories did the people gain? What new council arose, and how did it govern ? How could a statesman still hold the leadership ? Who now became the leader of the people’s party ?
Section 53. What happened to Greek business after the Persian War? Discuss navigation; business profits. What can you say of the scale of values as compared with to-day ? What happened to the population of Athens? How were prices affected? What were the chief expenses of the Athenian State ? its chief sources of income ? Could other states raise as much ? Sketch the First Peloponnesian War.
545. Peace with Sparta and Persia
540. Athenian society: the wealthy classes
CHAPTER XV
ATHENS IN THE AGE OF PERICLES
Section 54. Society, the Home, Education and Training of Young Citizens
As we have seen, the population of Attica was made up of citizens, foreigners, and slaves. In a mixed crowd there would usually be among every ten people about four slaves, one or two foreigners, and the rest free Athenians (see § 536). A large group of wealthy citizens lived at Athens upon the income from their lands. They continued to be the aristocracy of the nation, for land was still the most respectable form of wealth. The wealthy manufacturer hastened to buy land and join the landed aristocracy. The social position of his family might thus become an influential one, but it could not compare with that of a noble.
Note, The above headpiece gives us a glimpse into the house of a bride the day after the wedding. At the right, leaning against a couch, is the bride. Before her are two young friends, one sitting, the other standing, both playing with a tame bird. Another friend approaches carrying a tall and beautiful painted vase as a wedding gift. At the left a visitor arranges flowers in two painted vases, while another lady, adjusting her garment, is looking on. The walls are hung with festive wreaths. The furniture of such a house was usually of wood, but if the owner’s wealth permitted, it was adorned with ivory, silver, and gold. It consisted chiefly of beds, like the couch above, chairs (see also Fig. 170), footstools (as at foot of couch above), small individual tables, and clothing chests which took the place of closets.
35°
A thens in the Age of Pericles
351
On the other hand, anyone who actually performed manual labor was looked down upon as without social station. Athens was a great beehive of skilled craftsmen and small shopkeepers: These classes were beginning to organize into guilds or unions of masons, carpenters, potters, jewelers, and many others — organizations somewhat like our labor unions. Below them was an army of unskilled laborers, free men, but little better than slaves, like the army of porters who swarmed along the docks at Piraeus. All these classes contained many citizens. Nevertheless the majority of the Athenian citizens were still the farmers and peasants throughout Attica, although the Persian devastation (§§ 512, 516) had seriously reduced the amount of land still cultivated.
The hasty rebuilding of Athens after the Persians had burned it did not produce any noticeable changes in the houses, nor were there any of great size or splendor. Since the appearance of the first European houses (§ 26) many thousand years had passed, but there were still no beautiful houses anywhere in Europe, such as we found on the Nile (Fig. 51). The one-story front of even a wealthy man’s house was simply a blank wall, usually of sun-dried brick, rarely of broken stone masonry. Often without any windows, it showed no other opening than the door, but a house of two stories might have a small window or two in the upper story. The door led into a court open to the sky and surrounded by a porch with columns. Here in the mild climate of Greece the family could spend much of their time as in a sitting room. In the middle stood an altar of the household Zeus, the protector of the family; while around the court opened a number of doors leading to a living room, sleeping rooms, dining room, storerooms, and also a tiny kitchen.
This Greek house lacked all conveniences. There was no chimney, and the smoke from the kitchen fire, though intended to drift up through a hole in the roof, choked the room or floated out the door. In winter. gusty drafts filled the house, for many doorways were without doors, and glass in the form
547. Athenian society: the poorer classes
548. Athenian houses
549. Lack of conveniences in the Athenian house
352
Ancient Times
550. Decoration and equipment
551. Streets of Athens
of flat panes for the windows was still unknown. In the mild Greek climate, however, a pan of burning charcoal, called a brazier, furnished enough heat to temper the chilly air of a room. Lacking windows, the ground-floor rooms depended entirely on the doors opening on the court for light. At night the dim light of an olive-oil lamp was all that was available. There was no plumbing or piping of any kind in the house, no drainage, and consequently no sanitary arrangements. The water supply was brought in jars by slaves from the nearest well or flowing spring.
The floors were simply of dirt, with a surface of pebbles tramped and beaten hard. There was no oil paint, and a plain water-color wash, such as we call calcimine, might be used on the inside, but if used on the outside would soon wash off, exposing the mud brick. The simplicity and bareness of the house itself were in noticeable contrast with the beautiful furniture which the Greek craftsmen were now producing (headpiece, p. 350; see also the beautiful chairs in Fig. 170). There were many metal utensils, among which the ladies’ hand mirrors of polished bronze were common; and most numerous of all were lovely painted jars, vases, and dishes, along with less prenten-tious pottery forming the household " crockery.” For it will be remembered that Greek pottery was the most beautiful ever produced by ancient man (Fig. 164, and headpiece, p. 350).
The view from the Acropolis over the sea of low flat roofs disclosed not a single chimney, but revealed a much larger city than formerly. Though not laid out in blocks, the city was about ten modem city blocks wide and several more in length. The streets were merely lanes or alleys, narrow and crooked, winding between the bare mud-brick walls of the low houses standing wall to wall. There was no pavement, nor any sidewalk, and a stroll through the town after a rain meant wading through the mud. All household rubbish and garbage were thrown directly into the street, and there was no system of sewage. When one passed a two-stoiy house he might hear a
Central Greece and Athens
Athens in the Age of Pericles
353
place of residence.
All Athens lived out of doors.
Athenian life was beautifully simple and unpretentious, especially since richly embroidered and colored oriental garments had passed away. Almost all citizens now appeared in the simple white garments which we of modem times have come to associate with the classical Greeks. Gorgeous costume thus disappeared in Greece, as it did among us in the days of our great great-grandfathers. Nevertheless, the man of elegant habits gained a practiced hand in draping his costume, and was proud of the gracefulness and the sweeping lines with which he could arrange its folds (Fig. 180).
The women were less inclined to give up the old finery, for unhappily they had little to think about but clothes and housekeeping (Fig. 170). For Greek citizens still kept their wives in the background, and
Fig. 180. Statue of the Tragic Poet Sophocles
The great poet stands in thoughtful repose in an attitude of ease, which incidentally reveals the wonderful beauty of a well-draped Greek costume (§ 552). The figure is probably our most beautiful Greek portrait, and as a work of art illustrates the sculpture of the fourth century B.C., almost a century after Pericles
553- Women
warning cry, and spring out of the way barely in time to escape being deluged with sweepings or filth thrown from a second-story window. The few wells and fountains fed by city water pipes did not furnish enough water to flush the streets, and there was no system of street cleaning. During the hot summers of the south, therefore,
Athens was not a healthful
552. Costume of men
354
Ancient Times
they were more than ever mere housekeepers. They had no share in the intellectual life of the men, could not appear at their social meetings, where serious conversation was carried on ; nor were they permitted to witness the athletic games at Olympia. Their position was even worse than in the Age of the Tyrants (§ 480), and a poetess like Sappho never appeared again among the later Greeks.
The usual house had no garden and the children therefore played in the court, running about with toy cart and dog or enjoying a swing at the hands of the nurse. There were no schools for the girls, but when the boy was old enough he was sent to school in charge of an old slave called a " pedagogue ” (paidagogos), which really means " leader of a child.” He carried the boy’s books and outfit. There were no schools maintained by the state and no schoolhouses. School was conducted in his own house by some poor citizen, who had perhaps lost his means, or by some other poor person, perhaps an old soldier or even a foreigner. In any case the teacher was much looked down upon. He received his pay froipi the parents; but there was a board of state officials appointed to look after the schools and to see that nothing improper was taught.
Without special education for his work, the teacher merely taught the old-time subjects he had learned in his own youth without change (§ 480). Proficiency' in music was regarded very seriously by the Greeks, not merely for entertainment but also and chiefly, as an influence toward good conduct. Besides learning to read and write as of old (§ 480 and Fig. 181), the pupil learned by heart many passages from the old poets, and here and there a boy with a good memory could repeat the entire Iliad and Odyssey. On the other hand, the boys still escaped all instruction in mathematics, geography, or natural science. This was doubtless a welcome exemption, for the masters were severe, and the Greek boy hated both school and schoolmaster.
A thens in the Age of Pericles 355
When the Athenian lad reached the age of eighteen years and left school, he was received as a citizen, providing that both his parents were of Athenian citizenship. The oath which
Fig. 181. An Athenian School in the Age of Pericles
These scenes are painted around the center of a shallow bowl, hence their peculiar shape. In A we see at the left a music teacher seated at his lyre, giving a lesson to the lad seated before him. In the middle sits a teacher of reading and literature, holding an open roll (Fig. 223) from which the boy standing before him is learning a poem. Behind the boy sits a slave (pedagogue) (§ 554) who brought him to school and carried his books. In B we have at the left a singing lesson, aided by the flute to fix the tones. In the middle the master sits correcting an exercise handed him by the boy standing before him, while behind the boy sits the slave (pedagogue) as before
he took was a solemn reminder of the obligations he now assumed. It had been composed by Solon, and it called upon the youth " never to disgrace his sacred arms; never to forsake
556. Attainment of citizenship
356
Ancient Times
557. Incoming citizens' military service
558. Athletic grounds: Academy and Lyceum
559- Theath-
letic events of the Greeks
his comrade in the ranks, but to fight for the sacred temples and the common welfare, whether alone or with others; to leave his country not in a worse, but in a better state than he found it; to obey the magistrates and the laws and to defend them against attack; finally to hold in honor the religion of his country.’'
The youth then spent a year in garrison duty at the harbor of Piraeus, where he was put through military drill. Then at nineteen the young recruits received spear and shield, given to each by the State. Thereupon they marched to the theater and entered the orchestra circle, where they were presented to the citizens of Athens assembled in the theater before the play. Another year of garrison service on the frontier of Attica usually completed the young man’s military service, although some of the recruits, whose means permitted, joined the small body of select Athenian cavalry.
On completion of his military service, if the wealth and station of his family permitted, the Athenian youth was more than ever devoted to the new athletic fields in the beautiful open country outside the city walls. On the north of Athens, outside the Dipylon Gate, was the field known as the Academy. It had been adorned by Cimon, who gave great attention to the olive groves, and, with its shady walks and seats for loungers, it became a place where the Athenians loved to spend their idle hours. On the east of the city there was another similar athletic ground known as the Lyceum. The later custom of holding courses of instructive lectures in these places (§ 759) finally resulted in giving to the words " academy ” and " lyceum the associations which they now possess for us.
The chief events were boxing, wrestling, running, jumping, casting the javelin, and throwing the disk. Omitting the boxing, the remaining events formed a fivefold match called the pentathlon, which it was a great honor to win at Olympia. The earliest contest established at Olympia seems to have been a two-hundred-yard dash, which the Greeks
Athens in the Age of Pericles
357
called a stadion, that is, six hundred Greek feet. Many other contests were added to this, and in the age of Pericles, boxing, or boxing and wrestling combined, the pentathlon, chariot racing, and horseback races made up a program in which all Greek youths were anxious to gain distinction (§ 479). A generation later some of the philosophers severely criticized the Greeks for giving far too much of their time and attention to athletic pursuits.
But other pastimes less worthy were common. An hour or two of gossip with his friends in the market place often preceded the Greek youth’s daily visit to the athletic grounds. The afternoon might be passed in dawdling about in the barber shop or dropping in at some drinking resort to shake dice or venture a few drachmas in other games of chance. As the shadows lengthened in the market place he frequently joined a company of young men at dinner at the house of a friend. Often followed by heavy drinking of wine and much singing with the lyre, such • a dinner might break up in a drunken carouse leading to harum-scarum escapades upon the streets, that in our time would cause the arrest of the company for disorderly conduct.
Section 55. Higher Education, Science, and the Training gained by State Service
On the other hand, there were serious-minded men, to whom such dinners meant delightful conversation with their companions on art, literature, music, or personal conduct. Such life among the Athenians had now been quickened by the appearance of more modern private teachers called Sophists, a class of new and clever-witted lecturers who wandered from city to city. Many a bright youth who had finished his music, reading, and writing at the old-fashioned private school (§ 554) annoyed his father by insisting that such schooling was not enough and by demanding money to pay for a course of lectures delivered by one of these new teachers.
560. Social and other diversions
561. Coming of the Sophists
358
Ancient Times
562. Higher
education offered by the Sophists
563. The
intellectual revolution; chasm between young and old
For the first time a higher education was thus open to young men who had hitherto thought of little more than a victory in the Olympic games or a fine appearance when parading with the crack cavalry of Athens. The appearance of these new teachers therefore marked a new age in the history of the Greeks, but especially in that of Athens. In the first place, the Sophists recognized the importance of effective public speaking in addressing the large citizen juries (§ 528) or in speaking before the Assembly of the people. The Sophists therefore taught rhetoric and oratory with great success, and many a father who had no gift of speech had the pleasure of seeing his son^a practiced public speaker. It was through the teaching of the Sophists also that the first successful writing of Greek prose began. At the same time they really founded the study of language, which was yet to become grammar (§ 753). They also taught mathematics and astronomy, and the young men of Athens for the first time began to learn a little natural science. Thus the truths which Greek philosophers had begun to observe in the days of Thales (§§ 492-493) were, after a century and a half, beginning to spread among the people. •
In these new ideas the fathers were unable to follow their sons. When a father of that day found in the hands of his son a book by one of the great Sophists, which began with a statement doubting the existence of the gods, the new teachings seemed impious. The old-fashioned citizen could at least vote for the banishment of such impious teachers and the burning of their books, although he heard that they were read aloud in the houses of the greatest men of Athens. Indeed, some of the leading Sophists were friends of Pericles, who stepped in and tried to help them when they were prosecuted for their teachings. The revolution which had taken place in the mind of Thales (§ 495) was now taking place in the minds of ever-increasing numbers of Greeks, and the situation was yet to grow decidedly worse in the opinion of old-fashioned folk.
Athens in the Age of Pericles
359
In spite of the spread of knowledge due to the Sophists, the average Athenian’s acquaintance with science was still very limited. This gave him great trouble in the measurement of time. He still called the middle of the forenoon the " time of full market,” and the Egyptian shadow clock in the market place had not yet led him to speak of an hour of the day by number, as the Egyptians had been doing for a thousand years. When it was necessary to limit the length of a citizen’s speech before the law-court, it was done by allowing him to speak as long as it took a given measure of water to run out of a jar with a small hole in it. The Greeks still used the moon-months, and they were accustomed to insert an extra month every third, fifth, and eighth year (§ 150). To be sure, they had often seen on the Pnyx, where the Assembly met (Fig. 179), a strange-looking tablet bearing a new calendar, set up by a builder and engineer named Meton. This man had computed the length of the year with only half an hour’s error. He had then devised his new calendar with a year still made up of moon-months, but so cleverly arranged that the last day of the last moon-month in every nineteenth year would also be the last day of the year as measured by the sun. But all this was quite beyond the average citizen’s puzzled mind. The archons too shook their heads at it and would have nothing to do with it. The old inconvenient, inaccurate moon-month calendar, with three thirteen-month years in every eight years, was quite good enough for them and continued in use.
Individual scientists continued to make important discoveries. One of them now taught that the sun was a glowing mass of stone " larger than the Peloponnesus.” He maintained also that the moon received its light from the sun, that it had mountains and valleys like the earth, and that it was inhabited by living creatures. Travel was difficult, for there were no passenger ships. Except rough carts or wagons, there were no conveyances by land. The roads were bad, and the trayeler went on foot or rode a horse. Nevertheless, Greeks
564. Lack
of general knowledge of science shown in time measurement
565. Progress of astronomy and geography
566. Progress in medicine
360 Ancient Times
with means were now, beginning to travel more frequently. This, however, was for information; travel for pleasure was still a century and a half in the future. From long journeys in Egypt, and other Eastern countries, Herodotus returned with much information regarding these lands. His map (p. 360) showed that the Red Sea connected with the Indian Ocean, a fact unknown to his predecessor Hecatseus (see map, p. 319).
The scientists were still much puzzled by the cold of the north and the warmth of the south, a curious difference which they could not yet explain.
Although without the microscope or the assistance of chemistry, medicine nevertheless made progress. In the first place, the Greek physicians rejected the older belief that disease was caused by evil demons, and endeavored to find the natural causes of the ailment. To do this they sought to understand the organs of the body. They had already discovered that the brain was the organ of thought, but the arterial system, the
Athens in the Age of Pericles 361
circulation of the blood, and the nervous system were still entirely unknown. Without a knowledge of the circulation of the blood, surgery was unable to attempt amputation, but otherwise it made much progress. The greatest physician of the time was Hippocrates, and he became the founder of' scientific medicine. The fame of Greek medicine was such that the Persian king called a Greek physician to his court.
Just at the close of Pericles’ life, in the midst of national calamities, the historian Herodotus, who had long been at work on his history, finally published his great work. It was a history of the world so told that the glorious leadership of Athens would be clear to all Greeks and would show them that to her the Hellenes owed their deliverance from Persia. Throughout Gre'ece it created a deep impression, and so tremendous was its effect in Athens that, in spite of the financial drain of war, the Athenians voted Herodotus a reward of ten. talents, some twelve thousand dollars. In this earliest history of the world which has come down to us, Herodotus traced the course of events as he believed them to be directed by the will of the gods, and as prophesied in their divine oracles. There was littie or no effort to explain historical events as the result of natural processes.
Besides the instruction received from the Sophists by many young men, their constant share in public affairs .was giving them an experience which greatly assisted in producing an intelligent body of citizens. In the Council of Five Hundred, citizens learned to carry on the daily business of the government. On some days also as many as six thousand citizens might be serving as jurors (§ 528). This service alone meant that one citizen in five was engaged in duties which sharpened his wits and gave him some training in legal and business affairs. At the same time such duties kept constantly in the citizen’s mind his obligations toward the State and community.
This led many citizens to surprisingly generous contributions. It was not uncommon for a citizen to undertake the entire
567. Progress in history writing; Herodotus
568. Education and discipline gained from State service
362
Ancient Times
569. Voluntary contributions by citizens
570. State feasts
571. The higher life of imperial Athens; the glorified State
equipment of a warship except the hull and spars, though this service may have been compulsory. At national festivals a wealthy man would sometimes furnish a costly dinner for all the members of his " tribe.” The choruses for public performances, especially at the theater, were organized by private citizens, who paid for their training and for their costumes at great expense (Fig. 190). We know of one citizen who spent in the voluntary support of feasts and choruses in nine years no less than fourteen thousand dollars, a considerable fortune in those days.
Public festivals maintained by the State also played an important part in the lives of all Athenians. Every spring at the ancient Feast of Dionysus (§ 483) the greatest play-writers each submitted three tragedies and a comedy to be played in the theater for a prize given by the State. All Athens streamed to the theater to see them. Many other State festivals, celebrated with music and gayety, filled the year with holidays so numerous that they fell every six or seven days. The great State feast, called the Panatheticea, occurred every four years. A brilliant procession made up of the smart young Athenian cavalry, groups of dignified government officials, priests and sacrificial animals, marched with music and rejoicing across the market place, carrying a beautiful new robe embroidered by the women of Athens for the goddess Athena. The procession marched to the Acropolis, where the robe was delivered to the goddess amid splendid sacrifices and impressive ceremonies. Contests in music and in athletic games, war dances and a regatta in the channel off Salamis, served to furnish entertainment for the multitude which flocked to Athens for the great feast.
Section 56. Art and Literature
Although the first fifteen years of the leadership of Pericles were burdened with the Spartan and Persian wars, the higher life of Athens continued to unfold. Under influences like those we have been discussing, a new vision of the glory of the State,
Athens in the Age of Pericles
363
discerned nowhere else in the world before this age, caught the imagination of poet and painter, of sculptor and architect; and not of these alone, but also of the humblest artisan and tradesman, as all classes alike took part in the common life of the community. Music, the drama, art, and architecture were profoundly inspired by this new and exalted vision of the State, and the citizen found great works of art so inspired thrust into the foreground of his life.
We can still follow the Athenian citizen and note a few of 572. Painting the noble monuments that met his eye as he went about the new Athens which Pericles was creating. When he wandered into the market place and stood chatting with his friends under the shade of the plane trees, he found at several points colonnaded porches looking out upon the market. One of these, which had been presented to the city by Cimon’s family, was called the " Painted Porch ’’; for the wall behind the columns bore paintings by Polygnotus, an artist from one of the island possessions of Athens, a gift of the painter to the Athenians, depicting their glorious victory at Marathon. Here in splendid panorama was a vision of the heroic devotion of the fathers. In the thick of the fray the citizen might pick out the figure of Themistocles, of Miltiades, of Callimachus, who fell in the battle, of yEschylus the great tragic poet. He could see the host of the fleeing Persians and perhaps hear some old man tell how the brother of yEschylus seized and tried to stop one of the Persian boats drawn up on the beach, and how a desperate Persian raised his ax and slashed off the hand of the brave Greek. Perhaps among the group of eager listeners he noticed one questioning the veteran carefully and making full notes of all that he could learn from the graybeard. The questioner was Herodotus, collecting from survivors the tale of the Persian wars for his great history (§ 567).
Behind the citizen rose a low hill, known as "Market Hill,” ^.^Lackof around which were grouped plain, bare government buildings, ^govern”85 Here were the assembly rooms of the Areopagus (§ 528) and mentoffices
Fig. 182. The So-called Temple of Theseus, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis of Athens*
A thens in the Age of Pericles
the Council of Five Hundred. The Council’s Committee of Fifty (§ 528), carrying on the current business of the government, also had its offices here. The citizen recalled how, as a member of this Council, he had lived here for over a month while serving on that committee and had taken his meals in the building before him, at the expense of the State, along with the Athenian victors in the Olympic games and other deserving citizens who were thus pensioned by the government. In spite of the growing sentiment for the glory of the State, these plain buildings, like the Athenian houses, were all built of sun-dried mud brick or, at most, of rough rubble. The idea of great and beautiful buildings for the offices of the government was still unknown in the Mediterranean world, and no such building yet existed in Europe.
The sentiment toward the State was so mingled with reverence for the gods who protected the State that patriotism was itself a deeply religious feeling. Hence the great public buildings of Greece were temples and not quarters for the offices of the government. As the citizen turned from the Painted Porch, therefore, he might observe crossing the market
* In this view we stand inside the wall of Themistocles, hear the Dipylon Gate in the Potters’ Quarter (see plan, p. 352). In the foreground is the temple of Theseus, the legendary unifier of Attica, whom all Athenians honored as a god, and to whom this temple was long supposed (perhaps wrongly) to have been erected. It is built of Pen-telic marble and was finished a few years after the death of Pericles; but now, after twenty-three hundred years or more, it is still the best preserved of all ancient Greek buildings. Above the houses, at the extreme right, may be seen one corner of the hill called the Areopagus (see plan, p. 352), often called Mars’ Hill. It was probably here that the apostle Paul (§ 1068) preached in Athens (see Actsxvii). The buildings we see on the Acropolis are all ruins of the structures erected after the place had been laid waste by the Persians (§ 512). The Parthenon (§ 576), in the middle of the hill (see Fig. 183), shows the gaping hole caused by the explosion of a Turkish powder magazine ignited by a Venetian shell in 1687, when the entire central portion of the building was blown out. The space between the temple of Theseus, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis was largely occupied by the market place of Athens (§ 572, and plan, p. 352).
574. The
great State buildings are temples
366
Ancient limes
575. Plans
of Pericles for the restoration of the Acropolis
576. The
entrance to the Acropolis and the Parthenon
many a creaking wagon, heavily loaded with white blocks of marble for a new and still unfinished temple of Theseus (Fig. 182), the hero-god, who, as the Athenians thought, had once united Attica into a single nation:
Above him towers the height of the Acropolis, about one thousand feet in length, two of our city blocks (Figs. 182 and 183). There, on its summit, had always been the dwelling place of Athena, whose arm was ever stretched out in protection over her beloved Athens. But for long years after the repulse of the Persians, the Acropolis rose smoke-blackened over the rebuilt houses of the city, and no temple of Athena appeared to replace the old building of Pisistratus, which the Persians had burned. Now at last Pericles has undertaken the restoration of the ancient shrines on a scale of magnificence and beauty before unknown anywhere in the Greek world. His sumptuous plans have demanded an expense of about two and a quarter millions of dollars, a sum far exceeding any such public outlay ever heard of among the Greeks. As he passes the Market Hill, where the Areopagus meets, the citizen remembers the discontented mutterings of the old men in this ancient Council as they heard of these vast expenses, and he smiles in satisfaction as he reflects that this unprogressive old body, once so powerful in Athenian affairs, has been deprived of all power to obstruct the will of the people. From here he also catches a glimpse of the Pnyx (Fig. 179), where he has heard Pericles make one eloquent speech after another in support of his new building plans before the assembly of the people, and he recalls with what enthusiasm the citizens voted to adopt them.
As he looks up at the gleaming marble shafts, he feels that the architectural splendor now crowning the Acropolis is the work of the Athenian people, a world of new beauty in the creation of which every Athenian citizen has had a voice. Here before him rise the imposing marble colonnades of the magnificent monumental entrance to the Acropolis (Fig. 183).
Athens in the Age of Pericles 367
Fig. 183. Restoration of the Athenian Acropolis
The lower entrance (A) is of Roman date. Beyond it we have on the right the graceful little Temple of Victory (B, and see headpiece, p. 378), while before us rises the colonnaded entrance building (C) designed by Mnesicles (§ 576). As we pass through it we stand beside the colossal bronze statue of Athena (D) by Phidias (§ 577), beyond which at the left is the ancient sanctuary of the Erechtheum (F and § 644). To the right, along the south edge of the hill, is the wonderful temple of the Parthenon (F) (Fig. 185, and Plate IV, p. 380). Its farther comer looks down upon the theater (H) (Fig. i89)- The other theater-like building (/) in the foreground is a concert hall, built by Herodes Atticus, a wealthy citizen, in Roman times (second century A.D.). G is the foundation of an ancient temple (now destroyed) older than the present Parthenon
It is still unfinished, and the architect Mnesicles, with a roll of plans under his arm, is perhaps at the moment directing a group of workmen to their task. He is beginning to employ a new style of column, called- the Ionic (Fig. 184); it is lighter and more ornate than the stately Doric. The tinkle of many distant
Fig. 184. The Ionic Column and its Oriental Predecessors (After Puchstein)
A is a column of wood as used in houses and shrines in Egypt (fifteenth century B.C.); notice at the top of A the lily with the ends of the petals rolled over in spirals called volutes. B is part of a wall with beautifully decorative designs in colored glazed brick from the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon (Fig. 1 ro); on this wall we see the same lily design appearing.twice. D shows us a capital used in the beginnings of Greek architecture in Asia Minor, with the lily petals forming the volutes rolled further over but still showing its relationship with A. This process is carried so far in F, a capital dug up on the Acropolis of Athens, that we lose sight of the lily. H finally shows us the fully developed Ionic column, in which the volutes no longer hardly resemble the lily from which they came. This column (H) is taken from the colonnade of the Temple of Victory on the Acropolis of Athens (headpiece, p. 378). Examples of this style of column are now common in our own public buildings
368
Athens in the Age of Pericles
369
hammers from the height above tells where the stonecutters are shaping the marble blocks for the still unfinished Parthenon, a noble temple dedicated to Athena (Figs. 183, 185, and Plate IV, p. 380); and there, too, the people often see Pericles intently inspecting the building, as Phidias the sculptor and Ictinus the architect of the building pace up and down the inclosure, explaining to him the progress of the work. In these wondrous Greek buildings architect and sculptor work hand in hand.
Phidias is the greatest of the sculptors at Athens. In a long band of carved marble extending entirely around the four sides of the Parthenon, at the top inside the colonnades (Plate IV, p. 380), Phidias and his pupils have portrayed, as in a glorified vision, the sovereign people of Athens moving in the stately procession (Fig. 186) of the Pan-Athenaic festival (§ 570). To be sure, these are not individual portraits of actual Athenian folk, but only types which lived in the exalted vision of the sculptor, and not on the streets of Athens. But such sculpture had never been seen before. How different is the supreme beauty of these perfect human forms from the cruder figures which adorned the temple burned by the Persians. The citizen has seen the shattered fragments of'these older works cleared away and covered with rubbish when the architects leveled off the summit of the Acropolis.1 Inside the new temple gleams the colossal figure of Athena, wrought by the cunning hand of Phidias in gold and ivory. Even from the city below the citizen can discern, touched with bright colors, the heroic figures of the gods with which Phidias- has filled the triangular gable ends of the building (Fig. 185). Out in the open area behind the colonnaded entrance rises another great work of Phidias, a colossal bronze statue of Athena, seventy feet high as it stands on its tall base (Fig. 183, D). With shield and spear the goddess stands, the gracious protectress of Athens, and the glittering
577. Phidias and the sculptures of the Parthenon
1 Till recently they lay buried under the rubbish on the slope (Fig. 182). The excavations of the Greek government have recovered them, and they are" now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens.
37°
Ancient Times
point of her gilded spear can be seen shining like a beacon far across the land, even by the sailors as they round the southern tip of Attica (see map, p. 352) and sail homeward.
Fig. 185. Restoration of the Parthenon, as it was in the Fifth Century b.c. (After Thiersch and Michaelis)
This is the noble temple of Athena erected on the Acropolis of Athens (Fig. 183, E) by Pericles with the architect Ictinus and the sculptor Phidias (§ 576). The restoration shows us the wonderful beauty of the Doric colonnades as they were when they left the hands of the builders. In Plate IV, p. 380, we gain a glimpse of the same colonnades as they are to-day, after the explosion of the Turkish powder magazine, the effect of which can be seen in Fig. 182. The gable ends each contained a triangular group of sculpture depicting the birth of Athena and her struggle with Poseidon, god of the sea, for possession of Attica. The wonderful frieze of Phidias (Fig. 186 and § 577) extended around the building inside the colonnades at the top of the wall
578. The In spite of the Sophists (§ 563), these are the gods to whom
jEschylus the faith of the Athenian people still reverently looks up. Have not Athena and these gods raised the power of Athens to the
Fig. 186. Part of the Parthenon Frieze of Phidias (§ 577), showing Athenian Youths riding in
THE PAN-AtHENAIC FESTIVAL (§ 570)
Notice the wonderful movement of the horses, and compare them with the horses of the barbarous Greek vase-painters three centuries earlier (Fig. 155). The reins and trappings were of metal and have disappeared
Fig. 187. Praxiteles’ Figure of Hermes playing with the Child Dionysus
This wonderful statue was discovered in the ruins of the Hera temple at Olympia (headpiece, p. 295), and is one of the few original works of the great Greek sculptors found in Greece. Nearly all such Greek originals have perished, and we know them only in Roman copies (§ 1053), In his uplifted right hand (now broken off) the god probably held a bunch of grapes, with which he was amusing the child (§ 648)
Athens in the Age of Petioles
371
imperial position which she now occupies ? Do not all the citizens recall ^Eschylus’ drama " The Persians ” ? It told the story of the glorious victory of Salamis, and in it the memories of the great deliverance from Persian conquest were enshrined. How that tremendous day of Salamis was made to live again in the imposing picture which the poet’s genius brought before them, disclosing the mighty purpose of the gods to save Hellas!
As he skirts the sheer precipice of the Acropolis the citizen reaches the theater (see plan, p. 352, and Fig. 183, H), where he finds the people are already entering, for the Feast of Dionysus (§ 570) has arrived. Only yesterday he and his neighbors received from the State treasury the money for their admission. It is natural that they should feel that the theater and all that is done there belong to the people, and not the less as the citizen looks down upon the orchestra circle and recognizes his friends and neighbors and their sons in the chorus for that day’s performance. The seats are of wood, and they occupy the slope at the foot of the Acropolis. Hence they are not elevated on timbers, and there is no danger of their falling and killing the spectators as they once did when the theater was a temporary structure in the market place, in the days of the citizen’s grandfather. All the citizens have turned out, including some less worthy and intelligent, who do not hesitate to indulge in cat-calls, or pelt the actors with food, if the play displeases them. The play would seem strange enough to us, for there is little or no scenery;- and the actors, who are always men, wear grotesque masks, a survival of old days (§ 483). The narrative is largely carried on in song by the chorus (§ 483), but this is varied by the dialogue of the actors, and the whole is not unlike an opera.
A play of Sophocles (Fig. 180) is on, and the citizen’s neighbor in the next seat leans over to tell him how as a lad many years ago he stood on the shore of Salamis, whither his family had fled (§512), and as they looked down upon the destruction
579. Theater and people
580. Sophocles
372
Ancient Times
581. Euripides
of the Persian fleet this same Sophocles, a boy of sixteen, was in the crowd looking on with the rest. How deeply must the events of that tragic day have sunk into the poet’s soul 1 For does he not see the will of the gods in all that happens to men? Does he not celebrate the stern decree of Zeus everywhere hanging over human life, at the same time that he uplifts his
audience to adore the splendor of Zeus, however dark the destiny he lays upon men ? For Sophocles still believes in. the gods, and is no friend of the Sophists. Hencg the citizen feels that Sophocles is a veritable voice of the people, exalting the old gods in the new time. Moreover, in place of the former two, Sophocles has three actors in his plays, a change which makes them more interesting and full of action. Even old ^Eschylus. yielded to this innovation once before he died. Yet too much innovation is also unwelcome to the citizen.
The citizen feels this especially if it is one of the new sensational plays of Euripides which is presented. Euripides (Fig. 188) is the son of a farmer who lives over on the island of Salamis (Fig. 177). He has for some time been presenting plays at the spring competition (§ 57°)- He is a friend and companion of the Sophists, and in matters of religion his mind is shadowed with doubts. His new plays are all inwrought with problems and mental struggle regarding the gods, and they have raised, a great
Fig.
188. Portrait of Euripides
The name of the poet (§ 581) is engraved in Greek letters along the lower edge of the bust
Athens in the Age of Pericles
373
many questions and doubts which the citizen has never been able to banish from his own mind since he heard them. The citizen determines that he will use all the influence he has to prevent the plays of Euripides from winning the prize. Indeed, Sophocles suits all the old-fashioned folk, and it is very rarely that Euripides has been able to carry off the prize, in spite of his great ability. The citizen feels some anxiety as he realizes that his own son and most of the other young men of his set are enthusiastic admirers of Euripides. They constantly read his plays and talk them over with the Sophists.
The great tragedies were given in the morning, and in the afternoon the people were ready for less serious entertainment, such as the comedy offered. Out of- the old-time masques and burlesque frolics of the village communities at country feasts the comedy had developed into a stage performance, with all the uproarious antics of the unbridled comedian. The play-writer did not hesitate to introduce the greatest dignitaries of the State. Even Pericles was not spared, and great philosophers, or serious-minded writers like Euripides, were shown in absurd caricatures and made irresistibly ridiculous on the stage, while the multitudes of Athens vented their delight in roars of laughter mingled with shouts and cheers. Parodies on great passages of literature, too, were sure of a quick response, so keen was the wit of the Athenians and so widespread the acquaintance of the people with the literature which they had inherited.
When all was over they must wait until the next spring feast of Dionysus before they were privileged to see any more plays. But meantime they were greatly interested in the decision of the jury of citizens awarding prizes for tragedy, for comedy, and for the best chorus a bronze tripod to the citizen who had equipped and trained it (Fig. 190). Moreover, the interest in drama and the theater continued, for the next competition soon demanded that probably two thousand men and boys of Athens should put all their leisure time into learning their parts written out for them on sheets of papyrus and into
582. Comedies
583. Continued and widespread interest in drama and literature
Fig. 189. The Theater of Athens
This theater was the center of the growth and development of Greek drama, which began as a part of the celebration of the spring feast of Dionysus, god of the vine and the fruitfulness of the earth (§ 420). The temple of the god stood here, just at the left. Long before anyone knew of such a thing as a theater, the people gathered at this place to watch the celebration of the god’s spring feast, where they formed a circle about the chorus, which narrated in song the stories of the gods (§ 483). This circle (called the orchestra) was finally marked out permanently, seats of wood for the spectators were erected in a semicircle on one side, but the singing and action all took place in the circle on the level of the ground. On the side opposite the public was a booth, or tent (Greek, skene, 11 scene ”), for the actors, and out of this finally developed the stage. Here we see the circle, or orchestra, with the stage cutting off the back part of the circle. The seats are of stone and accommodated possibly seventeen thousand people. The fine marble seats in the front row were reserved for the leading rpen of Athens. The old wooden seats were still in use in the days when ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides presented their dramas here (§§ 578-5S2). From the seats the citizens had a grand view of the sea, with the island of ./Egina, their old-time rival (§ 543); and even the heights of Argolis, 40 miles away, were visible; for orchestra and seats continued roofless, and a Greek theater was always open to the sky. In Roman times a colonnaded porch across the back of the stage was introduced, and such columns of Roman date may be seen in Plate VII, p. 560. For the best-preserved early Greek theater, see tailpiece, p. 393
374
Athens in the Age of Pericles
375
training and rehearsals for the various choruses. Thousands of citizens too were reading the old plays that had already been presented.
For now at length books too had come to take an important place in the life of Athens. Rows of baskets of cylindrical shape held the books which filled the shelves in our Athenian citizen’s library. Homer and the works of the old classic poets were now written on long rolls of papyrus, as much as a hundred and fifty or sixty feet in length. To one of these rolls the educated Greek sat down as the Egyptian had so long before been accustomed to do (Fig. 191). For lack of good artificial light, reading was necessarily done mostly by day, but studious Greeks also ventured to try their eyes in reading by the dim olive-oil lamp. Besides literary works, all sorts of books of instruction began to appear. The sculptors wrote of their art, and Ictinus produced a book on his design of the Parthenon (§ 576). There was a large group of books on medicine, bearing the name of Hippocrates. Textbooks on jnathematics and rhetoric circulated, and the Athenian housekeeper could even find a cookbook at the bookshop.
In our voyage up the Nile (§ 115), we found that far back in the Egyptian Empire, a thousand years before the days of Pericles, there was a group of gifted men who created at Thebes a grand and imperial city of noble architecture. But that group of great Egyptians was not made up of citizens, nor had the multitudes- of Thebes any share in government or in the creation of the magnificent city. It was very different in the Athens of Pericles. Here had grown up a whole community of intelligent men, who were the product of the most active interest in the life and government of the community, constantly sharing in its tasks and problems, in daily contact with the greatest works of art in literature, drama, painting, architecture, and sculpture — such a wonderful community indeed as the ancient world, Greek or oriental, had never seen before.
584. Books and reading
585 Contrast between Athens and Egyptian Thebes
376
Ancient Times
586. The old
Athens and the new
Not only was it totally different from any that we have found in the ancient Orient, but we see also how very different from the Athens of the old days before the Persian Wars was this imperial Athens of Pericles! — throbbing with new life and astir with a thousand questions eagerly discussed at every corner. Keenly awake to the demands of the greater State and the sovereign people, the men of the new Athens were deeply pondering also the duties and privileges of the individual, who felt new and larger visions of himself conflicting with the exactions of the State and the old faith. Troubled by serious doubts, they were, nevertheless, clinging with wistful apprehension to the old gods and the old truths. Under Pericles Athens was becoming as he desired it should, the teacher of the Greek world. It now remained to be seen whether the people, in sovereign control of the State, could guide her wisely and maintain her new power. As we watch the citizens of Athens endeavoring to furnish her with wise and successful guidance, we shall find another and a sadly different side of the life of this wonderful community.
QUESTIONS
Section 54. What can you say of the population of Attica as to social classes? Discuss the rich and the poor. Were there any beautiful houses in Europe in-'Pericles’ time ? Describe an Athenian house of this age; its conveniences ; its equipment; its decoration. What were the streets of Athens like? Describe Greek costume in this age. What was now the position of women? Describe the usual school and its teacher. What subjects were taught ? What did a boy do when he left school? What oath of citizenship did he take? Tell about his military service; his athletic training. What were the chief events in athletics ? ^
Section 55* What new private teachers now began to appear? What did these men teach ? Did a boy learn from them anything which his father had not been taught ? What did the fathers think about the teaching of the Sophists ? Was there any general knowledge of science ? How was the time of day designated ? How was time measured within the day? within the year? What were the
Athens in the Age of Pericles 377
difficulties ? What discoveries were made in astronomy ? in geography ? What progress was made in medicine? in history-writing? How did government business train the citizens of Athens? Tell about voluntary contributions by. the citizens. What can you say about official State feasts at Athens ?
Section 56. How did warmth of patriotic feeling affect music, the drama, art, and architecture ? Discuss the painting of Marathon in the Athenian market place. Do you see any connection between art and patriotism in such a work? Were there any fine government office buildings in Athens under Pericles ? What was the material of such buildings ? What were the beautiful public buildings of Greece at this time ? How did the Athenian Acropolis look after the Persian Wars? What did Pericles do about it? Who opposed him? Was there a majority of Athenian citizens who wanted such great works as Pericles planned? How then did he put his plan through? Who assisted Pericles in carrying out the actual work on the Acropolis? What buildings did they erect? Describe the sculpture of Phidias.
What play did yEschylus write about the war with Persia? Do you see any connection between literature and patriotism in such a work? Describe the theater where such plays were presented at Athens. Did a citizen pay for his own ticket? Describe a play in such a theater. Who was Sophocles ? What did he think about the gods and the Sophists? How many actors did he have?
What did Euripides think about the gods? To which of these two men did the Athenians vote the most prizes ? What did an old-fashioned citizen think about having his son read the plays of Euripides? Tell about the comedies played at Athens. How did the Athenians take part in drama and music ? What did a book look like in this age ? What books could a citizen find at the bookshop ? Contrast Athens and Egyptian Thebes. In what ways was the Athens of Pericles different from that of Solon ?
Note. The sketch below shows us vase-paintings of Greek children at play.
587. States of the Athenian Empire become helpless subjects
CHAPTER XVI
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA AND THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
Section 57. The Tyranny of Athens and the Second Peloponnesian War t
While Athens under the guiding hand of Pericles had thus made herself the chief center of refined and civilized life in the Greek world, her political situation was in a number of ways becoming a serious one both within and without her empire. When the danger from Persia had long passed and some of the island states of the Empire wished to withdraw, Athens
Note. The above headpiece shows us the lovely little Temple of Victory, still standing on the Acropolis (B in Fig. 1S3). It was demolished by the Turks, who built a battery out of its blocks. When the Turkish works were cleared away in 11835, the fragments of the temple were discovered and it was put together again. The roof, however, is still lacking (but see D in restoration, p. 340). It was probably built, or at least begun, in the latter part of the leadership of Pericles. The columns display the incoming Ionic form (Fig. 184) and are among the most beautiful examples of this style, or, as it is commonly called, w order,”
378
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 379
would not permit them to do so. She sent out her war fleet, conquered the rebellious islands, and forced them to pay money tribute instead of contributing ships. Often many of their citizens were driven out and their lands were divided among the Athenian settlers. A section of the Athenian fleet was on constant duty to sail about in the iEgean and collect the tribute money by force (see map II, p. 344). These funds were used by Athens as she pleased, and the magnificent buildings of Pericles were paid for out of this tribute.
Moreover, the democracy of Athens was most undemocratic in its treatment of these outsiders in the other cities of the Empire. For, about the middle of the century the Athenians, led by Pericles, abolished the former liberal policy of granting citizenship to outsiders (§ 536) and passed a very strict law limiting Athenian citizenship to those whose parents were themselves citizens of Athens. This law kept the people of the Empire really foreigners and deprived Athens of the large body of loyal citizens which she might have gained from among the subject cities.
At the same time Athens forced the people of the Empire to come there to settle their legal differences before her citizen-juries. For this purpose the people of distant island states were often obliged to maj^ the expensive and inconvenient journey to Athens. There ^as no feeling of unity within the Empire, for the Council ,of representatives from the states of the Empire, which once guided its affairs, no longer held any meetings. Athens was in complete control and governed them as she liked. They saw how much easier were the conditions under which the members of the Spartan League lived, and more than one of them sent secret messages to Sparta, with the purpose of throwing off Athenian control and going over to Sparta.
While such was the state of affairs within the Athenian Empire, conditions outside were: even more serious. The outward splendor of Athens, her commercial prosperity, the visible
588. Change
in the policy of Athens regarding citizenship
589. Tyranny of Athens and discontent in her Empire
590. Hostility of the rivals of Athens
380
Ancient Times
growth of her power, her not very conciliatory attitude toward her rivals, and the example she offered of the seeming success of triumphant democracy — all these things were causes of jealousy to a backward and conservative military State like Sparta, where most of the citizens were still unable to read, iron money continued in use, and the town remained an open settlement without walls or defenses (Fig. 178). Moreover, this feeling of unfriendliness toward Athens was not confined to Sparta but was quite general throughout Greece. The merchants of Corinth (Fig. 163) found Athenian competition a continuous vexation, and when Athenian possessions in the north y£gean revolted and received support from Corinth and Sparta, the fact that hardly half of the thirty years’ term of peace (§ 545) had expired did not prevent the outbreak of war.
591. Open- It seemed as if all European Greece not included in the Pelopon-C°nd Athenian Empire had united against Athens, for Sparta con-”431^c)” trolled the entire Peloponnesus except Argos, and north of and Pericles’ Attica, Bceotia led bv Thebes, as well as its neighbors on the
plan of cam- m. " i ° .
paign west, were hostile to Athens. The support of Athens consisted
of the ^Egean cities which made up her empire and a few outlying allies of little power. She began the struggle with a large war treasury and a fleet which made her undisputed mistress of the sea. But she could not hope to cope with the land forces of the enemy, which, some thirty thousand strong, had planned to meet in the Isthmus in the spring of 431 B.C. Accordingly, Pericles’ plan for the war was to throw all the resources of Athens into naval enterprises and make no effort to defend Attica by land. When the Peloponnesian army entered Attica the country communities were directed by Pericles to leave their homes and take refuge in the open markets and squares of Athens, the sanctuaries, and especially between the Long Walls leading to the Piraeus. Here they were safe behind the strong defenses of Athens and her port. To offset the devastation of Attica by the Spartan army, all that Athens could do was to organize destructive sea raids and
© B„ G. Teubner
Plate IV. A Corner of the Parthenon
Looking through the Doric colonnades as they are to-day, at the southeast corner of the building, to the distant hills of Hymettus. On the left is the base of the wall of the interior, destroyed by the explosion (p. 365, footnote). At the top of this wall was the frieze of Phidias (Fig. 186 and § 577)
The Struggle between Athens mid Sparta 381
inflict as much damage Peloponnesus or blockade of old (map II, p. 344).
The masses of people crowded within the walls of Athens under the unsanitary conditions we have already described (§ 551), exposed the city to disease; a plague, brought in from the Orient, raged with intermissions for several seasons. It carried off probably a third of the population, and from ' this unforeseen disaster Athens never recovered. Constantly under arms for the defense of the walls, deprived of any opportunity to strike the enemy, forced to sit still and see their land ravaged, the citizens at last broke out in discontent.
Even before the beginning of the war there had been signs that the power of Pericles was waning. He was a thoroughly modem man, associated openly with the Sophists, and very evidently held their views.
as possible along the coasts of the and destroy Corinthian commerce as
Fig. 190. Monument commemorating the Triumph of an Athenian Citizen in Music An entire street of Athens was filled with such monuments (§ 583). We learn the name of the citizen, Lysicrates, who erected this beautiful monument, from the inscription it still bears, which reads: " Lysicrates . . . was choragus [leader of the chorus] when the boy-chorus of the tribe of Akamantis won the prize; Theon was a flute-player, Lysiades of Athens trained the choir. Euaenetus was archon.” The archon’s name dates the erection of the monument for us in 335 to 334 B.C. Beyond the monument we look westward to the back of the Acropolis (see, plan, p. 352)
592. The plague in Athens
593. Decline and fall of Pericles
594* Restoration, and death of Pericles (429 B.C.)
382 Ancient Times
We can understand what this meant to the people, if we imagine one of our own political leaders of to-day declaring
Fig. 191. Greek Youth reading from a Roll
It will be seen that the young man holds the roll so that he rolls up a portion of it with one hand as he unrolls another portion with the other. He soon has a roll in each hand, while he holds smoothly stretched out between the two rolls the exposed portion from Which he reads a column of writing like that which we see photographed from the oldest-preserved Greek book (roll), in Fig. 223. Such a column formed for him a page, but when it was read, instead of turning a page as we do, he rolled it away to the left side, and brought into view a new column from the other roll on the right side
pie soon turned to Pericles again
himself an infidel.* One of Pericles’ particular friends among the Sophists had been prosecuted by the people for irreligious views (§ 563). He was legally condemned for his infidelity and, in spite of all that Pericles could do, was obliged to flee from Athens. At the same time a popular attack on the honesty of Pericles’ friend Phidias, the great sculptor, resulted in his being thrown into prison, where he died. Finally, Pericles himself lost control, was tried for misappropriation of funds, and fined.
The absence of his steadying haiid and powerful leadership was at once felt by the people, for there was no one to take his place, although a swarm of small politicians were contending for control of the Assembly. Realizing their helplessness the peo-and elected him strategus.
1 Those who remember Robert G. Ingersoll will recall that he sacrificed a political career because of his religious views.
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 383
But the great days of his leadership were over. His two sons died of the plague. Then he was himself stricken with it and died soon after his return to power (429 B.C.). Great statesman as he was, he had left Athens with a system of government which did not provide for the continuation of such leadership as he had furnished, and without such leadership the Athenian Empire was doomed.
Men of the prosperous manufacturing class now came to the fore. They possessed neither the high station in life, the ability as statesmen, nor the qualities of leadership to win the confidence and respect of the people. Moreover, these new leaders were not soldiers and could not command the fleet or the army as Pericles had done. The most notable exception was Alcibiades, a brilliant young man, a relative of Pericles and brought up in his house. The two sons of Pericles having died, Alcibiades, if he had enjoyed the guidance of his foster father a few years longer, might have become the savior of Athens and of Greece. As it happened, however, this young leader was more largely responsible than anyone else for the destruction of the Athenian Empire and the downfall of Greece.
Lacking the steadying hand of a statesman whose well-formed plans and continuous policy might furnish a firm and guiding influence, the management of Athenian affairs fell into confusion. Wavering and changeableness were rarely interrupted by any display of stability, firmness, and wisdom; the leaders drifted from one policy to another, and usually from bad to worse. It seemed impossible to regain stable leadership. The youthful Aristophanes (§ 659) pictured the rudderless condition of the ship of State in one clever comedy after another, in which he ridiculed in irresistible satire the pretense to statesmanship of such " men of the people ” as Cleon the tanner.
A typical example of the ill-considered actions of the Assembly was their treatment of the revolting citizens of Mitylene. When the men of Mitylene were finally subdued, the Assembly
595. Lack of leaders after death of Pericles
596. Unstable leadership of the Assembly
^97. Incident of Mitylene
384
Ancient Times
598. Cleon the tanner
599. The first ten years of the war, and the Peace of Nicias (421 B.C.)
on the Pnyx (Fig. 179) voted that they should all be put to death, and a ship departed with these orders. It was with great difficulty that a more moderate group in the Assembly secured a rehearing of the question and succeeded in inducing the people to modify their barbarous action to the condemnation and execution of the ringleaders only. A second ship then overtook the first barely in time to save from death the entire body of the citizens of Mitylene.
In spite of such revolts Athenian naval supremacy continued; but as the war dragged on, the payment of army and fleet reduced Athenian funds to a very low state. Cleon the tanner was a man of much energy and a good deal of financial ability. He succeeded in having an income tax introduced, and later on the tribute of the ^Egean cities was raised. But having always been a manufacturer, he lacked all military experience. For years the operations on both sides were in most cases utterly insignificant. This is best seen in Cleon’s siege and capture of four hundred Spartans on one of the islands on the west coast of Greece — a disaster which made a great impression and, in view of some other reverses, led the Spartans to sue for peace! Later in an absurdly mismanaged expedition on the northern coast of the yEgean, Cleon lost his army of fifteen hundred men and his own life.
The attack of the allies on Athens did not succeed in breaking up her empire and overthrowing her leadership of the ^Egean cities. It was the devastation wrought by the plague which had seriously affected her. Athens and the whole Greek world were demoralized and weakened. The contest had in it no longer the inspiration of a noble struggle such as the Greeks had maintained against Persia. Unprecedented brutality, like that at first adopted toward Mitylene, gave the struggle a savagery and a lack of respect for the enemy which completely obscured all finer issues, if there were any such involved in the war. With Cleon gone, Athenian leadership fell into the hands of a wealthy and noble citizen named Nicias, a man of
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 385
no ability. When ten years of indecisive warfare had passed, Nicias arranged a peace to be kept for fifty years. Each contestant agreed to give up all new conquests and to retain only old possessions or subject cities (see map II, p. 344).
Section 58. Third Peloponnesian War and Destruction of the Athenian Empire
Meantime serious difficulties arose in carrying out the conditions of the peace. One of the northern subject cities of Athens which had gone over to Sparta refused to return to Athenian allegiance. Athens took the questionable ground that Sparta should force the unwilling city to obey the terms of peace. It was at this- juncture that Athens especially needed such guidance as a statesman like Pericles could have furnished. She was obliged to depend upon the feeble leadership of Nicias and the energetic but unprincipled. Alcibiades.
Nicias continued to\ urge a conciliatory attitude toward Sparta, but he failed of election as strategus. On the other hand, the gifted and reckless Alcibiades, seeing a great opportunity for a brilliant career, did all that he could to excite the war party in Athens. He was elected strategus, and, in spite of the fact that troubles at home had forced Sparta into a treaty of alliance with Athens, Alcibiades was able to carry the Assembly with him. He then involved Athens in an alliance with Argos against Sparta. In this way Attica, exhausted with plague and ten years of warfare, was enticed into a life-and-death struggle which was to prove final.
Several years of ill-planned military and naval operations followed the fruitless peace of Nicias. The Spartans did not at once respond with hostilities and sent no army into Attica. Alcibiades at length persuaded the Athenians to plan a great joint expedition of army and navy against Sicily, where the mighty city of Syracuse, founded as a colony of Corinth, was leading in the oppression of certain Western cities in alliance
600. Difficulties in maintaining the new peace
601. Alcibiades brings on war again
602. Third Peloponnesian War: Siciliap expedition
386
Ancient Times
603. Arrest of Alcibiades and his flight to Sparta
with Athens. The Athenians placed Alcibiades and Nicias in command of the expedition. -
Just as the fleet was about to sail, certain sacred images in Athens were impiously mutilated, and the deed was attributed to Alcibiades. In spite of his demand for an immediate trial, the Athenians postponed the case until his return from Sicily.
Plan of the Siege of Syracuse
When the fleet reached Italy, however, the Athenian people, with their usual inability to follow any consistent plan and also desiring to take Alcibiades at a great disadvantage, suddenly recalled him for trial. This procedure not only deprived the expedition of its only able leader but also gave Alcibiades an opportunity to desert to the Spartans, which he promptly did. His advice to the Spartans now proved fatal to the Athenians.
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 387
The appearance of the huge Athenian fleet off their coast struck dismay into the hearts of the Syracusans, but Nicias entirely failed to see the importance of immediate attack before the Syracusans could recover and make preparations for the defense of their city. He wasted the early days of the campaign in ill-planned maneuvers, only winning a barren victory over the Syracusan land forces. When Nicias was finally induced by the second general in command to begin the siege of the city, courage had returned to the Syracusans, and their defense was well organized.
The Athenians now built a siege wall behind Syracuse nearly across the point of land on which the city was situated, in order to cut it entirely off from the outside world. The spirit of the Syracusans was much depressed, and surrender seemed not far off. Just at this point Gylippus, a Spartan leader and his troops, sent by the advice of Alcibiades, succeeded in passing the Athenian lines and gained entrance to the city. The courage of the Syracusans was at once restored. The Athenians were thrown upon the defensive. Meantime the Syracusans had also organized a fleet. The Athenian fleet had entered the harbor, and in these narrow quarters they were unable to maneuver or to take advantage of their superior seamanship. After some Athenian success at first, the fleet of Syracuse was victorious.
There was now no prospect of the capture of the city, and Nicias would have withdrawn, but the leaders at home would not allow it. In spite of renewed Spartan invasion, the blinded democratic leaders sent out another fleet and more land forces to reinforce Nicias. No Greek state had ever mustered such power and sent it far across the waters. All Greece watched the spectacle with amazement. A night assault by the reinforced Athenians failed with large losses, and the position of the whole expedition at once became a dangerous one.
With disaster staring them in the face there was nothing for the Athenians to do but withdraw. But just at this point, an eclipse of the moon occurred, and the superstitious Nicias
604. Incompetence of Nicias
605. Athenian siege unsuccessful
606. Reinforced Athenians repulsed
388
Ancient Times
607. Capture of Athenian fleet and army before Syracuse
(413 B.C.)
insisted on waiting for another more favorable moon. This month’s delay was fatal to the Athenians. The Syracusans blockaded the channel to the sea and completely shut up the Athenian fleet within the harbor, so that an attempt to break through and escape disastrously failed. The desperate Athenian
Fig. 192. Stone Quarries of Syracuse in which the Athenians were Imprisoned
"We look across the deep quarry and the Small Harbor to the ancient island of Ortygia (see map, p. 386). It is now a cape, occupied by the modem city of which we can see the buildings. The quarries are overgrown with ivy and masked with beautiful green foliage. Here the seven thousand Athenians captured by the Syracusans (§ 607) were imprisoned without sufficient water and provisions, and here most of them died
army, abandoning sick and wounded, too late endeavored to escape into the interior, but was overtaken and forced to surrender. The Syracusans treated the captured Athenians with savage barbarity. After executing the commanding generals, they took the prisoners, seven thousand in number, and sold them into slavery or threw them into the stone quarries of the city (Fig. ig2), where most of them miserably perished. Thus
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 389
the Athenian expedition was completely .destroyed (413 B.C.). This disaster, together with the earlier ravages of the plague, brought Athens near the end of her resources.
Heretofore Sparta had stood more or less aloof, seemingly unwilling to break the peace of Nicias, and had not invaded Attica. But now seeing the unprotected condition of Athens, after the dispatch of the Sicilian expedition, Sparta again invaded Attica and, on the advice of Alcibiades, occupied the town of Decelea,1 almost within sight of Athens. Here the Spartans established a permanent fort held by a strong garrison, and thus placed Athens in a state of perpetual siege. All agriculture ceased, and the Athenians lived on imported grain. The people now understood the folly of having sent away on a distant expedition the ships and the men that should have been kept at home to repel the attacks of a powerful and still uncrippled foe.
After these disasters the Athenian Empire began to show signs of breaking up. The failure of the democracy in the management of the war enabled the nobles to denounce popular rule as unsuccessful. The nobles regained power for a time; violence and bloodshed within were added to the dangerous assaults of the enemy from without. The finances were in a desperate condition. The tribute, already raised to the breaking point, was abolished and a customs duty of five per cent was levied on all goods exported or imported. The plan was a success and brought in a larger income than the tribute. But the measure did not unite nor quiet the discontented communities of which the Empire was made up. One after another they fell away. Spartan warships sailed about in the ./Egean, aiding the rebels, who had of course dared to revolt only on promise of such assistance from Sparta.
To add to the Athenian distress, the powerful Persian satrap in western Asia Minor was supporting the Spartan fleet with money. Indeed, both Athens and Sparta had long been
1 On this account the war with Sparta which now followed, lasting nine years (from 413 to 404 B. c.)5 is often called the " Decelean War ” (see map, p. 352).
608. Spartan garrison in Attica
609. Internal troubles of the Athenian Empire
610, Persia aids the Peloponnesians against Athens
390
Ancient Times
6n. Alcibia-des recovers command of the Athenian fleet (411 B.C.)
612. Restoration of Alcibiades (407 B.C.)
613. Fall and death of Alcibiades
negotiating with Persia for aid, and Sparta had recognized Persian rule over the Greek cities of Asia. The Greek islands and the cities of Asia Minor which had once united in the Delian League with Athens to throw off Persian rule were now combining with Sparta and Persia against Athens. Thus the former union of the Greeks in a heroic struggle against the Asiatic enemy had given way to a disgraceful scramble for Persian support and favor.
Meantime Alcibiades, under the protection of the Persian satrap, had himself encouraged the revolters against Athens, hoping that her distress would finally oblige her to recall him and seek his aid. He was not disappointed. The small fleet which the Athenians were still able to put into the fight called upon Alcibiades for help, and finally put itself under his command, without any authorization from Athens. In several conflicts, chiefly through the skill of Alcibiades, the Peloponnesian fleet was finally completely destroyed, and Athens regained the command of the sea.
Sparta now made offers of peace, but Alcibiades skillfully used the war sentiment in the fleet against their acceptance, and the democratic leaders in power at Athens also refused to make peace. Alcibiades was then (407 b.c.) elected strategus and legally gained command of the fleet which he had already been leading for four years. At the head of a triumphant procession he entered Athens again for the first time since he had left it for Sicily eight years before. He was solemnly purified from the religious curse which rested upon him ; and his fortune, which had been confiscated, was returned to him.
It now needed only the abilities of such a leader as Alcibiades to accomplish the union of the distracted Greek states, and the foundation of a great Greek nation. At this supreme moment, however, Alcibiades lacked the courage to seize the government, and the opportunity never returned again. When he put to sea again a slight defeat, inflicted on a part of his fleet when he was not present, cost him the favor of the fickle
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 391
Athenians. When they failed to reelect him strategus he retired to a castle which he had kept in readiness on the Hellespont. He never saw his native land again and died in exile, the victim of a Persian dagger.
The Athenians had now lost their ablest leader again, but they continued the war on the sea as best they could. They won another important victory over a new Peloponnesian fleet on the coast of Asia Minor by the little islands of Arginusse. As the battle ended a storm arose which prevented the commanders from saving the Athenian survivors clinging to the wreckage. For this accident the Athenian commanders were accused of criminal neglect before the Assembly and condemned to death. In spite of all that could be done, six of the eight naval commanders were executed, including the young Pericles, a son of the great statesman. The other two commanders had been wise enough to flee from such justice as they might expect at the hands of the Athenian democracy.
Athens now suffered worse than ever before for lack of competent commanders. The fleet numbering about one hundred and eighty triremes was placed in command of a group of officers, each of whom was to lead for a day at a time. The democratic leaders who had made this absurd arrangement watched the fleet sail out to continue a war which they themselves were prolonging by again refusing Spartan proffers of peace. For several days in succession the Athenians sailed out from their station near the river called yEgospotami on the Hellespont, and offered battle to the Peloponnesian fleet lying in a neighboring harbor. But the Peloponnesians refused battle. On their return from these maneuvers each day, the Athenians left their ships along the beach and themselves went ashore. Alcibiades from his neighboring castle, where he still was, came down and pointed out to the Athenian commanders the great danger they ran in leaving the fleet in this condition so near the enemy. His advice received no attention. The able Spartan, Lysander, the commander of the Peloponnesian
614. Athenian victory of Arginusas; execution of the com-m'anders (406 B.C.)
615; Capture of the Athenian fleet at the battle of ./Egospotami (405 B.C.)
392
Ancient Times
616. Surrender of Athens and fall of the Athenian Empire. (404 B.C.) .
fleet, seeing this daily procedure, waited until the Athenians had gone ashore and left their ships as usual.- Then, sailing over, he surprised and captured practically the whole Athenian fleet.
At last, twenty-seven years after Pericles had provoked the war with Sparta, the resources of Athens were exhausted. Not a man slept on the night when the terrible news of final ruin reached Athens. It was soon confirmed by the appearance of Lysander’s fleet blockading the Piraeus. The grain ships from the Black Sea could no longer reach the port of Athens. The Spartan king pitched his camp in the grove of the Academy (§ 558) and called on the city to surrender. For some months the stubborn democratic leaders refused to accept terms of peace which meant the complete destruction of Athenian power. But the pinch of hunger finally convinced the Assembly, and the city surrendered. The Long Walls and the fortifications of the Pirasus were torn down, the remnant of the fleet was handed over to Sparta, all foreign possessions were given up, and Athens was forced to enter the Spartan League. These hard conditions saved the city from the complete destruction demanded by Corinth. Thus the century which had begun so gloriously for Athens with the repulse of Persia, the century which under the leadership of such men as Themistocles and Pericles had seen her rise to supremacy in all that was best and noblest in Greek life, closed with the annihilation of the Athenian Empire (404 B.C.).
QUESTIONS
Section 57. How did Athens treat the suhject states of her Empire ? What was now her policy regarding citizenship ? regarding lawsuits in the subject states? How did these states now feel toward Athens? How did the states outside the Athenian Empire feel ? What was the result ? Who were the enemies of Athens in this war? What were her resources?
What was Pericles’ plan of campaign ? What disaster overtook Athens ? How did this affect the fortunes of Pericles ? By what
The Struggle between Athens and Sparta 393
associations had he displeased the people? What was the result? What young leader now came forward? What kind- of leadership did the Assembly now furnish ? Give an example. What business man now tried to lead the nation? How did he succeed? Were the military operations of the war on a large scale? What was the result of ten years’war? Who arranged the peace? When?
Section 58. Who was chiefly responsible for the reopening of the war ? What great expedition did the Athenians plan ? Who were the commanders? What prevented Alcibiades from going? Tell the story of the expedition and its end. What did Sparta now do? What was now the internal condition of the Athenian Empire? What' part did Persia play in the war ? What can you state of the restoration of Alcibiades to office? What was the result? How did the Athenians treat their naval commanders? What was the result? What was the situation of Athens after the loss of her fleet? What conditions did Sparta make ? Contrast the beginning and the end of the fifth century in Athenian history.
Note. The tailpiece below shovs us the theater of Epidaurus, which is unusually instructive because it is the best preserved of the Greek theaters. Although it was built late in the fourth century B.C., we see that the orchestra circle is still complete and has not been cut into by later stage arrangements behind it as at Athens (Fig. 189).
CHAPTER XVII
617. Unfitness of Sparta for leadership of the Greeks
THE FINAL CONFLICTS AMONG THE GREEK STATES
Section 59. Spartan Leadership and the Decline of Democracy
The long struggle of Athens for the political leadership of the Greek world had ignominiously failed. It now- remained to be seen whether her victorious rival, Sparta, was any better suited to undertake such leadership. No nation which devotes itself exclusively to the development of military power, as Sparta had done, is fitted to control successfully the affairs of its neighbors. Military garrisons commanded by Spartan officers were now placed in many of the Greek'cities, und Spartan
Note. The above headpiece shows us the lovely Porch of the Maidens built to adom the temple on the Acropolis known as the Erechtheum (Fin Fig. 183). This
was a very ancient sanctuary of Athena, supposed to have gained its name because it was originally a shrine in the castle of the prehistoric king Erechtheus on the Acropolis. It was believed to stand on the spot where Athena overcame Poseidon in her battle with him for the possession of Attica, and here was the mark of the Sea-god’s trident which he struck into the earth. Here also grew the original olive tree which Athena summoned from the earth as a gift to the Athenians (§ 654). The building was erected during the last Peloponnesian war, in spite of the financial distress of Athens at that time. It is one of the most beautiful architectural works left us by the Greeks.
394
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 395
control was maintained in a much more offensive form than was the old tyranny of Athens.
By such violent means Sparta was able to repress the democracies which had everywhere been hostile to her. In each city the Spartans established and supported by military force the rule of a small group of men from the noble or upper class. Such rule of a small group was called oligarchy, a Greek term meaning " rule of a few.” The oligarchs were guilty of the worst excesses, murdering and banishing their political opponents and confiscating their fortunes. When the people regained power, they retaliated in the same way and drove the oligarchs from the city. As this kind of conflict went on, both parties banished so many that a large number of the leading Athenian citizens constantly lived in exile. From their foreign homes they plotted against their banishers and formed a constant danger from abroad.
In spite of the failure of oligarchy, thoughtful men everywhere regarded popular rule also as an open failure. The splendid achievements of citizenship under Pericles (Chapter XV) must not blind us to the weaknesses of Athenian democracy. Some of these we have already seen in following the course of the Peloponnesian Wars; but the same weaknesses were evident in the people’s control of the internal affairs of Athens. Let us examine some of the leading matters in which popular control had failed and continued to fail.
Nowhere were the mistakes of democracy more evident than in the Athenian law courts. The payment of the large citizen-juries (§ 538) often exhausted the treasury. When there was no money in the treasury with which to pay the juries, the jurymen, who preferred such service to hard work, found it very easy to fill the treasury again by fining any accused citizen brought before them, whether he was guilty or innocent. More than one lawyer of the time urged the court to confiscate the fortune of an accused citizen, in order that the jurymen to whom the lawyer was talking might thus receive their pay. It became
618. Struggle of oligarchy and democracy
619. Disrepute and weaknesses of democracy
620. Corruption and class prejudice of the Athenian citizen-juries
396
Ancient, Times
621. Evils of one-sided class rule
622. Unwise financial policy of the democracy
623. Expensive means of collecting taxes
a profitable trade to bring accusations and suits against wealthy men on all sorts of trumped-up charges. A man thus threatened usually preferred to buy off his accusers, in order to avoid going before five hundred poor and ignorant jurors.
In the days of Solon we remember that the rule of the upper classes over the lower was so oppressive that it almost resulted in the destruction of the State (§ 473). In the course of less than two hundred years the lower classes had gained complete control, and their rule, as we have just seen (§ 620), became so corruptly oppressive toward the upper classes that the final situation was again one-sided class rule, as bad as any that Athens had ever seen. To Athenian misfortunes in foreign wars were thus added the constant violence of weakening inner struggles between classes.
Another weakness of popular rule was its unwise financial policy, which continually exhausted the treasury of Athens. Her empty treasury was due to a number of causes, chiefly three. First, the payment of large numbers of citizens for services to the State, especially the thousands of citizen-j urors ; second, the payment to all citizens of " show-money ” (§ 579), a heavy drain on the treasury; and third, the long-continued expenses and losses of war (§ 539).
To these we might add the expensive means of collecting taxes employed by both parties. Unlike the great oriental governments we have studied (Fig. 40), no Greek state possessed any officials to undertake the task of collecting taxes. It therefore sold its tax claims to the highest bidder, who then had the right to collect the taxes. In order to secure the large sums necessary for making such bids, a number of men of money would form themselves into a company. These companies by secretly combining gained a monopoly in the business of tax collecting. Their bid was always far less than the amount of the tax claims to be collected. Thus the people paid far more taxes than the State received from the collectors, into whose pockets the difference went. Consequently, the rate of taxation
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 39?
at Athens was now high, being at least from one to two per cent of a man’s fortune and sometimes much higher.
The Athenians had early begun to use the treasure which had accumulated in the temple of Athena. The obligation to pay back this borrowed treasure was engraved upon a stone tablet set up on the Acropolis. To this day the surviving fragments of this broken stone bear witness to the unpaid debt to Athena and the bankruptcy of Athens. After the long struggle between Athens and Sparta was over, all the Greek states were practically bankrupt. An admiral or a general of this time often found himself facing the enemy without the money to pay his forces or to feed them. At the same time, if he failed in his compaign he would be punished for his failure by the democracy at home. There were times when the Athenian courts ceased to hold any sessions, for lack of funds to pay the citizen-juries, and a man with an important lawsuit on his hands could not get it tried.
Under these circumstances the Mediterranean states for the first time began to study the methods and theory of raising money for government expenses. A beginning was thus made in the science of national finances and political economy. Nevertheless, the method of collection of the taxes continued to be that of " farming ” out the undertaking to the highest bidder. In this matter the Orient still remained far in advance of the northern Mediterranean states (§ 74). From now on the finances of a nation became more and more a matter of special training, and it became more difficult for the average citizen without experience to manage the financial offices of the government.
Notwithstanding the great losses in property and in men during the long Peloponnesian Wars, Athens at length began to recover herself. The farms of Attica had been laid waste so often by the Spartan armies that agriculture never wholly recovered its former prosperity. There was a tendency among farmers to sell their land and to undertake some form of manufacturing in the city. This was a natural thing to do, for the
624. Exhaustion of temple treasures ; bankruptcy of the Greek states
625. Beginnings of financial theory and political economy
626. Beginning of the decline of farming, and appearance of large landowners
398
Sincteni unit:j
627. Growth of manufacturing and rise of banks
628. Rise of prices; growing luxury
industries of Athens offered attractive opportunities to make a fortune. At the same time, men who had already gained wealth in manufactures bought one farm after another. This was a process which would finally concentrate the lands of Attica in the hands of a few large city landlords who were not farmers, but worked their great estates, each made up of many farms, with slaves under superintendents. The landowning farmers who worked their own lands and lived on them tended to disappear. In their place the great estates common in neighboring Asia Minor under the Persians (§ 269) were also appearing among the Greeks.
Athens was still the leading business center and the greatest city in the Mediterranean world. While manufacturing business was not often conducted by companies, groups of wealthy men, as we have seen, united to furnish the large sums necessary to bid for the contract to collect the taxes. Such combinations formed one of the evils of Athenian business life, as they have sometimes done in our own time. Other men combined their capital to form the first banks. The Greeks no longer left their accumulated money in a temple treasury, for safe-keeping, but gave it to such a bank that it might be loaned out, used in business, and earn interest. Athens thus became the financial center of the ancient world, as New York and London are today, and her bankers became the proverbially wealthy men of the time. The most successful among them was Pasion, a former slave, who had been able to purchase his liberty because of his great business ability.
As the banking system resulted in keeping more money in circulation the old increase in prices (§ 537) went on, and the expenses for government were consequently higher; but the democracy continued to pay itself vast sums for jury service and show-money. There was a freer use of money in private life among the well-to-do classes. The houses of such people began to display rooms with painted wall decorations and adorned with rugs and hangings. An orator of the time
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 399
condemns such luxurious houses, wljiich he says were unknown in the days of Miltiades and the Persian War, just as some criticize our own modern fine houses and contrast them with the simplicity of George Washington and Revolutionary days.
Men were now becoming more and more interested in their own careers, and they were no longer so devoted to the State as formerly. This was especially true in the matter of military service. Except in Sparta, a Greek had heretofore left his occupation for a brief space to bear arms for a single short campaign, and then returned to his occupation. Such men made up a citizen militia, no more devoted to arms than our own modern militia. But the long Peloponnesian Wars had kept large numbers of Greeks so long under arms that many of them permanently adopted military life and became professional soldiers, serving for pay wherever they could find opportunity. Such soldiers serving a foreign state for pay are called " mercenaries.” There were few unoccupied lands to which a young Greek could migrate as in the colonizing age ; and Persia blocked all such enterprises in the East. The Greek youths who could find no opportunities at home were therefore enlisting as soldiers in Egypt, in Asia Minor, and in Persia, and the best young blood of Greece was being spent to strengthen foreign states instead of building up the power of the Greeks.
During the Peloponnesian Wars military leadership had also become a profession. It was no longer possible for a citizen to leave private life and casually assume command of an army or a fleet. Athens produced a whole group of professional military leaders whose romantic exploits made them famous throughout the ancient world. The most talented among these was the Athenian, Xenophon. About 400 B.C. he took service in Asia Minor with Cyrus, a young Persian prince, who was planning to overthrow his brother, the Persian king. With ten thousand Greek mercenaries Cyrus marched entirely across Asia Minor to the Euphrates, and down the river almost to Babylon. Here the Greeks defeated the army of the Persian king; but Cyrus
629. Rise of the professional soldier as a result of the Peloponnesian Wars
630. Rise of
professional
military
leaders;
Xenophon
and the Ten
Thousand
400
Ancient limes
631. Rise of military science; w Anabasis and other military treatises
632. Greeks learn use of siege machinery and larger warships
was killed, and the Greeks were therefore obliged to retreat. Xenophon led them up the Tigris past the ruins of Nineveh (Fig. 203), and after months of fighting in dangerous mountain passes, suffering from cold and hunger, the survivors struggled on until they reached the Black Sea and finally gained Byzantium in safety.
Of this extraordinary raid into the Persian Empire Xenophon has left a modest account called the "Anabasis" ("up-going”), one of the great books which have descended to us from ancient times. He explains the military operations involved, and the book thus became one of the treatises on military science which now began to appear. Such leaders were discussing the theory of operations in the field,- methods of strategy, and the best kinds of weapons. Even Euripides, in his tragedy of Hercules, pictured the comparative effectiveness of bow and spear. Xenophon tells of an officer of Cyrus who divided his men into two parties and armed one party with clods and the other with clubs. After the two parties had fought it out, all agreed that the club in the hand at close quarters was more effective than missiles (that is, the clods) hurled from a distance. This was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the spear at close quarters over the arrows of distant archers.
We recall that in Pericles’ time the Spartans made no attempt to attack the walls of Athens, because the Greeks at that time knew nothing about methods of attacking fortifications. The Phoenician Carthaginians, however, had carried the Assyrian siege devices (p. 140) to the west, where the western Greeks had now learned to use them in Sicily. From Sicily the use of battering-rams, movable towers, and the like was carried to Greece itself, and against attack with such equipment Athens would no longer have been safe. The Mediterranean, which had so long ago received the arts of peace from the Orient, was now also learning to. use war machinery from the same source. At the same time larger warships were constructed, some having as many as five banks of oars; and the
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 401
old triremes with three banks could no longer stand against such powerful ships. All such equipment made war more expensive than before.
The remarkable feat of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand (§ 630) finally stirred Spartan ambition to undertake conquest in Persian territory in Asia Minor. The Spartans, therefore, hired the surviving two thirds of the Ten Thousand, but the rule of Sparta had caused such dissatisfaction that her victories in Asia Minor were offset by revolts in Greece. In one of these Lysander was killed. The outcome of these rebellions was a league of Athens and Thebes against Sparta. Even Corinth, the old-time enemy of Athens, joined this league, and Argos also came in. Behind this combination was Persia, "whose agents had brought it about in order to weaken Sparta. It was one of the ironies of the whole deplorable situation that a fleet of Athens made common cause with the Persians and helped to fasten Persian despotism on the Greek cities of Asia. The Greeks had learned nothing by their long and unhappy experience of fruitless fighting, and thus began an eight years’ struggle, called the Corinthian War. The Athenians had been able to rebuild a fleet, with which they now destroyed the fleet of Sparta. They were then in a position to erect the Long Walls again.
At length the Persians began to fear lest Athens should again be strong enough to endanger Persian control in Asia Minor. The Spartans, therefore, found it easy to arrange a peace with Persia. The Greek states fighting Sparta were equally willing to come to terms, and when peace was at last established in Greece, it was under the humiliating terms of a treaty accepted by Hellas at the hands of the Persian king. It is known as the King’s Peace (387 B.C.). It did not end the leadership of Sparta over the Greek states, and the Greek cities of Asia Minor were shamefully abandoned to Persia. The period following the King’s Peace brought only added discontent with Sparta’s illegal and tyrannical control, and no satisfactory solution of the problem of the relations of the Greek states among themselves.
633. War between Sparta and Persia; and the Corinthian War (395-387 B.C.)
634. King’s
Peace (387 B.C.)
402
Ancient Times
635. Thebes
and a new
Athenian
league
against
Sparta
(378 B.C.)
636. Peace congress of the Greek states at Sparta
637. Spartan
military
tactics
Section 60. The Fall of Sparta and the Leadership of Thebes
For twenty-five years since the last Peloponnesian war, the Spartans had been endeavoring to maintain control of the Greek world. Men like Lysander had been-unable to transform the rigid Spartan system into a government which should sympathetically include and direct the activities of the whole Greek world. The Spartans were therefore more hated than Athens had ever been. A group of fearless and patriotic citizens at. Thebes succeeded in slaying the oligarchs, the Spartan garrison surrendered and a democracy was set up, which gained the leadership of all Boeotia. At the same time Athens, which on the whole had been greatly strengthened by the terms of the King’s Peace, was able to begin the formation of a second naval alliance like the original league from which the Athenian Empire had sprung. The combination included Thebes and so many of the other Greek cities that Sparta was greatly disturbed. The Spartans met disaster on land, and when this was followed by the defeat of their fleet by Athens, they were ready for peace.
To arrange this peace all the Greek states met at Sparta, and such meetings gave them experience in the united management of their common affairs for the welfare of all Hellas. Spartan leadership might have held the Greek states together, and by giving them all a voice in the control of Hellas, Sparta might still have finally, united the Greeks into a great nation. But this was not to be. When the conditions of peace were all agreed upon, the Spartans refused to allow Thebes to speak for the whole of Bceotia. The Thebans refused to enter the compact on any other terms, and the peace was concluded without them. This left Sparta and Thebes still in a state of war.
All Greece now expected to see the Thebans crushed by the heavy Spartan phalanx, which had so long proved irresistible. The Spartan plan of battle hitherto followed by all commanders
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 403
consisted in making the phalanx of the right wing very heavy and massive, by arraying it many warriors deep. The customary depth was eight men. The onset of a well-drilled phalanx produced a pressure so terrible that the opposing lines gave way and the unbroken phalanx pushed through. The effect was that of a heavy mass play in American football, only we must picture the phalanx as carrying out the operation on a large scale. Having broken through at the first onset, the
Theban Bight
\ t
Theban Center
ThebanLeft
4
|
gg—1 |
|||
|
ii |
SpartanLeft |
Spartan Center |
SpartanRight
Plan of the Battle of Leuctra (371 b.c.)
victorious phalanx could then cut down singly the scattered soldiers who had given way before them.
The Spartans had, as it were, but one " play ” in their list; but they were accustomed to see it automatically successful. The Theban commander, a gifted and patriotic citizen named Epaminondas, consequently knew in advance the only " play ” which the Spartans had ever used. He therefore devised an altogether novel arrangement of his troops, such that it would meet and more than offset the fearful pressure of the heavy Spartan right. He drew up his line so that it was not parallel with that of the Spartans, his right wing being much further from the Spartan line than his left. At the same time he massed his troops on his left wing, which he made fifty shields
638. New tactics of Epaminon-das, the ’ Theban
404
Ancient Times
639. Battle of Leuctra and fall of Sparta (371 B.C.)
640. Leadership and speedy collapse of Thebes
641. Final political prostration of the whole Greek world
642. Progress of the Greeks in the higher life
deep. This great mass was to meet the shock of the heavy Spartan right wing (see plan, p. 403).
The battle took place at Leuctra, in southern Boeotia (see. map, p. 352). As the lines moved into action the battle did not begin along the whole front at once; but the massive Theban left wing, being furthest advanced, met the Spartan line first and was at first engaged alone. Its onset proved so heavy that the Spartan right opposing it was soon crushed, .and the rest of the Spartan line also gave way as the Theban center and right came into action. Over half of the Spartans engaged were slain and with them their king. The long-invincible Spartan army was at last defeated, and the charm of Spartan prestige was finally broken. After more than thirty yegrs of leadership (since 404 B.C.) Spartan power was ended (371 B.C.)
The two rival leaders of the Greeks, Athens and Sparta, had now both failed in the effort to weld the Greek states together as a nation. A third Greek state was now victorious on land, and it remained to be seen whether Thebes could accomplish what Athens and Sparta had failed in doing. Under Epami-nondas’ leadership Thebes likewise created a navy, and having greatly weakened Athens at sea, Thebes gained the leadership of Greece. But it was a supremacy based upon the genius of a single man, and when Epaminondas fell in a final battle with Sparta at Mantinea (362 B.C.), the power of Thebes by land and sea collapsed.
Thus the only powerful Greek states, which might have developed a federation of the Hellenic world, having crushed each other, Hellas was ready to fall helplessly before a conqueror from the outside. The Greek world, whose civilization was everywhere supreme, was politically prostrate and helpless.
It was less than two generations since the death of Pericles, and there were still old men living who had seen him in their childhood days. We have been following the political fortunes of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes ■ during these two generations, but our narrative has been very far from telling the whole
The Final Conflicts among the Greek States 405
story. For in spite of their political decline during the two generations since Pericles, the Greeks, and especially the Athenians, had been achieving things in their higher life, in art, architecture, literature, and thought, which made this period perhaps the greatest in the history of man. To these achievements since the death of Pericles we must now turn back.
QUESTIONS
Section 59. Why was Sparta unfitted to control the Greek states ? What was her method of control ? What is an oligarchy ? How did it succeed? Had democracy succeeded any better? Describe the abuses practiced by the citizen-juries. Was class rule by the poor any better than class rule by. the rich? What practices kept the Athenian treasury empty ? What was the Athenian method of collecting taxes? Why was it unprofitable for the State? Describe the effects of lack of money on the work of government. What did the Greeks do in order to understand the national finances ?
What was happening to small farm owners ? Discuss business and finance at this time. How had the long Peloponnesian Wars affected the citizen soldiers of Greece ? How was military leadership developing? Tell the story of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. How has this story come down to us ? What science was now arising ? Where did the Greeks learn the use of siege machinery ? What did the raid of the Ten Thousand lead Sparta to do? Sketch the Corinthian War. What was the result?
Section 60. What combination was formed to overthrow the leadership of Sparta? What did the Thebans do? What happened at the peace conference ? In the resulting war between Sparta and Thebes what result was to be anticipated ? Describe Spartan military tactics. How did Epaminondas plan to meet the Spartan tactics? Where and when did the armies meet ? What was the result ?_ How did Thebes succeed in leading the Greek states ? In what condition politically was the whole Greek world ?
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HIGHER LIFE OF THE GREEKS FROM THE DEATH OF PERICLES TO THE FALL OF THE GREEK STATES
Section 6i. Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting
643. Decline of State support of art and architecture
Note. Tlje above headpiece is a restoration by Adler of the famous tomb of King Mausolus of Caria, called after him the Mausoleum (§ 646). We now call any splendid tomb a mausoleum, thus preserving the old Hittite name of this king. It was when first built (in the middle of the fourth century B.C.) the most magnificent tomb on the north side of the Mediterranean, and it was because of its widespread fame that its name was preserved. Upon a high rectangular base a fine Ionic colonnade supported a step pyramid, upon which, crowning the whole monument, rose a splendid four-horse chariot bearing the king and queen. The work was designed and built by the architect and sculptor Pythius, and adorned with sculpture by Scopas and other Athenian sculptors whom the queen (§ 646) called to Caria for the purpose.
The long wars and the demands of the democracy (§ 622) had swallowed up the wealth of Athens; the great and splendid works of the Age of Pericles were therefore no longer possible. At the same time Athens was obliged to rebuild her fortifications, erect war arsenals, and build sheds for her battleships. The old temporary wooden seats of the theater (§ 579) were replaced by a permanent structure of stone (Fig. 189). Here and there other Greek cities also were building durable stone theaters
The Higher Life of the Greeks
407
like that at Athens. Permanent stadiums for races were likewise erected by some communities (Fig. 212, 0. The maintenance of art and architecture in this age was, however, largely in the hands of individual artists, not supported by the State but producing works of art for private buyers.
Nevertheless, the Erechtheum (F in Fig. 183), one of the most beautiful buildings ever erected, a temple which had been begun before Pericles’ death, was continued and, for the most part, completed during the unhappy days of the last Peloponnesian war. It was built in the Ionic style (p. 340), adorned with colonnades of wonderful refinement and beauty, and at one corner, over the grave of the legendary king Cecrops, the architects raised an exquisite porch,' with its roof supported by lovely marble figures of Athenian maidens, watching over the burial place of the ancient king"
(headpiece, p. 394).
Egyptian architects, as we remember, had long before crowned their columns with a capital representing growing flowers or palm-tree tops (Fig. 56). The Greek architects now profited by this hint (see headpiece and note, p. 453). Perceiving the great beauty of their own acanthus plant, they now designed a capital adorned with a double row of acanthus leaves (Fig. 193). This new capital was richer and more
Fig. 193. A Corinthian Capital
The shaft of this column has been cut out in the drawing between the base and the capital to save space. Like the capitals of Egypt (§ 92), this one represents a plant, the leaves of the acanthus, alternating in .two rows around the capital and crowned by volutes rising to the four corners of a flat block upon which the supported stone above rests. The effect of this capital is peculiarly rich and ornate (§ 645)
644. The Erechtheum on the Athenian Acropolis
645. Rise of the Corinthian style of architecture
408
Ancient Times
646. The
Mausoleum in Asia Minor
647. Contrast between sculpture of the Periclean Age and the later work
648. The sculpture of Praxiteles and Scopas
sumptuous than the simpler Doric and Ionic forms (p. 340). Although our earliest example of such columns still survives at Athens (Fig. 190), they are now called Corinthian columns.
While Athens no longer possessed the means to erect great state temples, other Greek states were not all so financially exhausted. In Asia Minor the widowed queen of the wealthy king of the Carians, Mausolus, so revered the memory of her royal husband that she devoted vast riches to the erection of a magnificent marble tomb for him, so splendid that it became one of the most famous monuments of the ancient world (headpiece, p. 406). While imposing as a monument of architecture, the Mausoleum (so named after Mausolus; see note, p. 406) was most impressive because of the rich and remarkable sculpture with which it was adorned. To do this work the widowed queen called in the greatest sculptors of the Greeks.
Sculpture had made great progress since the days of Pericles. Phidias and his pupils depicted the gods, whom they wrought in marble, as lofty, majestic, unapproachable beings, lifted high above human weaknesses and human feeling. We remember that even the human figures of Phidias were not the everyday men and women, youths and maidens whom we might have met on the streets of Athens (§ 577). When Phidias and his pupils had passed away, the sculptors who followed them began to put more of the feeling and the experience of daily human life into their work and thus brought their subjects nearer to us. Among them we must give a high place, perhaps the highest place, to the great Athenian sculptor Praxiteles.
His native city being without the money for great monumental works, Praxiteles wrought individual figures of life size, and most of these for foreign states. Unlike the majestic and exalted figures of Phidias, the gods of Praxiteles seem near to us. They at once appeal to us as being human like ourselves, interested in a life like ours, and doing things which we would like to do ourselves. As they stand at ease in attitudes of repose, the grace and balance of the flowing lines give them a splendor
Figs. 194 and 195. Two Greek Gods as sculptured by Praxiteles
Notice the wonderful ease and grace with which these figures in repose are poised. In a country where lizards were darting along every sunny wall, a lad with stone poised to throw was a frequent sight. This common human action is the one which Praxiteles chose for his Apollo (Fig. 194), and another equally common, the pouring of wine, he has depicted in the figure of the satyr (Fig. 195)* These very human gods are quite different from those of Phidias (§ 648)
Fig. 196. Battle Scene from the Sculptures of the Mausoleum (§ 646) in the Manner of
Scopas (§ 648)
The superb vigor and violent action of these ancient warriors are in sharp contrast with the tranquillity and repose of Praxiteles’ figures (Figs. 187, 194, and 195). Unfortunately, not a single one of the very numerous works of Scopas has survived. A number of fragments are supposed to be his work, and some of the frieze scenes surviving from the Mausoleum may be the work of his hands. The above scene is not ascribed to him, but shows his influence and is a fine example of the sculpture of violent action (§ 648)
The Higher Life of the Greeks 409
of beauty unattained by any earlier sculpture of the Greeks (Figs. 187, 194, and 195). In great contrast with the work of Praxiteles was that of Scopas, who did much of the sculpture of the Mausoleum. He loved to fashion figures not in tranquil moods, but in violent action, in moments of passionate excitement, like that of warriors in batde (Fig. 196). The faces sculptured by Praxiteles and Scopas were no longer expressionless, as in earlier sculpture (Figs. 168 and 169); but the artists began to put into them some of their own inner feeling. The artist’s own individual life thus began to find expression in his work. In many ways the sculpture of this age was much influenced by the work of the painters, who really led the way.
The introduction of portable paintings on wooden tablets made it more’easy for the painters to-follow their own individual feelings, for they were thus freed from the necessity of painting large scenes on the walls of State buildings (§ 572). As we have already learned (§ 550), no oil colors were known, in the ancient world, but the Greek painters now adopted the Egyptian method of mixing their colors in melted wax and then applying the fluid wax with a brush to a wooden tablet (Plate VIII, p. 654). The painter could then work in his own studio to please his own fancy, and could sell his paintings to any private purchaser who wished to buy. It thus became customary for people of wealth to set up paintings in their own houses, and in this way private support-of art was much furthered, and painting made great progress.
An Athenian painter named Apollodorus now began to notice that the light usually fell on an object from one side, leaving the unlighted side so dark that but little color showed on that side, while on the lighted side the colors came out very brightly. When he painted a woman’s arm in this way, lo, it looked round and seemed to stand out from the surface of the painting (Fig. 197); whereas up in the Painted Porch all the human limbs in the old painting of Marathon (§ 572) looked perfectly flat. By representing figures in the background of his paintings, as
649. Rise of paintings on wood
650. Discovery of how to paint light, shadow, and perspective
4io
Ancient Times
Fig. 197. A Wall-Painting at Pompeii showing the Sacrifice of Iphigenia
The works of the gTeat fourth-century artists (§ 651) have all perished, but it is supposed that the later house decorators and wall-painters of Italy copied the old masterpieces. Hence the scene here shown probably conveys some impression of old Greek painting. The scene shows us the maid Iphigenia as she is carried away to be slain as a sacrifice. The figure at the left, standing with veiled face, suggests, as often in modern art, the dreadfulness of a coming catastrophe, which human eyes are unwilling to behold. Note the skill with which human limbs are made to show thickness and roundness (§ 650)
smaller than those in front Apollodorus also introduced what we now call perspective. As a result, his paintings had an appearance of depth, and when he painted the interior of a house one
The Higher Life of the Greeks
411
seemed to be looking into the very room itself. He was called by the Athenians the " shadow painter,” and the good old-fashioned folk shook their heads at his work, preferring the old style. Even the great philosopher Plato (§ 671) condemned this new method of painting as employing devices and creating illusions of depth which were really deception.
A B .
Fig. 198. Greek Boy pulling out a Ti-iorn (A) and a Later Caricature of the Thorn Puller (B)
The graceful figure of the slender boy so seriously striving to remove the thorn was probably wrought not long after the Persian Wars. It was very popular in antiquity, as it has also been in modern times. The comical caricature (B) in clay (terra cotta), though it has lost one foot, is a delightful example of Greek humor expressed in parody (§ 652)
Nevertheless, the new method triumphed, and the younger 651. Tripainters who adopted it produced work which was the talk of n™vmethod the town. People gossiped about it and told how a painter °f painting named Zeuxis, in order to outdo his rival Parrhasius, had painted grapes so naturally that the birds flew up to the painting and pecked at them. Thereupon Parrhasius invited Zeuxis over to his studio to inspect a painting of his. Zeuxis found it covered
412
Ancient Times
652. Vase-painters and other artist-craftsmen
with a curtain which he attempted to draw aside. But his hand fell on a painted surface and he discovered to his confusion that the curtain was no more real than his own painted grapes had
been. Unfortunately, all such Greek paintings have perished, and we have only later copies (Fig. 197) at Pompeii.
The vase-painters of the time likewise often copied the famous works of the leading sculptors and painters. But after a wonderful revival in the last Peloponnesian war, the art of vase-painting passed into a melancholy decline from which it never recovered. At the same time, in order to meet the rising desire for objects of art among the people, small artists began to furnish delightful miniature copies of famous classic works, or again they made delicious caricatures of such well-known classics (Fig. 198, S). At the same time even stonecutters wrought tombstones, bearing reliefs done with a soft and melancholy beauty, breathing the wistful uncertainty with which the Greeks of this age were beginning to look out into the shadow world (Fig. 199).
Fig. 199. Athenian Gravestone showing a Daughter saying Farewell to her Parents
This tombstone of a young girl shows us the fine feeling of which even a graveyard stonecutter was capable. He has depicted the last farewell of the parents, as their daughter is carried away by death. The mother, seated at the left, grasps the young girl’s hand, while the father stands with his fingers in his beard in somber and meditative reconciliation
The Higher Life of the Greeks
413
Section 62. Religion, Literature, and Thought
Any young Athenian born at about the time of Pericles’ death found himself in an age of conflict wherever he went: an age of conflict abroad on the'field of battle as he stood with spear and shield in the Athenian ranks in the long years of warfare between Athens, Sparta, and Thebes; an age of conflict at home in Athens amid the excited shouting and applause of the turbulent Assembly or the tumult and even bloodshed of the streets and markets of the city as the common people, the democracy, struggled with the nobles for the leadership of the State; and finally in an age of conflict in himself as he felt his once confident faith in old things struggling to maintain itself against new views.
He recalled the childhood tales of the gods, which he had heard at his nurse’s knee. When he had asked her how Athena and the gods looked, she had pointed to a beautiful vase in his father’s house, bearing graceful paintings of Athena presenting the olive tree to the Athenians, and of the angry Sea-god striking his trident into the ground and leaving a mark which the lad’s nurse had shown him at the Erechtheum on the Acropolis (p. 394). There were the gods on the vase in human form, and so he had long thought of them as people like those of Athens. He had learned, too, that they were near by, for he had seen his father present gifts to them at household feasts. Later when he went to school and memorized -long passages of the Homeric poems, he had learned more about their adventures on earth. Then he had stood on the edge of the crowd with his parents watching the magnificent State feasts, like the Panathenaea (§ 570), supported at great expense, in order to honor the gods and keep them favorable to Athens. Hence everyone seemed to him to believe that the gods had all power over Athens. On such occasions he vaguely felt the majesty and grandeur of the great gods, but when he looked upon figures of them, sculptured by such artists as Praxiteles
<553- The age
of conflict after the death of Pericles
654. The Athenian citizen’s religion and early life
414
Ancient Times
655. Religion and conduct
656. The religion of the multitude
657. The
foreign gods from the Orient
(Fig. 194), the gods again appeared very much’ like earthly folk, as he had seen them on the vase in his childhood.
He never had any religious instruction, for there was nothing like a church, a clergy, or any religious teachers. There was no sacred book revered by all, like our Bible. He had not been taught that the gods had any interest in him or his. conduct, or that they required him to be either good or bad. As long as he did not neglect any of the ceremonies desired by the gods, he knew he need have no fear of them. At the same time if he lived an evil life, he realized that he might be condemned to enter at death a dark and gruesome dwelling place beneath the earth (§ 488). On the other hand, a good life might bring him at last to the beautiful Elysian fields (§ 489).
One of the ways of reaching this place of blessedness was by initiation into the mysteries at Eleusis (§ 489). Another way was to follow the teachings of the beggar-priests and soothsayers of Orpheus. These wandering tcachers, like traveling revival preachers of to-day, went about in all Greece, followed by hordes of the poor and ignorant, who eagerly accepted their mysterious teachings, promising every blessing to those who listened and obeyed. The more mysterious it all was the better the multitude liked it. These teachings were recorded in the wonderful book of Orpheus. ^wEich finally gained wide cirpila-tion among the common people, ft came nearer to being the sacred book "oF The Greeks than any that ever arose among them. All the lower classes believed in magic and were deeply impressed by the mysterious " stunts ” of the magicians and soothsayers whom they constantly consulted on all the ordinary acts of life.
Down at Piraeus, the harbor town, the Athenian citizen found the busy streets crowded with foreign merchants from Egypt, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor. They, too, had their assurances of divine help and blessedness, and they brought with them their strange gods: the Great Mother from Asia Minor, Isis from her lovely temple at the First Cataract of the Nile
The Higher Life of the Greeks
415
(Plate V, p. 444), and Egyptian Amon from his mysterious shrine far away in the Sahara (Fig. 205), behind the Greek city of Cyrene (see map, p. 436). The famous Greek poet Pindar had written a poem in his honor, and erected a statue of the great Egyptian god. As a deliverer of oracles revealing the future, Amon had now become as great a favorite among the Greeks themselves as Apollo of Delphi (§ 490). There was an Athenian ship which regularly plied between the Piraeus and Cyrene, carrying the Greeks to Amon’s distant Sahara shrine. Egyptian symbols too were common on Greek tombstones.
Some of these foreign beliefs had once greatly impressed our citizen in his, younger days. Then when he left his boyhood teacher behind, and went to hear the lectures of a noted Sophist (§ 561), he found that no one knew with any certainty whether the gods even existed; much less did anyone know what they were like. He now looked with some pity at the crowds of pilgrims who filled the sacred road leading to the hall of the mysteries at Eleusis. He had only contempt for the mob which filled the processions of the strange oriental gods, and almost every day marched with tumult and flute-playing through the streets of Athens. While he could not follow such superstitions of the ignorant poor, he found, nevertheless, that he was not yet quite ready to throw away the gods and reject them altogether, as some of his educated neighbors were doing.
He recalled the days of his youth, when he had detested these very doubts which he had now taken up. With great enjoyment he had once beheld the caricatures of Aristophanes, the greatest of the comedy writers (§ 582). Our citizen had shouted with delight at Aristophanes’ mockery of the doubts and mental struggles of Euripides (§ 581), or the ridicule which the clever comedy heaped upon the Sophists. Since then, however, had come the new light which he had gained from the Sophists. Whatever the gods might be like, he was sure that
658. The
Athenian citizen’s later uncertainties
659. The
victory of doubt and the triumph of Euripides
416
Ancient Times
660. Aristophanes and Socrates
they were not such beings as he found pictured among his heroic forefathers in the Homeric poems. Now he had long since cast aside his Homer. In spite of Aristophanes, he and
his educated friends were all reading the splendid tragedies of Euripides (§ 581), with their uncertainties, struggles, and doubts about life and the gods. Euripides, the victim of Aristophanes’ ridicule, to whom the Athenians had rarely voted a victory during his lifetime (§ 581), had now triumphed , but his triumph meant the defeat of the old, the victory of doubt, the overthrow of the gods, and the incoming of a new age in thought and belief. But the old died hard, and the struggle was a tragic one.
The citizen remembered well, another comedy of Aristophanes, which had likewise found a ready response from the Athenian audience. It had placed upon the stage the rude and comical figure of a poor Athenian named Socrates, whom Aristophanes had represented as a dangerous man, to be shunned or even chastised by good Athenians. He was the son of a stonecutter, or small sculptor. The ill-clothed figure and ugly face (Fig. 200) of Socrates had become familiar in the streets to all the folk of Athens since the outbreak of the second war with Sparta. He was accustomed to stand about the market place all day long,
Fig. 200. Portrait of Socrates
This is not the best of the numerous surviving portraits of Socrates, but it is especially interesting because it bears under the philosopher’s name nine inscribed lines containing a portion of his public defense as reported by Plato in his Apology
The Higher Life of the Greeks
417
engaging in conversation anyone he met, and asking a great many questions. Our citizen recalled that Socrates’ questions left him in a very confused state of mind, for he seemed to call in question everything which the citizen had once regarded as settled.
Yet this familiar and homely figure of the stonecutter’s son was the personification of the best and highest in Greek genius. Without desire for office or a political career, Socrates’ supreme interest nevertheless was the State. He believed that the State, made up as it was of citizens, could be purified and saved only by the improvement of the individual citizen through the education of his mind to recognize virtue and right.
Herein lies the supreme achievement of Socrates; namely, his unshakable conviction that the human mind is ableT to nize and determine"vvKat axevirtue and right, truth, beauty and __honestvr and all the other preat ideas which mean so much to human life. To him these ideas had reality. He taught that by keen questioning and discussion it is possible to reject error and discern these realities. Inspired by this impregnable belief, Socrates went about in Athens, engaging all his fellow citizens in such discussion, convinced that he might thus lead each citizen in turn to a knowledge of the leading and compelling virtues. 'Furthermore, he firmly believed that the citizen who had once recognized these virtues would shape every action and all his life by them. Socrates thus revealed the power of virtue and of similar ideas by argument and logic, but he made no appeal to religion as an influence toward good conduct. Nevertheless, he showed himself a deeply religious man, believing with devout heart in the gods, although they were not exactly those of the fathers, and even feeling, like the Hebrew prophets, that there was a divine voice within him, calling him to his high mission.
The simple but powerful personality of this greatest of Greek teachers often opened to him the houses of the rich and noble. His fame spread far and wide, and when the
661. The
State the chief interest of Socrates
662. His belief in man’s power to discern the great truths as such and to shape his conduct by them
663. Public opinion of Socrates
4i8
Ancient limes
664. The trial and death of Socrates
(399 b-c-)
665. The influence of Socrates after his death
Delphian oracle (§ 490) was asked who was the wisest of the living, it responded with the name of Socrates. A group of pupils gathered about him, among whom the most famous was Plato. But his aims and his noble efforts on behalf of the Athenian State were misunderstood. His keen questions seemed to throw doubt upon all the old beliefs. The Athenians had already vented their displeasure on more than one leading Sophist who had rejected the old faith and teaching (§ 593).
So the Athenians summoned Socrates to trial for corrupting the youth with all sorts of doubts and impious teachings. Such examples as Alcibiades, who had been his pupil, seemed convincing illustrations of the viciousness of his teaching; many had seen and still more had read with growing resentment the comedy of Aristophanes which held him up to contempt and execration. Socrates might easily have left Athens when the complaint was lodged against him. Nevertheless he appeared for trial, made a powerful and dignified defense, and, when the court voted the death penalty, passed his last days in tranquil conversation with his friends and pupils, in whose presence he then quietly drank the fatal hemlock (399 B.C.). Thus the Athenian democracy, which had so fatally mismanaged the affairs of the nation in war, brought upon itself much greater reproach in condemning to death, even though in accordance with law, the greatest and purest soul among its citizens (headpiece, p. 425).
The undisturbed serenity of Socrates in his last hours, as pictured to us in Plato’s idealized version of the scene, profoundly affected the whole Greek world and still forms one of the most precious possessions of humanity. He was the greatest Greek, and in him Greek civilization reached its highest level. But the glorified figure of Socrates, as he appears in the writings of his pupils, was to prove more powerful even than the living teacher.
Meantime there had been growing up a body of scientific knowledge about the visible world, which men had never
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possessed before. Moreover this new scientific knowledge was no longer confined to the few philosophers who were its discoverers, as formerly had been the case (§ 564). Our doubting citizen had at home a whole shelf of books on natural science. It included a treatise on mathematics, an astronomy in which the year was at last stated to contain 365\ days, a zoology and a botany. There was also a mineralogy, a pamphlet on foretelling the weather, and a treatise on the calendar, besides several geographies with maps of the world then known. There were also practical books of guidance and instruction on drawing, war, farming, raising horses, or even cooking.
There was in our citizen’s library also a remarkable history, treating the fortunes of nations in the same way in which natural science was treated. Its author was Thucydides, the first scientific writer of history. A generation earlier Herodotus’ history (§ 567) had ascribed the fortunes of nations to the will of the gods, but Thucydides, with an insight like that of modern historians, traced historical events to their earthly causes in the world of men where they occur. There stood the two books, Herodotus and Thucydides, side by side in the citizen’s library. There were only thirty years or so between them, but how different the beliefs of the two historians, the old and the new! Thucydides was one of the greatest writers of simple and beautiful prose that ever lived. His book which told the story of the long wars resulting in the fall of the Athenian Empire was received by the Greeks with enthusiastic approval. It has been one of the world’s great classics ever since.
The success of Thucydides’ work in prose shows that the interest of the Athenians was no longer in poetry but in the new and more youthful art of prose. Poetry, including play-writing, noticeably declined. A successful public speech was now written down beforehand, and the demand for such addresses in the Assembly, and especially before the citizen-juries, was a constant motive for the cultivation of skillful prose writing and public speaking.
666. Spread of scientific knowledge among the people
667. Scientific writing of history
668. The decline of poetry and the triumph of prose
420
Ancient Times
669. Athens the center of , education; Isocrates
670. Rise of the science of government
671. Plato
The teachers of rhetoric at Athens, the successors of the old Sophists (§ 562), became world renowned, and they made the city the center of education for the whole Greek world. The leader among them was Isocrates, -the son of a well-to-do flute manufacturer. Having lost his father’s fortune in the Peloponnesian Wars, he turned for a living to the teaching of rhetoric, in which he soon showed great ability. He chose as his theme the great political questions of his time. He was not a good speaker, and he therefore devoted himself especially to the writing of his speeches, which he then published as political essays. Throughout Greece these remarkable essays were read, and Isocrates finally became the political spokesman of Athens, if not of all Greece.
Notwithstanding the new interest in natural science, the affairs of men rather than of nature were the burning questions at Athens. How should the governmental affairs of a community of men be conducted ? — what should be the proper form of a free state ? — these were the problems which Athenian experience and the efforts of Socrates toward an enlightened citizenship had thrust into the foreground. What should be the form of the ideal state ? The Orient had already had its social idealism. In the Orient, however, it had never occurred to the social dreamers to discuss the form of government of the ideal state. They accepted as a matter of course the monarchy under which they lived as the obvious form for the State. But in Greece the question of the form of government, whether a kingdom, a republic, or an aristocracy, was now earnestly discussed. Thus there arose a new science, the” science of government.
Plato, the most gifted pupil of Socrates, published much of his beloved master’s teaching in the form of dialogues, supposedly reproducing the discussions of the great teacher himself. Then after extensive travels in Egypt and the west he returned to Athens, where he set up his school in the grove of the Academy (§ 558). Convinced of the hopelessness of democracy in Athens, he reluctantly gave up all thought of a
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career as a statesman, to which he had been strongly drawn, and settled down at Athens to devote himself to teaching.
Plato was both philosopher and poet. The ideas which Socrates maintained the human mind could discern, became for Plato eternal realities, having an existence independent of man and his mind. The human soul, he taught, had always existed, and in an,earlier state had beheld the great ideas of goodness, beauty, evil, and the like, and had gained an intuitive vision of them which in this earthly life the soul now recalled and recognized again. The elect souls, gifted with such vision, were the ones to control the ideal state, for they would necessarily act in accordance with the ideas of virtue and justice which they had discerned. It was possible by education, thought Plato, to lead the souls of men to a clear vision of these ideas.
In a noble essay entitled The Republic Plato presented a lofty vision of his ideal state. Here live the enlightened souls governing society in righteousness and justice. They do no work, but depend on craftsmen and slaves for all menial labor. And yet the comforts and leisure which they enjoy are the product of that very world of industry and commerce in a Greek city which Plato so thoroughly despises. The plan places far too much dependence on education and takes no account of the dignity and importance of labor in human society. Moreover, Plato’s ideal state is the self-contained, selfcontrolling city-state as it had in times past supposedly existed in Greece. He failed to perceive that the vital question for Greece was now the relation of these city-states to each other. He did not discern that the life of a cultivated state unavoidably expands beyond its borders, and by its needs and its contributions affects the life of surrounding states. It cannot be confined within its political borders, for its commercial borders lie as far distant as its galleys can carry its produce.
Thus boundary lines cannot separate nations ; their life overlaps and interfuses with the life round about them. It was so within Greece, and it was so far beyond the borders of Greek
672. Plato’s development of the So-cratic ideas
673. Plato’s ideal state
674. Growth of a Hellen-ized world
422
Ancient Times
675. Motives toward unity: Isocrates and Xenophon
676. Unalterable disunion the end of Greek political development
territory. There had grown up a civilized world which was reading Greek books, using Greek utensils, fitting up its houses with Greek furniture, decorating its house interiors with Greek paintings, building Greek theaters, learning Greek tactics in war — a great Mediterranean and oriental world bound together by lines of commerce, travel, and common economic interests. For this world, as a coming political unity, the lofty idealist Plato, in spite of his travels, had no eyes. To this world, once dominated by oriental culture, the Greeks had given the noblest and sanest ideas yet attained by the mind of civilized man, and to this world likewise the Greeks should have given political leadership.
Men in practical life, like Isocrates, clearly understood the situation at this time. Isocrates urged the Greeks to bury their petty differences and expand their purely sectional patriotism into loyalty toward a great nation which should unite the whole Greek world. He told his countrymen that, so united, they could easily overthrow the decaying Persian Empire and make themselves lords of the world, whereas now, while they continued to fight among themselves, the king of Persia could do as he pleased with them. In an inspiring address distributed to the Greeks at the Olympic games, he said: " Anyone coming from abroad and observing the present situation of Greece would regard us as great fools struggling amongfourselves about trifles, and destroying our own land, when without danger we might conquer Asia.” To all Greeks who had read Xenophon’s story of the march of his Ten Thousand, the weakness of the Persian Empire was obvious. Every motive toward unity was present.
Nevertheless, no Greek city was willing to submit to the leadership of another. Local patriotism, like the sectionalism which brought on our Civil War, prevailed, and unalterable disunion was the end of Greek political development. As a result the Greeks were now to be subjected by an outside power, which had never had any share in advancing Greek culture-
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(§ 678). Thus the fine theories of the ideal form of the state so warmly discussed at Athens were now to be met by the hard fact of irresistible power in the hands of a single ruler — the form of power which the Greek republics had in vain striven to destroy.
But in spite of this final and melancholy collapse of Greek 677- Suprem-political power, which even the wealth and splendor of the west- genius hT** ern Greek cities in.Italy and Sicily, like Syracuse, had not been able to prevent, what an incomparably glorious age of Greek collapse civilization was this which we have been sketching! The rivalries which proved so fatal to the political leadership of the Greeks had been a constant incentive spurring them all on, as each city strove to surpass its rivals in art and literature and all the finest things in civilization. Great as the age of Pericles had been, the age that followed was still greater. The tiny Athenian state, with a population not larger than that of our little state of Delaware in 1910, and having at best twenty-five or thirty thousand citizens, had furnished in this period a group of great names in all lines of human achievement, such as never in all the history of the world arose in an area and a population so limited. In a book like this we have been able to offer only a few hints of all that these men of Athens accomplished.
Their names to-day are among the most illustrious in human history, and the achievements which we link with them form the greatest chapter in the higher life of man. Furthermore,
Greek genius was to go on to many another future triumph, in spite of the loss of that political leadership which we are now to see passing into other hands.
QUESTIONS
Section 61. Was Athens now able to support great works of art as in the days of Pericles? What was the effect upon art? What lovely building was nevertheless erected on the Acropolis? What new style of architecture was coming in ? How did it differ from the ‘older Doric and Ionic styles ? Describe the Mausoleum. How did
Ancient Tim.eS
the sculpture of Praxiteles differ from that of Phidias ? What kind of figures did Scopas love to carve ? What new proce-ss of producing portable paintings came in ? What new method of painting did Apollodorus introduce ? What popular stories about the feats of the new shadow painters arose ? Have any of these paintings survived ? How do we know how they looked? What kind of small works did the lesser artists produce ?
Section 62. In what respects was the age following Pericles one of conflict ? What did an Athenian child of this time learn about the gods at home ? at school ? at public celebrations ? from great works of art? Had he had any religious instruction? What did he believe about his own conduct and the relation of the gods to it ? What did the common people believe ? What teachers did they follow ? Did they show intelligence or superstition in religious matters ?
What foreign divinities were coming in ? Tell about them. What did the educated citizen think about the beliefs of the common people? What had once heen his feeling about religious doubt? Whose comedies had mocked such doubt? From whom did such a citizen himself learn to doubt? Whose tragedies were he and his friends reading? Did this mean the suppression or the triumph of doubt?
How did one of the comedies of Aristophanes represent Socrates ? How did Socrates spend most of his time? What was his purpose in doing this? Can you sum up his teachings? Was he then an evil man? Was he irreligious? What was the general opinion about his wisdom ? about his character ? What did the Athenians finally do in order to silence Socrates? Tell about his trial and death. Did his influence cease at his death ?
What was the condition of scientific knowledge at Athens ? How did the history of Thucydides differ from that of Herodotus ? How much time had elapsed between them ? What can you say of prose and poetry in this age? Who was the leading teacher of rhetoric and prose writing at Athens ? What can you say of his own writing ? What new science was arising? What can you say of the life of Plato ? What did he teach about government ? What great question did he fail to perceive? What civilized world was growing up? Why had not the Greeks given this world of Greek culture also political unity? How did practical men like Isocrates feel about this problem ? Did the Greeks follow his advice ? What was to be the result ?
CHAPTER XIX
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Section 63. The Rise of Macedonia
On the northern frontiers in the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula Greek civilization gradually faded and disappeared, merging into the barbarism which had descended from Stone Age Europe. These backward Northerners, such as the Thracians, spoke Indo-European tongues akin to Greek, but their Greek kindred of the South could not understand them. A veneer
Note. The above headpiece shows us one of the streets where it was the custom of both the Greeks and Romans (Fig. 212, H, K) to bnry their dead. It was outside the Dipylon Gate (plan, p. 352), on the sacred way leading to Eleusis, .both sides of which were lined for some distance with marble tombstones, of which Fig. 199 is an example. The Roman Sulla (§ 945), in his Eastern war, while besieging Athens, piled up earth as a causeway leading to the top of the wall of Athens (see plan, p. 352) at this point. The part of the cemetery which he covered with earth was thus preserved, to be dug out in modem times — the only surviving portion of such an ancient Greek street of tombs. ■ In this cemetery the Athenians of Socrates’ day were buried. The monument at the left shows a brave Athenian youth on horseback, charging the fallen enemy. He was slain in the Corinthian War (§ 633) and buried here a few years after the death of Socrates (§ 664).
425
678. The uncultivated states of the Balkan Peninsula and the North
426
Ancient Times
679. Philip of Macedon and his policy of expansion
680. Philip creates Macedonian infantry
681. Macedonian horsemen and Philip’s combination of cavalry and infantry in unified operations
of Greek civilization began here and there to mask somewhat the rough and uncultivated life of the peasant population of Macedonia. The Macedonian kings began to cultivate Greek literature and art. The mother of Philip of Macedon was grateful that she had been able to leam to write in her old age.
Philip himself had enjoyed a Greek education, and when he gained the power over Macedonia, in 360 B.C., he understood perfectly the situation of the disunited Greek world. He planned to make himself its master, and he began his task with the ability both of a skilled statesman and an able soldier. With clear recognition of the necessary means, he first created the indispensable military power. As a hostage at Thebes he had learned to lead an army under the eye of no less a master than Epaminondas himself, the conqueror of the Spartans. But Philip surpassed his teacher.
From the peasant population of his kingdom Philip drew off a number large enough to form a permanent or standing army of professional soldiers who never expected again to return to the flocks and fields. These men he armed as heavy infantry of the phalanx, as he had seen it in Greece- only he made the phalanx deeper and more massive and gave his men longer spears. They soon became famous as the " Macedonian phalanx.”
Heretofore horsemen had played but a small part in war in Europe. Horses were plentiful in Philip’s kingdom, and the nobles forming a warrior class had always been accustomed to fight on horseback in a loose way, each for himself. Philip now drilled these riders to move about and to attack in a single mass. The charge of such a mass of horsemen was so terrible that it might of itself decide a battle. Philip then further improved the art of war by a final step, the most important of all. He so combined his heavy phalanx in the center, with the disciplined masses of horsemen on each wing, that the whole combined force, infantry and cavalry, moved and operated as one great unit, an irresistible machine in which every part worked together with all the others.
Alexander the Great 427
This new chapter in the art of warfare was possible only because a single mind was in unhampered control of the situation. The Greeks were now to witness the practical effectiveness of one-man control as exercised by a skillful leader for many years. With statesmanlike insight Philip first began his conquests in the region where he might expect the least resistance. He steadily extended the territory of his kingdom eastward and northward until it reached the Danube and the Hellespont.
His progress on the north of the j'Egean soon brought him into conflict with the .interests of the Greek states, which owned cities in this northern region.
Philip’s conquests were viewed with mixed feelings at Athens, toward which the Macedonian king himself felt very friendly, for he had the greatest admiration for the Greeks. Two parties therefore arose at Athens. One of them was quite willing to accept Philip’s proffered friendship, and recognized in him the uniter and savior of the Greek world. The leader of this party was Isocrates (§ 675), now an aged man. The other party, on the contrary, denounced Philip as a barbarous tyrant who was endeavoring to enslave the free Greek cities.
The leader of this anti-Macedonian party was the great orator Demosthenes (Fig. 201). In one passionate appeal after another he addressed the Athenian people, as he strove to arouse them to the growing danger threatening the Greek states with every added triumph of Philip’s powerful army. By the whirlwind of his marvelous eloquence he carried the Athenian Assembly with
682. Practical
advantages
of one-man
control;
Philip’s
Northern
conquests
683. Two parties at Athens: Isocrates
684. Demosthenes
428
Ancient Times
685, Philip gains the leadership of the Greeks (338 B.C.)
686. The
successors of Philip of Macedon
687. Education and character of Alexander the Great
him. His " Philippics,” as his denunciations of King Philip are called, are among the greatest specimens of Greek eloquence, and have become traditional among us as noble examples of oratorical power inspired by high and patriotic motives. But they were very immoderate in their abuse and denunciation of his opponents in Athens, nor can it be said that they display a statesmanlike understanding of the hopelessly disunited condition of the ever-warring Greek states.
The outcome of the struggle which unavoidably came on between Philip and the Greek states showed that the views of Isocrates, while less ideally attractive, were far more sagacious and statesmanlike than those of Demosthenes. After a long series of hostilities Philip defeated the Greek forces in a final battle at Chseronea (338 B.C.), and firmly established his position as head of a league of all the Greek states except Sparta, which still held out against him. He had begun operations in Asia Minor for the freedom of the Greek cities there,-when two years after the battle of Chasronea he was stabbed by conspirators during the revelries at the wedding of his daughter (336 B.C.).
The power passed into the hands of his son Alexander, a youth of only twenty years. Fortunately Philip also left behind him in the Macedonians of his court a group of remarkable men, of imperial abilities. They were devoted to the royal house, and Alexander’s early successes' were in no small measure due to them. But their very devotion and ability, as we shall see, later brought the young king into a personal conflict which contained all the elements of a tremendous tragedy (§ 709).
When Alexander was thirteen years of age his father had summoned to the Macedonian court the great philosopher Aristotle (§ 760), a former pupil of Plato, to be the teacher of the young prince. Under his instruction the lad learned to know and love the masterpieces of Greek literature, especially the Homeric songs. The deeds of the ancient heroes touched
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429
and kindled his youthful imagination and lent a heroic tinge to his whole character. As he grew older and his mind ripened, his whole personality was imbued with the splendor of Greek genius and Hellenic culture.
Section 64. Campaigns of Alexander the Great
The Greek states were still unwilling to submit to Macedonian leadership, and they fancied they could overthrow so youthful a ruler as Alexander. They were soon to learn how old a head there was on his young shoulders. When Thebes revolted against Macedonia for the second time'after Philip’s death, Alexander, knowing that he must take up the struggle with Persia, realized that it would not be safe for him to march into Asia without giving the Greek states a lesson which they would not soon forget. He therefore captured and completely destroyed the ancient city of Thebes, sparing only the house of the great poet Pindar. All Greece was thus taught to fear and respect his power, but learned at the same time to recognize his reverence for Greek genius. Feeling him to be their natural leader, therefore, the Greek states, with the exception of Sparta, formed a league and elected Alexander as its leader and general. As a result they all sent troops to increase his army.
The Asiatic campaign which Alexander now planned was to vindicate his position as the champion of Hellas against Asia. He thought to lead the united Greeks against the Persian lord of Asia, as the Hellenes had once made common cause against Asiatic Troy (§ 411). Leading his army of Macedonians and allied Greeks into Asia Minor, he therefore stopped at Troy and camped'upon the plain (Fig. 151, and map, p. 436) where the Greek heroes of the Homeric songs had once fought. Here he worshiped in the temple of Athena, and prayed for the success of his cause against Persia. He thus contrived to throw around himself the heroic atmosphere of the Trojan War, till all Hellas beheld the dauntless figure of the Macedonian
688. Alexander subjugates the Greek states and becomes head of a Greek league
689. Alexander, the champion of Hellas _ against Asia
430
Ancient limes
690. Battle of
the Granicus (334 B.C.) and conquest of Asia Minor
6gr. Alexander’s march through Asia Minor
youth, as it were, against the background of that glorious age which in their belief had so long ago united Greek arms against Asia (§ 411).
Meantime the Great King had hired thousands of Greek heavy-armed infantry, and they were how to do battle against their own Greek countiymen. At the river Granicus, in his first critical battle, Alexander had no difficulty in scattering the forces of the western Persian satraps. Following the Macedonian custom, the young king, then but twenty-two years of age, led his troops into the thick of the fray and exposed his royal person without hesitation. But for the timely support of Clitus, the brother of his childhood nurse, who bravely pushed in before him at a critical moment, the impetuous young king would have lost his life in the action on the Granicus. Marching southward, he took the Greek cities one by one and_freed_ all westem_Asia Minor forever from the Persian yoke.
Meantime a huge Persian fleet was master of the Mediterranean. It was at this juncture that the young Macedonian, little more than a boy in years, began to display his mastery of a military situation which demanded the completest understanding of the art of war. He had left a strong force at home, and he believed that the lesson of his destruction of Thebes would prevent the Persian fleet in the ALgean from arousing Hellas to rebellion against him during his absence. He therefore pushed boldly eastward. Following the route of the Ten Thousand, Alexander led his army safely through the difficult pass, called the Cilician Gates (see map, p. 436), and rounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. Here, as he looked out upon the Fertile Crescent, there was spread out before him the vast Asiatic world of forty million souls, where the family of the Great King had been supreme for two hundred years. In this great arena he was to be the champion for the next ten years (333-323 B.C.).
At this important point, by the Gulf of Issus, Alexander met the main army of Persia, under the personal command of the
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Great King, Darius III, the last of the Persian line. The tactics of his father Philip and Epaminondas, always to be the attacking party, were now adopted by Alexander, in spite of the enemy’s strong defensive position behind a stream. His attack was on the old plan of the oblique battle line (§ 638), with the cavalry forming the right wing nearest the enemy. Heading this cavalry charge himself, Alexander led his Macedonian horsemen across the stream in such a fierce assault (Fig. 202) that the opposing Persian wing gave way. Along the center and the other wing, the battle was hotly fought and indecisive. But as Alexander’s victorious horsemen of the right wing turned and attacked the exposed Persian center in the flank, the Macedonians swept the Asiatics from the field, and the disorderly retreat of Darius never stopped until it had crossed the Euphrates. The Great King then sent a letter to Alexander desiring terms of peace and offering to accept the Euphrates as a boundary between them, all Asia west of that river to be handed over to the Macedonians.
It was a dramatic picture, the figure of the young king, standing with this letter in his hand. As he pondered it he was surrounded by a group of the ablest Macedonian youth, who had grown up around him as his closest friends; but likewise by old and trusted counselors upon whom his father before him had leaned. The hazards of battle and of march, and the daily associations of camp and bivouac, had wrought the closest bonds of love and friendship and intimate influence between these loyal Macedonians arid their ardent young king.
As he considered the letter of Darius, therefore, his father’s old general ParmeniO^ who had commanded the Macedonian left wing in the battle just won, proffered him serious counsel. We can almost see the old man leaning familiarly over the shoulder of this imperious boy of twenty-three.and pointing out acrqss the Mediterranean, as he bade Alexander remember the Persian fleet operating there in his rear and likely to stir up revolt against him in Greece. He said too that with Darius
692. Defeat of Darius I f I at the battle of Issus (333 B.C.)
693. The situation after Issus, and Alexander’s friends
694. The
advice of Parmenio to accept Persian terms after Issus
Fig. 2oz. Alexander the Great charging the Bodyguard and Officers of the Persian
King at the Battle of Issus *
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433
behind the Euphrates, as proposed in the letter, Persia would be at a safe distance from Europe and the Greek world. The campaign against the Great King, he urged, had secured all that could reasonably be expected. Undoubtedly he added that Philip himself, the young king’s father, had at the utmost no further plans against Persia than those already successfully carried out. There was nothing to do, said Parmenio^but to accept the terms offered by the Great King.
In this critical decision lay the parting of the ways. Before the kindling eyes of the young Alexander there rose a vision of world empire -dominated by Greek civilization — a vision to which the duller eyes about him were entirely closed. He waved aside his father’s old counselors and decided to advance to the conquest of the whole Persian Empire. In this far-reaching decision he disclosed at once the powerful personality which represented a new age. Thus arose the conflict which never ends — the conflict between the new age and the old,
* The artist who designed this great work has selected the supreme moment when the Persians (at the right) are endeavoring to rescue their king from the onset of the Macedonians (at the left). Alexander, the bareheaded figure on horseback at the left, charges furiously against the Persian king (Darius III), who stands in his chariot (at the right). The Macedonian attack is so impetuous that the Persian king’s life is endangered. A Persian noble dismounts and offers his riderless horse, that the king may quickly mount and escape. Devoted Persian nobles heroically ride in between their king and the Macedonian onset, to give Darius an opportunity to mount. But Alexander’s spear has passed entirely through the body of one of these Persian nobles, who has thus given his life for his king. Darius throws out his hand in grief and horror at the awful death of his noble friend. The driver of the royal chariot (behind the king) lashes his three horses, endeavoring to carry Darins from the field in flight (§ 692). This magnificent battle scene is put together from bits of colored glass (mosaic) forming a floor pavement, discovered, in 1831 at the Roman town of Pompeii (Fig. 255). It has been injured in places, especially at the left, where parts of the figures of Alexander and his horse have disappeared. It was originally laid at Alexandria and suffered this damage in being moved to Italy. It is a copy of an older Hellenistic work, a painting done at Alexandria {§ 738)* It is one of the greatest scenes of heroism in battle ever painted, and illustrates the splendor of Hellenistic art.
695. The decision after Issus, and Alexander’s friction with his friends
434
A?icient Times
696. Conquest of Phoenicia and Egypt; dispersion of the Persian fleet
697. Alexander’s march to Persia: battle of Arbela (331 B.C.)
just as we have seen it at Athens (§ 653). Never has it been more dramatically staged than as we find it here in the daily growing friction between Alexander and that group of devoted, if less gifted, Macedonians who were now drawn by him into the labors of Heracles — the'conquest of the world.
The danger from the Persian fleet was now carefully and deliberately met by a march southward along the eastern end of the Mediterranean. All the Phoenician seaports on the way were captured. Here Alexander’s whole campaign would have collapsed but for the siege machinery, the use of- which his father had learned from the western Greeks. Against the walls of Tyre, Alexander employed machines which had been devised in the Orient (headpiece, p. 140), and which he was now bring-, ing back thither with Greek improvements. Feeble Egypt, so long a Persian province, then fell an eksy prey to the Macedonian arms. The Persian fleet, thus deprived of all its home harbors and cut off from its home government, soon scattered and disappeared. I
Having thus cut off the enemy in his rear,[Alexander returned from Egypt to Asia, and, marching along the Fertile Crescent, he crossed the Tigris close by the mounds which had long covered the ruins of Nineveh (Fig. 203). Here, near Arbela, the Great King had gathered his forces for a last stand. The Persians had not studied the progress in the art of war made by the Greeks and the Macedonians (§ 681), and they were as hopelessly behind the times as China was in her war with Japan. They had prepared one new device, a body of chariots with scythes fastened to the axles and projecting on each side. But the device failed to save the Persian army. Although greatly outnumbered, the Macedonians crushed the Asiatic army and forced the Great King into ignominious flight. In a few days Alexander was established in the winter palace of Persia in Babylon (§ 274).
As Darius fled into the eastern mountains he was stabbed by his own treacherous attendants (330 B.C.). Alexander rode
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435
Fig. 203. View across the Ruins of Nineveh to the Plain where Alexander the Great overthrew the Last Army of the Persian Empire
We are supposed to be standing on the roof of a house in the modern town of Mosul (see plan, p. 154) and looking eastward across the Tigris to the ruins of Nineveh, with mound of Kuyunjik, containing the palates of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, directly before us. Past this mound (compare plan, p. 154) runs the road from Mosul to Arbela, about 30 miles east. These ruins must have been much like this when Alexander marched past them, less than three hundred years after the city was destroyed. Somewhere in the plain toward Arbela, Alexander won his last battle with the Persians {§ 697). Although no systematic clearance of all the chief buildings, such as the French and Germans have accomplished at Sargonburg (Khorsabad), Assur, and Babylon, has ever been done here, a great many important monuments have been dug out, like the library of Assurbanipal (§ 226)
up with a few of his officers in time to look upon the body of the last of the Persian emperors, the lord of Asia, whose vast realm had now passed into his hands. He punished the murderers and sent the body with all respect to the fallen ruler’s
698. Death of Darius III (33° b.c.); Alexander lord of the ancient East
699* Alexander captures the Persian royal cities
436 Ancient Times
Fig. 204. A Corner of the Court of the Palace of Darius I at Susa, captured by Alexander the Great (as
RESTORED BY PlLLET)
The remarkable French excavations at Susa discovered the wonderful relief of Naram-Sin (Fig. 89), and the shaft bearing the code of Hammnrapi (Fig. 93). At the same time the French uncovered the ruins of the palace built by Darius I in the days of Marathon and finished later under Xerxes at the time of Salamis, a hundred and fifty years before Alexander captured Susa. The French architect’s restoration shows the Persian emperor and his attendants coming forth into a court of the palace. We see the gorgeous glazed-brick decorations along the base of the wall, showing lines of Persian soldiers, as in Fig. 113. It must have looked just as we see it here, when Alexander entered it for the first time, to take possession of the dead Persian emperor’s magnificent residence
mother and sister, to whom he had extended protection and hospitality. Thus at last both the valley of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent, the homes of the earliest two civilizations, whose long and productive careers we have already sketched, were now in the hands of a European power and under the control of a newer and higher civilization. Less than five years had passed since the young Macedonian had entered Asia.
Although the Macedonians had nothing more to fear from the Persian arms, there still remained much for Alexander to do in order to establish his empire in Asia. On he marched through the original little kingdom of the Persian kings, whence Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, had
*Dairfaseus
Tyrej
SarnarM
'Jerusalem
J'faucratisl
ALEXANDRIA
Statute Miles
1. Royal War Barber 4. Museum end Library'
2. Theater 5. Mausoleum
3. Inner Royal Caetlo 0. Gymnasium r'?®*
Pharos L.FL -^g-^to0 V
' EMPIRE ALEXANDER T1
Great Harbor
Empire of Ale
States sufcjcct
States indepen
Marches of Al<
Voyage of Ne,
Scale of Statu 100 200 ?
^ Harbor ^ of/Eunosios mi
Alexander the Great
437
victoriously issued over two hundred years before (see § 258).
He stopped at Susa (Fig. 204) and then passed on to visit the tomb of Cyrus (Fig. 115), near Persepolis. Here he gave a dramatic evidence of his supremacy in Asia by setting fire to the Persian palace (Fig. 116) with his own hand, as the Persians had once done to Miletus and to the temples on the Athenian Acropolis. It was but a symbolical act, and Alexander ordered the flames extinguished before serious damage was
After touching Ecbatana in the north, and leaving behind 700. Aiex-the trusted Parmenio in charge of the enormous treasure of paigns in gold and silver, accumulated for generations by the Persian £aSf^30_ kings, Alexander again moved eastward. In the course of the ' next five years, while the Greek world looked on in amazement, the young Macedonian seemed to disappear in the mists on the far-off fringes of the known world. He marched his army in one vast loop after another through the heart of the Iranian plateau (see map, p. 436), northward across the Oxus and the Jaxartes rivers, southward across the Indus and the frontiers -of India, into the valley of the Ganges, where at last the murmurs of his intrepid army forced him to turn back.
He descended the Indus, and even sailed the waters of the Indian Ocean. Then he began his westward march again along the shores of the Indian Ocean, accompanied by a fleet which he had built on the Indus. The return march through desert wastes cost many lives as the thirsty and ill-provisioned troops dropped by the way. Over seven years after he had left the great city of Babylon, Alexander entered it again. He had been less than twelve years in Asia, and he had carried Greek civilization into the very heart of the continent. At important points along his line of march he had founded Greek cities bearing his name and had set up kingdoms which were to be centers of Greek influence on the frontiers of India. From such centers Greek art entered India, to become the source of the art which still survives there; and the Greek works of art, especially coins, from Alexander’s communities in these remote
324
701. Alexander returns to Babylon
(323 b-c.);
some results of his Eastern campaigns
43§
Ancient Times
702. Alexander’s scientific enterprises
703. His
endeavor to merge European and Asiatic civilization
regions of the East penetrated even to China, to contribute to the later art of China and Japan. Never before had East and West so interpenetrated as in these amazing marches and campaigns of Alexander.
Section 65. International Policy of Alexander: its Personal Consequences
During all these unparalleled achievements the mind of this young Hercules never ceased to busy itself with a thousand problems on every side. He dispatched an exploring expedition up the Nile to ascertain the causes of the annual overflow of the river, and another to the shores of the Caspian Sea to build a fleet and circumnavigate that sea, the northern end of which was still unknown. He brought a number of scientific men with him from Greece,, and with their aid he sent hundreds of natural-history specimens home to Greece to his old teacher Aristotle, then teaching in Athens.
Meantime he applied himself with diligence to the organization and administration of his vast conquests. Such problems must have kept him wearily bending over many a huge pile of state papers, or dictating his great plans to his secretaries and officers. He believed implicitly in the power and superiority of Greek culture. He was determined to Hellenize the world and to merge Asia with Europe by transplanting colonies of Greeks and Macedonians. In his army, Macedonians, Greeks, and Asiatics stood side by side. He also felt that he could not rule the world as a Macedonian, but must make concessions to the Persian world (Plate VI, p. 468). He married Roxana, an Asiatic princess, and at a gorgeous wedding festival he obliged his officers and friends also to marry the daughters of Asiatic nobles. Thousands of Macedonians in the army followed the example of their king and took Asiatic wives. He appointed Persians to high offices and set them over provinces as satraps. He even adopted Persian raiment in part.
Alexander the Great
439
Amid all this he carefully worked out a plan of campaign for the conquest of the western Mediterranean. It included instructions for the building of a fleet of a thousand battleships with which to subdue Italy, Sicily, and Carthage It also planned the construction of a vast roadway along the northern coast of Africa, to be built at an appalling expense and to furnish a highway for his army from Egypt to Carthage and the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). It is here that Alexander’s statesmanship may be criticized. All this should have been done immediately after the destruction of Persia. But Alexander seems not to have perceived that he could convert the Mediterranean shores into a unified empire under a single ruler much more effectively than he could unite and control the scattered and far-reaching lands of the remote Orient.
What was to be his own position in this colossal world-state of which he dreamed ? In such a matter Alexander’s imagination was without bounds. He had dreamed of having Mt. Athos carved into a vast statue of himself, with a town of ten thousand people in his right hand! And now he planned divinity for himself. The will of a god, in so far as a Greek might believe in him at all, was still a thing to which he bowed without question and with no feeling that he was being subjected to tyranny. Alexander found in this attitude of the Greek mind the solution of the question of his own position. Many a great Greek had come to be recognized as a god, and there was in Greek belief no sharp line dividing gods from men. He would have himself lifted to the realm of the gods, where he might impose his will upon the Greek cities without offense. This solution was the more easy because it had for ages been customary to regard the king as divine in Egypt, where he was a son of the Sun-god, and the idea was a common one in the Orient.
In Egypt therefore, seven years before, he had deliberately taken the time, while a still unconquered Persian army was awaiting him in Asia, to march with a small following far out into the Sahara Desert to the oasis shrine of Amon (§ 657 and
704. Alexander makes plans for the conquest of the western Mediterranean
705. Deifi- ° cation of Alexander and its logical necessity
706. Alexander’s visit to Siwa — the desert shrine of Amon
440
Ancient Times
707. Alexander demands his deification by the Greek cities of the dissolved league
Fig. 205). Here in the vast solitude Alexander entered the holy place alone. No one knew what took place there; but when he issued again he was greeted by the high priest of the temple as the son of Zeus-Amon. Alexander took good care that all Greece should hear of this remarkable occurrence, but
Fig, 205. Oasis of Sivva in the. Sahara
In this oasis was the famous temple of the Egyptian god Amon (or Ammon) (§ 657). Alexander marched hither from the coast, a distance of some 200 miles, and thence back to the Nile at Memphis, some 350 miles (see map, p. 436)- A modern caravan requires twenty-one days to go from the Nile to this oasis. Such an oasis is a deep depression in the desert plateau; the level of the plateau is seen at the tops of the cliffs on the right. Its fertility is due to many springs and flowing wells
the Hellenes had to wait some years before they learned what it all meant.
Four years later the young king found that this divinity which he claimed lacked outward and visible manifestations. There must go with it some outward observances which would vividly suggest his character as a god to the minds of the world which he ruled. He adopted oriental usages, among which was the requirement that all who approached him on official occasions should bow down to the earth and kiss his feet. He also
Alexander the Great
441
sent formal notification to all the Greek cities that the league of' which he had been head was dissolved, that he was henceforth to be officially numbered among the gods of each city, and that as such he was to receive the State offerings which each city presented.
Thus were introduced into Europe absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. Indeed, through Alexander there was transferred to Europe much of the spirit of that Orient which had been repulsed at Marathon and Salamis. But these measures of Alexander were not the efforts of a weak mind to gratify a vanity so drunk with power that it could be satisfied only with superhuman honors. They were carefully devised political measures dictated by State policy and systematically developed step by step for years.
This superhuman station of the world-king Alexander was gained at tragic cost to Alexander the Macedonian youth and to the group of friends and followers about him (§ 693). Beneath the Persian robes of the State-god Alexander beat the warm heart of a young Macedonian. He had lifted himself to an exalted and lonely eminence whither those devoted friends who had followed him to the ends of the earth could follow him no longer. Neither could they comprehend the necessity for measures which thus strained or snapped entirely those bonds .of friendship which linked together comrades in arms. And then there were the Persian intruders treated like the equals of his personal friends (Plate VI, p. 468), or even placed over them ! The tragic consequences of such a situation were inevitable.
Early in those tremendous marches eastward, after Darius’s death, Philotas, son of Parmenio, had learned of a conspiracy against Alexander’s life, but his bitterness and estrangement were such that he failed to report his guilty knowledge to the king. The conspirators were all given a fair and legal trial, and Alexander himself suffered the bitterness of seeing a whole group of his former friends and companions, including Philotas,
708. Absolute monarchy and divine right of kings
709. Personal consequences suffered by Alexander as a result of his deification and international policy
710. Execution of Philotas, Parmenio, and their friends
442
Ancient Times
71X. Alexander slays his friend Clitus
condemned and executed in the presence of the army. The trusted Parmenio, father of Philotas, still guarding the Persian treasure at Ecbatana, was also implicated, and a messenger was sent back with orders for the old general’s immediate execution. This was but the beginning of the ordeal through which
Fig. 206. Temple beside the Royal Palace at Babylon where Alexander presented Daily Offerings
The German excavations at Babylon (Fig. ill) have found the ruins of a temple at the door of the great palace (plan, p. 165), and the director of the work, Professor Koldewey, has drawn the above restoration. The ancient accounts tell us that Alexander was wont to sacrifice every day at this temple on an altar, seen here before the door. He was restoring the ruined buildings of Babylon, especiallyvthe fallen temple tower, when he died. Koldewey found vast masses of earth which Alexander moved
the man Alexander was to pass, in order that the world-king Alexander might mount the throne of a god.
Clitus also, who had saved his life at the Granicus, was filled with grief and indignation at Alexander’s political course. At a royal feast, where these matters came up in conversation, Clitus was guilty of unguarded criticisms of his lord and then, entirely losing his self-mastery, he finally heaped such unbridled
Alexander the Great
443
reproaches upon the king that Alexander, rising in uncontrollable rage, seized a spear from a guard and thrust it through the bosom of the man to whom he owed his life. As we see the young king thereupon sitting for three days in his tent, speechless with grief and remorse, refusing all food, and prevented only by his officers from taking his own life, we gather some slight impression of the terrible personal cost of Alexander’s state policy.
Similarly the demand that all should prostrate themselves and kiss his feet on entering his presence cost him the friendship of the historian Callisthenes. For, not long afterward, this friend was likewise found criminally guilty toward the king in connection with a conspiracy of the noble Macedonian pages who served Alexander, and he was put to death. He was a nephew of the king’s old teacher, Aristotle, and thus the friendship between master and royal pupil was transformed into bitter enmity.
On his return to Babylon (Fig. 206), Alexander was overcome with grief at the loss of his dearest friend Hephaestion, who had just died. He arranged for his dead friend one of the most magnificent funerals ever celebrated. Then, as he was preparing for a campaign to subjugate the Arabian peninsula and leave him free to carry out his great plans for the conquest of the western Mediterranean, Alexander himself fell sick, probably as the result of a drunken debauch, and after a few days he died (323 B.C.). He was thirty-three years of age and had reigned thirteen years.
QUESTIONS
Section 63. What was the policy of Philip of Macedon? What new developments in the art of warfare did he introduce ? What did the Athenians think about his plans ? Who were the two party leaders ? What can you say of Demosthenes ? What was the outcome of Philip’s struggle with the Greeks? Who succeeded Philip? How was Philip’s successor educated ?
712, Execution of Callisthenes
713, Death of Alexander
(323 B.C.)
444
Ancient i imes
Section 64. Discuss Alexander’s relations with the Greeks. What was the outcome of their rebellion against him ? As whose champion did he contrive to make himself appear? Describe his conquest of Asia Minor. Where and when did he meet the main Persian army? What was the result? What proposal did the Persian king make? What advice did Alexander receive? What did he do? What conflict arose? How did he dispose of the Phoenician fleet?
Where did Alexander go after conquering Egypt? Describe his next encounter with the Persians. What happened to Darius 111 ? What had thus become of Egypt and Western Asia ? To what great cities of the Persian Empire did Alexander then go ? What happened there ? Describe the remote marches which he now undertook. Can you trace them on the map? What was the result of these marches?
Section 65. What scientific enterprises did Alexander undertake? Discuss his plans for merging Greek and Asiatic civilization. What further great plans of conquest did he have ? What was to be his own position in the new empire? How had he prepared for this position while he was in Egypt? How did he require his new position to be recognized? What effect had all this upon his friends? What happened to Parmenio ? to Clitus ? to Callisthenes ? Where, when, and how did Alexander die?
Note. The sketch below shows us the lion erected by the Thebans on the battlefield of Chscronea in memory of their fallen citizens. Excavation has disclosed bodies and remains of the great funeral fire.
From a painting by C. Scott White
Plate V. The Temples and Palms of Phiue at the Head of the First Cataract of the Nile
Much of the architecture on the island of Philse was the work of the Ptolemies, and well illustrates the prosperity of Egypt under its Macedonian kings (§ 716). Until a few years ago the palm-shaded temples made the island the most beautiful spot in Egypt and one of the most beautiful in the world. Since the erection of a colossal irrigation dam below the island, the buildings have been covered with water a large part of each year
PART IV. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
CHAPTER XX
THE HEIRS OF ALEXANDER
Section 66. The Heirs of Alexander’s Empire
Alexander has been well termed " the Great.” Few men of genius, and certainly none in so brief a career, have left so indelible a mark upon the course of human affairs. By his remarkable conquests, he gained for the Greeks that political supremacy, which their civilization, as we have seen, had long before attained.
Note. The headpiece above shows a view of modem Antioch- in Syria. The great decisive battle among the generals of Alexander the Great at Ipsus in Phrygia in central Asia Minor (30j B.C.) made Seleucus lord of Asia (§718). He then founded this city of Antioch named after his father, Antiochus (§ 718). It finally became a great commercial center (§ 718), a magnificent city of several hundred thousand inhabitants. Many appalling earthquakes have destroyed the ancient city, and the modem town shown above has less than thirty thousand inhabitants.
7T4. Consequences of Alexander’s death
445
446
Ancient limes
715. The successors of Alexander; their three realms in Europe, Asia, and Africa
716. The
Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies
His death in the midst of his colossal designs was a fearful calamity, for it made impossible forever the unification of Hellas and of the world by the power of that gifted race which was now civilizing the world. Of his line there remained in Macedonia a demented half brother and, erelong, Alexander II, the son of Roxana, born in Asia after Alexander the Great’s death. Conflicts among the leaders at home swept away all these members of Alexander’s family, even including his mother.
His generals in Babylonia found the plans for his great Western campaign lying among his papers, but no man possessed the genius to carry them out. These able Macedonian commanders were soon involved among themselves in a long and tremendous struggle, which slumbered only to break out anew. The ablest of them was Alexander’s great general, Antigonus, who determined to gain control of all the great Macedonian’s vast empire. Then followed a generation of exhausting wars by land and sea, involving the greatest battles thus far fought by European armies. Antigonus was killed, and Alexander’s empire fell into three main parts, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, with one of his generals or one of their successors at the head of each. In Europe, Macedonia was in the hands of Antigonus, grandson of Alexander’s great commander of the same name. He endeavored to maintain control of Greece; in Asia most of the territory of the former Persian Empire was under the rule of Alexander’s general, Seleucus; while in Africa, Egypt was held by Ptolemy, one of the cleverest of Alexander’s Macedonian leaders (see map I, p. 448).
In Egypt, Ptolemy gradually made himself king, and became the founder of a dynasty or family of successive kings, whom we call the Ptolemies. Ptolemy at once saw that he would be constantly obliged to draw Greek mercenary troops from Greece. With statesmanlike judgment he therefore built up a fleet which gave him the mastery of the Mediterranean. He took up his residence at the great harbor city of Alexandria, the city which Alexander had founded in the western Nile Delta. As a result
The Heirs of Alexander 1 447
it became the greatest commercial port on the Mediterranean.
Indeed, for nearly a century (roughly the third century B.C.) the eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Syria and from the ^Egean to the Nile Delta was an Egyptian sea. As a barrier against their Asiatic rivals, the Ptolemies also took possession of Palestine and southern Syria. Thus arose an Egyptian empire in the eastern Mediterranean like that which we found nearly a thousand years earlier in our voyage up the Nile as we visited the great buildings of Thebes. Following the example of the Pharaohs (Fig. 62), the Ptolemies reached out also into the Red Sea with their fleets, and from the Indian Ocean to the Hellespont, from Sicily to Syria, the Egyptian fleets dotted the seas, bringing great wealth into the treasury of the ruler (map I, p. 448).
Although these new Hellenistic rulers of Egypt were Euro- 717. The peans, they did not set up a Greek or European form of state, entai mon-" They regarded themselves as the successors of the ancient p^e„fe*e Pharaohs, and like them they ruled over the kingdom of the Nile in absolute and unlimited power. To three Greek cities on the Nile, one of which was Alexandria, they granted the right to manage their own local affairs, like a city of Greece.
Otherwise there were no voting citizens among the people of Egypt, and just as in ancient. oriental days they had nothing whatever to say about the government or the acts of the ruler.
The chief purpose of the ruler’s government was to secure from the country as large receipts for his treasury as possible, in order that he might meet the expenses of his great war fleet and his army of Greek mercenaries. For thousands of years Egypt had been operating a great organization of local officials, trained to carry on the business of assessing and collecting taxes (Fig. 40). The Greek states possessed no such organization, but the Ptolemies found it too useful to be interfered with.
The tiniest group of mud huts along the river was ruled and controlled by such officials. Thus the Macedonians ruling on the Nile were continuing an ancient oriental absolute monarchy.
The example of this ancient form of state, thus preserved, was
448
Ancient Times
•718. The
Asiatic empire of the Seleucids
719. The
government of the Seleucids: the free cities
720. The government of the Seleucids: the kingship
of far-reaching influence throughout the Mediterranean world, and finally displaced the democracies of the Greeks and Romans.
Although they were not as powerful as the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, as we call Seleucus and his descendants, were the chief heirs of Alexander, for they held the larger part of his empire, extending from the AEgean to the frontiers of India. Its boundaries were not fixed, and its enormous extent made it very difficult to govern and maintain. The fleet of the Ptolemies hampered the commercial development and prosperity of the Seleucids, who therefore found it difficult to reach Greece for trade, troops, or colonists. They gave special attention to the region around the northeast comer of the Mediterranean reaching to the Euphrates, and here the Seleucids endeavored to develop another Macedonia. Their empire is often called Syria, after this region. Here on the lower Orontes, Seleucus founded the great city which he called Antioch (after his father, Antiochus). It finally enjoyed great prosperity and became the commercial rival of Alexandria and the greatest seat of commerce in the northern Mediterranean (headpiece, p. 4.45).
In government the Seleucids adopted a very different plan from that of the Ptolemies. Seleucus was in hearty sympathy with Alexander’s plan of transplanting Greeks to Asia and thus of mingling Greeks and Asiatics. He and his son Antiochus I founded scores of new Greek cities through Asia Minor, Syria, down the Two Rivers, in Persia, and far over on the borders of India. These cities were given self-government on the old Greek plan; that is, each city formed a little republic, with its local affairs controlled by its own citizens. The great Seleucid Empire was thickly dotted with these little free communities.
To be sure they were under the king, and each such free city paid him tribute or taxes. The form which the royal authority took was the one, so ancient in the Orient, which Alexander had already adopted. The ruler was regarded as a god to whom each community owed divine reverence and hence obedience. This homage they paid without offense to
Longitude
'Groonwlch 00° 70"
Map I \
The Three Empires of Alexander’s Successors in the Third Century B.C.
Scale of Miles 0 100 ROO 500 —■
Ltana
—i%a:
t^ama!sCUS'tf
^N^rusalem
] Ptolemaic Empire ] Seleucid Empire |Macedonian Empire J Unsubmissive Greeks and others__
W° Longitude 30'
609A Urewuich 00“ 70“
I \ Map TI
The Three Empires ^of Alexander’s Successors Early in the Second Century B.C.
. Scale of Miles
M 0 100 300 600
r-O
*. VLAfTI
fltOPATi
PARTH1A';
r«Tc ^Damascus *>; [ Jerusalem \<
,pcrsepolis_
J^R s r A
3 Ptolemaic Empire \
] Seleucid Empire ___'
3 Macedonian Empire 7 \
H Pergamum /
DUnsubmissive or Independent Grceks,-and others _. ---1 oc
Sequence Map showing the Three Empires of Alexander’s Successors from the Third Century b.c. to their Decline at the Coming of the Romans after 200 b.c.
The Heirs of Alexander
449
their feelings as free citizens. Greek life, with all the noble and beautiful things we have learned it possessed, took root throughout Western Asia and was carried far into the heart of the great continent (see map I, p. 448).
Compared with her two great rivals in Egypt and Asia, Macedonia in Europe seemed small indeed. The tradition of independence still cherished by the Greek states made the Macedonian leadership of the Balkan-Greek peninsula a difficult undertaking. Fighting for their liberty after Alexander’s death, they had proved too weak to maintain themselves against the Macedonian army; they were forced to submit, and the dauntless Demosthenes •(§ 684), whose surrender along with other democratic leaders was demanded by the Macedonians, took his own life (see map I, p. 448).
While the second Antigonus, grandson of Alexander’s general, was struggling to establish himself as lord of Macedonia and the Greeks, he was suddenly confronted by a new danger from the far North and West. From France eastward to the lower Danube, Europe was now occupied by a vast group of Indo-European barbarians whom we call Celts, or Gauls. They had penetrated into Italy after 400 B.C. (§ 813), and a centuiy later they were pushing far down into the Balkan Peninsula. By 280 B.C. they broke through the northern mountains, and having devastated Macedonia, they even invaded Greece and reached the sacred oracle of the Greeks at Delphi. The barbarian torrent overflowed also into Asia Minor, where a body of the invaders settled and gave their name to a region afterwards called Galatia. Antigonus II completely defeated the barbarians in Thrace and drove them out of Macedonia, of which he then became king (277 B.C.). This overwhelming flood of northern barbarians deeply impressed the Greeks, and left its mark even on the art of the age, as we shall see (.§ 736).
After the repulse of the Gauls, Antigonus II took up the problem of restoring his empire and establishing his power. The Egyptian fleet held complete command of the Aegean and
721. The
Macedonian Empire: revolt of the Greek states after Alexander’s death-
722. Antigonus II stops the great Gallic invasion and becomes king of Macedonia
(277 B.C.)
450
Ancient Times
723. The
struggle for control of the eastern Mediterranean
724. Commercial decline of Greece
725. Rise of the leagues
r\ . i'/irC .
thwarted him in every effort to control Greece. As Antiochus in Asia was suffering from the Egyptian fleet in the same way (§ 718), the two rulers, Antigonus and Antiochus, formed an alliance against Egypt. The energetic Antigonus built a war fleet at vast expense. In a long naval war with the Ptolemies, which went on at intervals for fifteen years, Antigonus twice defeated the Egyptian fleet. As the lax descendants of the earlier Ptolemies did not rebuild the Egyptian fleet, both Macedonia and Asia profited by this freedom of the eastern Mediterranean. But not long after these Macedonian naval victories, trouble arose in Greece, which involved Macedonia in another long war with the Greek states.
Section 67. The Decline of Greece
Greece was no longer commercial leader of the Mediterranean. The victories of Alexander the Great had opened the vast Persian Empire to Greek commercial colonists, who poured into all the favorable centers of trade. Not only did Greece decline in population, but commercial prosperity and the leadership in trade passed eastward, especially to Alexandria and Antioch, and also to the enterprising people of Rhodes and the merchants of Ephesus. As the Greek cities lost their wealth they could no longer support fleets or mercenary armies, and they soon became too feeble to protect themselves.
They naturally began to combine in alliances or federations for mutual protection. Not long after 300 b.c. two such . leagues were already in existence, one on each side of the Corinthian Gulf. On the south side of the gulf was the Acha;an League and on the north side that of the ^Etolians. Such a league was in some ways a kind of tiny United States. The league had its general, elected each year and commanding the combined army of all the cities ; it had also its other officials, who attended to all matters of defense and to all relations with foreign states outside the league. Each city, however, took care
The Heirs of Alexander
4Si
of its own local affairs, like the levying and collecting of taxes. But the two leagues were mostly hostile to each other, and while they were successful for a time in throwing off Macedonian leadership, it was too late for a general federation of all the Greek states, and a United States of the Greeks never existed.
One reason for this was that Sparta and Athens refused to join these leagues. The Achseans endeavored to force Sparta into their league, but the gifted Spartan king Cleomenes defeated them in one battle after another. His victories and his reorganization of the State restored to Sparta some of her oldtime vigor. The Achagans were obliged to call on Macedonia for help, and in this way Cleomenes was defeated and the Spartans were finally crushed. But the Achaean League was thereafter subject to Macedonia and never enjoyed liberty again. Henceforth the Macedonians were lords of all Greece, except the ^Etolian League. Meantime, while keeping out of the leagues, Athens preserved her self-government by securing recognition of her neutrality and liberty by the great powers, first by Egypt and later by Rome (§ 884). In spite of her political feebleness, Athens was still the home of those high and noble things in Greek civilization of which we have already learned something and to the further study of which we must now turn.
QUESTIONS
Section 66. What were the most important consequences of Alexander’s death ? What survivors of his line were there ? What did his generals do ? What was the result of a generation of fighting among them ? Into what main divisions did Alexander’s empire fall ? Who ruled these divisions ? What was the policy of the first Ptolemy? What was the result? What was at first the extent of Ptolemaic power? What kind of government did the Ptolemies establish in Egypt? Would you describe it as oriental or Greek? Was it financially better organized than the Greek states? In what respect?
What was the extent of the Seleucid Empire at first? How were the Seleucids hampered in the Mediterranean? To what region did
726. Sparta and Athens
452
Ancient Times
they give special attention ? What great city did they found there ? What kind of a government did the Seleucids establish ? What can you say of their Greek cities? Were such cities after all as free as Athens had once been? What form did the authority of the Seleucids take?
What was the first serious obstacle in the way of Macedonian leadership of the Balkan-Greek peninsula?’ What did Antigonus II accomplish by land? by sea? What was the extent of the Macedonian Empire (see map I, p. 448)?
Section 67. What were now the leading commercial cities of the Mediterranean ? In what direction had commercial leadership shifted? What was the reason ? What did the Greeks do ? What happened to Greece commercially? politically? Did a federation of all the Greeks arise?
Note. The tailpiece below (on the right) is a pleasing example of the Alexandrian art of mosaic — the art of putting together brightly colored bits of glass or stone and forming figures or designs with them, as a child puts together a puzzle picture. It was an old Egyptian art, which was carried much further by the Greeks at Alexandriaj where they seem to have learned itj and used it in making beautiful pavements (§ 738). They even copied many old Egyptian designs, such as this cat (seen below, at right), which was taken from an old Egyptian painting (seen below, at left) showing a cat with a bird in her mouth and also two more under her forepaws and hindpaws. The greatest example of mosaic is the copy of the painting of the battle of Issus (Fig. 202).
CHAPTER XXI
THE CIVILIZATION OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Section 68. Cities, Architecture, and Art
The three centuries following the death of Alexander we call the Hellenistic Age, meaning the period in which Greek civilization spread throughout the ancient world, especially the Orient, and was itself much modified by the culture of the Orient. Alexander’s conquests placed Asia and Egypt in the hands of Macedonian rulers who were in civilization essentially Greek. Their language was the Greek spoken in Attica. The Orientals found the affairs of government carried on in the Greek language (Fig. 207); they transacted business with multitudes of Greek merchants; they found many Greek books, attracting them to read. Attic Greek became the tongue of which every man of education must be master. Thus the strong Jewish com--munity living at Alexandria now found it necessary to translate
Note. The above headpiece shows us the old palm-tree capital (on the left), with which we are familiar on the Nile (Fig. 56). The Egyptians were the first to take the patterns of their decorative art from the forms of plant life. Their example has influenced decorative art ever since. Thus this palm-tree column (on the right) was borrowed from Egypt by the Hellenistic architects of Pergamum. Such an example shows clearly that the idea of taking decorative architectural forms from the vegetable world was acquired by the Greeks from abroad, and the Corinthian column (Fig. 193) was doubtless suggested in the same way.
453
727. The Hellenistic Age — supremacy of the Greek language
454 Ancient Times
the books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, in order that their educated men might read them. While the country people of the East might learn it imperfectly, Attic
Fig. 207. The Rosetta Stone, bearing the Same Inscription in Greek (C) and Egyptian (A and B)*
Greek became, nevertheless, the daily language of the great cities and of an enormous world stretching from Sicily (Fig. 257) and southern Italy eastward on both sides of the Mediterranean and thence far into the Orient,
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 455
Civilized life in the cities was attended with more comfort and better equipped than ever before. The citizen’s house, if he were in easy circumstances, might be built of stone masonry. The old central court was now often surrounded on all four sides by a pleasing colonnaded porch (Fig. 208). Most of the rooms were still small and bare, but the large living room, lighted from the court, might be floored with a bright mosaic pavement (tailpiece, p. 45 2), while the walls were plastered and adorned with decorative paintings, or even veneered with marble if the owner’s wealth permitted. The furniture was more elaborate and artistic; there might be carpets and hangings; and the house now for the first time possessed its own water supply.
* This famous inscription is in two languages. It was written in Greek because the language of the government was Greek and also because there were so many Greek-speaking people in Egypt (§ 727). At the same time, as the stone was to be a public record, it was necessary that it should be read by Egyptians, who knew no Greek, just as in some New England factory towns notices are now put up in both English and Italian. The document was therefore first written out with pen and ink, just as we would do it, in ordinary Egyptian handwriting, called by the Egyptians demotic (see Fig. 31 for explanation). This demotic copy was then cut on the stone where it occupies the middle (2?).* The priests also wrote out the document in the ancient sacred hieroglyphics, and they put this hieroglyphic form in the place of honor at the top of the stone (A), where the two corners have since been broken off and lost. Both of these two forms, then, are Egyptian-—the upper (A) corresponding to our print, the lower (B) corresponding to our handwriting. The Greek translation of the Egyptian we see at the bottom (C). The stone was intended as a public record of certain honors which the Egyptian priests were extending to the Greek king, one of the Ptolemies, in 195 B.C. After it fell down and was broken, the stone had been buried in rubbish for many centuries, when the soldiers of Napoleon accidentally found it while digging trenches near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile in 1799. Hence it is called the Rosetta Stone. It was afterward captured by the British and is now in the British Museum. After Champollion had learned the signs in the names of. Cleopatra, Ptolemy, and some others (Fig. 76), he was finally able to read also the hieroglyphic form of this Rosetta document {A), because the Greek translation told him what the hieroglyphic form meant. It was in this way that the Rosetta Stone became the key by which Egyptian hieroglyphic was deciphered. The stone is a thick slab of black basalt, 2 feet 4^- inches wide and 3 feet 9 inches high.
728. Improved houses and increased luxury
456
Ancient Times
729. Houser hold and business papers preserved in Egypt
The streets also were equipped with drainage channels or pipes, a thing unknown in the days of Pericles.
The daily life of the time has been revealed to us, as it went on in Egypt, in a vast quantity of surviving household documents.
Fig. 208. Plan of a House of a Wealthy Greek in the Hellenistic Age
The rooms are arranged around a central court {211) which is open'to the sky. A roofed porch with columns (called a peristyle) surrounds the court (cf. Fig. 56). The main entrance is at N, with the room of the doorkeeper on the right (A). At the corner is a shop [B). C, Z>, and E are for storage and housekeeping. F is a back-door entry through which supplies were delivered; it contained a stairway to the second floor. G was used as a small living room. It had a built-in divan, and the entire side toward the peristyle was open. The finest room in the house was //, measuring about 16 by 26 feet, with a mosaic floor (tailpiece, p. 452), in seven colors, and richly decorated walls. It was lighted by a large door and two windows. K was a little sleeping room, with a large marble bath tub; otherwise the sleeping rooms were all on the second floor, which cannot now be reconstructed. / was a second tiny shop.
This house was excavated by the French on the island of Delos
Among the common people ordinary receipts and other business memoranda were scribbled with ink on bits of broken pottery (Fig. 209), which cost nothing. For more important documents, however, a piece of papyrus paper was used (Fig- 2S3)- Such papers accumulated in the house, just as our
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 457
f,1 «*y^tLr,
Ip n
X'&X
fM-yttf}* |k“, AnrV
, *,;■/ fi C Tv* ^■V<v4rPswM" \ • M,
V', \ \|j| U K** J I ■% ’•*«.«. ‘
m fef ^\v v/^c*** rrwv./ r#/r!, '\u f A, '- %s\ ^ 7‘^Mrfip\hk%k'
old letters and papers do. In the rainless climate of Egypt they have survived in great numbers in the rubbish heaps now covering the remains of the houses of this age (§ 158 and Fig. 211).
We can read a father’s or a mother’s invitation to the wedding of a daughter; the letter of a father to a worthy son absent at school; the repentant confessions of a wayward son who has run away from -home ; the assurances of sympathy from a friend when a family has lost a son, a father, a mother, or a brother. Indeed, these documents disclose to us the daily intercourse between friends and relatives, just as such matters are revealed by letters which pass between ourselves at the present day. Such word-pictures, thoughtlessly penned by long-vanished fingers, make the distant life of this far-off age seem surprisingly near and
Fig. 209. Potsherd Document from the Ruins of an Egyptian Town
Thousands of personal documents of the Hellenistic Age have survived in Egypt, written with pen and ink on fragments of broken pottery, which cost nothing (§ 729).' This specimen records a receipt for land rent and closes thus : " Eumelos, the son of Hermulos, being asked to do so, wrote for him, because he himself writes too slowly.” The giver of the receipt probably could not write at all and, to avoid this humiliating confession, says that he wrote " too slowly ”! The hand which Eumelos wrote for him is the rapid-running business hand written by the Greeks of this age, very different from the capital letters which the Greek pottery painters made five centuries earlier (headpiece, p. 282). A modern college student, even though very familiar with printed Greek, would be unable to read it
real (Figs. 210 and 253).
The numerous new cities which this great Hellenistic Age brought forth were laid out on a very systematic plan, with the
458
Ancient Times
730. Equipment of Hellenistic cities} rise of secular public buildings
731. The
public buildings of a Hellenistic city
streets at right angles and the buildings in rectangular blocks (Fig. 212). Recent excavation has uncovered as many as eleven metal water pipes side by side crossing a street under the pavement. But there never was any system of public-street lighting in the ancient world. In the public buildings also a great change had taken place. In Pericles’ time the great state buildings were the temples (§ 573). But now the architects of the Hellenistic Age began to design large and splendid buildings to house the offices of the government. .
These fine public buildings occupied the center of the city where in early Greek and oriental cities the castle of the king
Fig. 210. A Papyrus Letter rolled up and sealed for Delivery
Large numbers of such letters have been found in the rubbish of the ancient towns of Egypt (Fig. 253). Their appearance when unrolled may be seen in Fig. 253, and the remarkable glimpses into ancient life which they afford are well illustrated by the same letter
had once stood. Near by was the spacious market square, surrounded by long colonnades; for the Greeks were now making laige use of this airy and beautiful form of architecture contributed by Egypt. Here much private business of the citizens was transacted. 1 here was, furthermore, a handsome building containing an audience room with seats arranged like a theater. The Assembly no longer met in the open air (Fig. 179), but held its sessions here, as did the Council also. The architects had also to provide gymnasiums and baths, a race track, and a theater. Even a small city of only four thousand people, like Priene in Asia Minor, possessed all these buildings (Fig. 212), besides several temples, one of which was erected by Alexander himself. It is very instructive to compare such a little Hellenistic city as Priene with a modem town of four thousand inhabitants
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 4S9
in America. Our modern houses are much more roomy and comfortable, but our ordinary public buildings, like our courthouses and town halls, make but a poor showing as compared with those of little Priene over two thousand years ago.
Fig. 211. Ruins of the Ancient Town of Elephantine on an Island of the Same Name in the Nile
This island is at the foot of the First Cataract, 5 miles below Philae (Plate V, p. 444). When the sun-dried-brick houses which we see here fell down (§ 158), they covered the owner’s household papers, which in the rainless climate of Egypt have been remarkably well preserved (see especially Fig. 131). Some of these houses are as old as the twenty-seventh century B.C., and the oldest papyrus documents dug out here are therefore as old as the Pyramid Age (Fig. 40). Others are much later, like the Aramaic papers of the Hebrew colony (Fig. 131). Most of the documents found here, however, are from the Hellenistic Age or later, and are therefore in Greek, like the young soldier’s letter (Fig. 253), which was found at another place like this one, or the certificate shown in Fig. 267. Near here was Eratosthenes’ well (§ 745)
On one side of the market there opened a building called a basilica, lighted by roof windows, forming a clerestory (Fig. 271), which the Hellenistic architects had seen in Egypt (Fig. 68). At the same time they had become acquainted with the arch in Asia Minor, whither it had passed from the Fertile
732. The clerestory and the arch •
introduced from the Orient
Fig. 212. Restoration of the Hellenistic City of Priene in Asia Minor. (After a
Drawing by A. Zippelius) *
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 461
Crescent (Figs. 82 and 206). They began occasionally to introduce arches into their buildings (Fig. 224), although we recall that Greek buildings had never before employed the arch. Thus the Orient, which had contributed the colonnade to Greek architecture (Fig. 167), now furnished two more great forms, the clerestory and the arch, but the Greeks never made great use of the arch.
If a little provincial Greek city like Priene possessed such splendid public buildings, an imperial capital and vast commercial city like Alexandria was correspondingly more magnificent. In numbers, wealth, commerce, power, and in all the arts of civilization, it was now the greatest city of the whole ancient world. Along the harbors stretched extensive docks, where ships which had braved the Atlantic storms along the coasts of Spain and Africa moored beside oriental craft which had penetrated the
* This little city when excavated proved to be almost a second Pompeii (Fig. 255), only older. Above A, on the top of the cliff, was the citadel with a path leading up to it {B). C shows the masonry flume which brought the mountain water down into the town. Entering the town one passed through the gate at K, and up a straight street to the little pro-vision-market square (L). Just above the market was the temple of Athena (/), built by Alexander himself. Then one entered the spacious business market [agora] (M), surrounded by fine colonnades, with shops behind them, except on one side (under AT) where there was a stately hall for business and festive occasions, like the basilica halls which were coming in at this time among the Greeks (Fig. 271, 3). Beyond (at JV) were the offices of the city government, the hall in which the Council and Assembly met, and the theater (£). At G was the temple of Isis (§ 657), and in the foreground were the gymnasium (P) and the stadium (Q). The wash-room here still contains the marble basins and the lion-headed spouts from which the water flowed. An attached open hall was used for school instruction and lectures (Fig. 224). Above the seats of the stadium (Q) was a beautiful colonnade 600 feet long, for pleasure-strolling between the athletic events, to enjoy the grand view of the sea upon which the audience looked down. The houses fronting directly on the street were mostly like the one in Fig. 208; but the finer ones in the region of the theater (E) and the temple of Athena (I) were of well-joined stone masonry and had no shops in front. Around the whole city was a strong wall of masonry, with a gate at east (H) and west (K), while along the street outside these gates were the tombs of the ancestors as at Athens (headpiece, p. 425).
733. Alexandria: its commerce and great lighthouse
462
jtlnct-ent j. tmtz*
gates of the Indian Ocean (§ 104) and gathered the wares of the vast oriental world beyond. Side by side on these docks lay bars of tin from the British Isles with bolts of silk from
Fig. 213. The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria in the Hellenistic Age. (After Thiersch)
The harbor of Alexandria (see corner map, p. 436) was protected by an island called Pharos, which was connected with the city by a causeway of stone. On the island, and bearing its name (Pharos), was built (after 300 B.C.) a vast stone lighthouse, some 370 feet high (that is, over thirty stories, like those of a modern skyscraper). It shows how vast was the commerce and wealth of Alexandria only a generation after it was founded by Alexander the Great, when it became the New York or Liverpool of the ancient world, the greatest port on the Mediterranean (§ 7jj)- The Pharos tower, the first of its kind, was influenced in design by oriental architecture, and in its turn it furnished the model for the earliest church spires, and also for the minarets of the Mohammedan mosques (Fig. 272). It stood for about sixteen hundred years, the greatest lighthouse in the world, and did not fall until 1326 A.D.
China and rolls of cotton goods from India. The growing commerce of the city even required the establishment of government banks. From far across the sea the mariners approaching at night could catch the gleaming of a lofty beacon shining from
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 463
a gigantic lighthouse tower (Fig. 213) which marked the entrance of the harbor of Alexandria. This wonderful tower, the tallest building ever erected by a Hellenistic engineer, was a descendant of the old Babylonian temple tower (tailpiece, p. 170), with which it was closely related (Fig. 272).
From the deck of a great merchant ship of over four thou- 734. Palace sand tons the incoming traveler might look cityward beyond ptokmiest the lighthouse and behold the great war fleet of the Ptolemies g™”^g°ch (§ 716) outlined against the green masses of the magnificent Parks royal gardens. Here, embowered in rich tropical verdure, rose the marble residence of the Ptolemies, occupying a point of land which extended out into the sea and formed the east side of the harbor (see map, p. 436). From the royal parks of the Persian kings and the villa gardens of the Egyptians (Fig. 51) the Hellenistic rulers and their architects had learned to appreciate the beauty of parks and gardens artistically laid out and adorned with tropical trees, lakes, fountains, and sculptured monuments. Thus the art of landscape gardening, combined with a systematically planned city, — an art long familiar to the architects of the Orient, — was also being cultivated by Europeans.
At the other end of the park from the palace were grouped the marble buildings of the Royal Museum, with its great 735. The library, lecture halls, exhibition rooms, courts and porticoes, SgsofAie*. and living rooms for the philosophers and men of science who andria resided in the institution. In the vicinity was the vast temple of Serapis, the new State god (§ 764), and further in the city were the magnificent public buildings, such as gymnasiums, baths, stadiums, assembly hall, concert hall, market places, and basilicas, all surrounded by the residence quarters of the citizens. Unfortunately, not one of these splendid buildings still stands. Even the scanty ruins which survive cannot be recovered, because in most cases the modern city of Alexandria is built over them.
We are more fortunate in the case of Pergamum (map II, 736. Per-p. 448), another splendid city of this age which grew up fJ™onderfui under Athenian influences (Fig. 214). One of the kings of sculPture
464
jincieni 1 wne&
Pergamum defeated and beat off the hordes of Gauls coming in from Europe (§ 722). This achievement greatly affected the art which Attic sculptors, supported by the kings of Pergamum, were creating there. They wrought heroic marble figures of
Fig, 214. Restoration of the Public Buildings of Pergamum, a Hellenistic City of Asia Minor. (After Thiersch)
Pergamum, on the west coast of Asia Minor (see map II, p. 448) became a flourishing city-kingdom in the third century B.C. under the successors of Alexander the Great (§ 736). The dwellings of the citizens were all lower down, in front of the group of buildings shown here. These public buildings stand on three terraces — lower, middle, and upper. The large lower terrace (A) was the main market place, adorned with a vast square marble altar of Zeus, having colonnades on three sides, beneath which was a long sculptured band (frieze) of warring gods and giants (Fig. 217). On the middle terrace (3), behind the colonnades, was the famous library of Pergamum, where the stone bases of library shelves still survive. The upper terrace (C) once contained the palace of the king; the temple now there was built by the Roman Emperor Trajan in the second century a.d.
the Northern barbarians in the tragic moment of death in battle with a dramatic impressiveness which has never been surpassed (Figs. 215 and 216). Reminiscences of this same struggle with the Gauls were also suggested by an enormous band of relief sculpture depicting the mythical battle between the gods and the
Fig. 215. A Gallic Chieftain in Defeat slaying his Wife and Himself
With one hand he supports his dying wife, and casting a terrible glance at the pursuing enemy, he plunges his sword into his own breast. The tremendous power of the barbarian’s muscular figure is in startling contrast with the helpless limbs of the woman. The beholder feels both terror at the wild impetuosity of the Northern barbarian, and at the same time involuntary sympathy with his unconquerable courage, which prefers death, for himself and his loved one, to shameful captivity among the victors (§ 736)
Figs. 216 and 217. Sculptures of Hellenistic Pergamum
Above (Fig. 216) is a Gallic trumpeter, as he sinks in death with his trumpet at his feet (§ 736). Below (Fig. 217) is a part of the frieze around the great altar of Zeus at Pergamum (Fig. 214). It pictures the mythical struggle between gods and giants. A giant at the left, whose limbs end in serpents, raises over his head a great stone to hurl it at the goddess on the right (§ 736)
Fig. 2 i 8. The Death of Laocoon and his Two Sons
This famous group was wrought some time in the first century B.C. by Agesander of Rhodes and two other sculptors, perhaps his sons. It shows the priest Laocoon sinking down upon the altar, by which he had been ministering, in a last agonizing struggle with the deadly serpents which enfold him and his two sons. It is one of the most marvelous representations of human suffering (§ 737) ever created by art, but it does not move us with such sympathy as the death of the Gallic chieftain (Fig. 215). We should place with these works (Figs. 215-218) the sarcophagus reliefs of Alexander (Plate VI, p. 468) and the mosaic picture of the battle of Issus (Fig. 202) as the supreme creations of ancient art
From an etching by George T, Plowman
Fig. 219. Greek Temples at P/Estum in Southern Italy
Paastum (Greek, Poseidonia), one of the early Greek colonies in the vicinity of Naples, possesses to-day the ruins of three Greek temples. The temple of Neptune (Poseidon), the finest of the group, is the best-preserved Greek temple outside of Attica. Built toward the end of the sixth century, and perhaps as late as 500 B.C., it is one of the noblest examples of archaic Greek architecture (§§ 4S5, 782)
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 46 5
giants (Fig. 217). This vast work extended almost entirely around a colossal altar (Fig. 214) erected by the kings of Per-gamum in honor of Zeus, to adorn the market place of the city.
It was the works of the Athenian sculptors which had inspired compositions of such tragic and overwhelming power, of such violent and thrilling action, at Pergamum.
Some of these Athenian works have survived.
They are best illustrated 1 *
by the reliefs on a wonder-
showing Alexander the ,
Great winning the battle of Issus, and again en-
sculpture of vigorous action in supremely tragic moments was also very beautifully followed out by a group of eminent sculptors on the island of Rhodes, which was a prosperous republic in the Hellenistic Age (§ 724).
Most of their works have perished, but those which have survived are among the most famous works of sculpture from the ancient world. One of them depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons as they are crushed to death in the folds of two deadly serpents (Fig. 218).
The great Greek painters of this age show the same tendencies as does the sculpture. They loved to depict dramatic and
Fig. 220. Hellenistic Portrait Head in Bronze
This magnificent head of an unknown man, with wonderful representation of the hair, was recovered from the bottom of the sea. The eyes are inlaid as in the old Egyptian bronze head (Fig. 53). It is now in the Museum of Athens
737. Athenian sculpture: the Alexander sarcophagus; Rhodian sculpture; Laocoon
738. Painting and mosaic
466
Ancient Times
739- Portraiture
740. Mechanical progress and practical inventions
tragic incidents at the supreme moment. Their original works have all perished, but copies of some of them have survived, painted on the walls as interior decorations of fine houses or wrought in mosaic as floor pavement. It is the art of mosaic which has preserved to us the wonderful painting of Alexander charging on the Persian king at Issus, by an unknown Alexandrian painter of the Hellenistic Age (Fig. 202).
Both the sculptors and painters of this age made wonderful progress in portraiture, and their surviving works now begin to furnish us a continuous stream of portraits which show us how the great men of the age really looked (Fig. 220). Unfortunately these portraits are all works of the sculptors in stone or metal, either as statues and busts or as reliefs, especially on medallions and coins; the portraits executed by the painter in colors on wooden tablets have all perished. Alexander’s favorite painter was Apelles. In one of his portraits of Alexander, the horse which the king was riding was said to have been painted with such lifelikeness that on one occasion a passing horse trotted up to it and whinnied. Later examples of this art of portrait painting have survived attached to mummies in Egypt (Plate VIII, p. 654).
Section 69. Inventions and Science ; Libraries and Literature
The keen and wide-awake intelligence of this wonderful age was everywhere evident, but especially in the application of science to the work and needs of daily life. It was an age of inventions, like our own. An up-to-date man would install an - ,'J automatic door opener for the doorkeeper of his house, and a washing machine which delivered water and mineral soap- as ; needed. On his estate olive oil was produced by a press operating with screw pressure. Outside the temples the priests set. up automatic dispensers of holy water, while a water sprinkler operating by water pressure reduced the danger of fire. The
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 467
application of levers, cranks, screws, and cogwheels to daily work brought forth cable roads for use in lowering stone from lofty quarries, or water wheels for drawing water on a large scale. A similar endless-chain apparatus was used for quickly raising heavy stone missiles to be discharged from huge missile-hurling war machines, some of which even operated by air pressure. As we go to see the " movies,” so the people crowded to the market place to view the automatic theater, in which a clever mechanician presented an old Greek tragedy of the Trojan War in five scenes, displaying shipbuilding, the launch of the fleet, the voyage, with the dolphins playing in the water about the vessels, and finally a storm at sea, with thunder and lightning, amid which the Greek heroes promptly went to the bottom. Housekeepers told stories of the simpler days of their grandmothers, when there was no running water in the house and they actually had to go out and fetch it a long way from the nearest spring.
A public clock, either a shadow clock, such as the Egyptian had had in his house for over a thousand years (Fig. 74), or a water clock of Greek invention (Fig. 221), stood in the market place and furnished all the good townspeople with the hour of the day. The Ptolemies or the priests under them attempted to improve the calendar by the insertion every fourth year of a leap year with an additional day, but the people could not be roused out of the rut into which usage had fallen, and everywhere they continued to use the inconvenient moon month of the Greeks. There was no system for the numbering of the years anywhere except in Syria, where the Seleucids gave each year a number reckoned from the beginning of their sway.
The most remarkable man of science of the time was probably Archimedes. He lived in Syracuse, and one of his famous feats was the arrangement of a series 'of pulleys and levers, which so multiplied power that the king was able by turning a light crank to move a large three-masted ship standing fully loaded on the dock, and to launch it into the water. After
741. Time and the calendar
i
I
742. Archimedes
468
Ancient Times
743. The
Alexandrian
scientists
witnessing such feats as this the people easily believed his proud boast, " Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth.” He devised such powerful and dangerous war machines that he greatly aided in defending his native city from capture by
the Romans (§ 868). But Archimedes was far more than an inventor of practical appliances. He was a scientific investigator of the first rank. He was able to prove to the king that one of the monarch’s gold crowns was not of pure metal, because he had discovered the principle of determining the proportion of loss of weight when an object is immersed in ,water. He was thus the discoverer of what science now calls specific gravity. Besides his skill in physics he was also the greatest of ancient mathematicians (§ 744)-
Fig. 221. The Town Clock of Athens in the Hellenistic Age
This tower, commonly called the w Tower of the Winds,” now stands among modern houses, but once looked out on the Athenian market place (§ 564). The arches at the left support part of an ancient channel which supplied the water for the operation of a water clock in the tower. Such clocks were more or less like hourglasses, the flowing water filling a given measure in a given time, like the sand in the hourglass. This tower was built in the last century B.C., when Athens was under the control of Rome (§ S84)
Archimedes was in close correspondence with his friends in Alexandria, who form'ed the greatest body of scientists in the ancient world. They lived together at the Museum, where they were paid salaries and supported by the Ptolemies. They formed the first scientific institution founded and supported by
Plate VI. Greeks and Persians hunting Lions with Alexander the Great
Alexander is out of range at the left. A Greek on horseback endeavors to pierce the wounded lion with his spear. A Persian on foot wields an ax. The scene is carved in relief on a marble sarcophagus, found at Sidon in 18S1 ; the colors are exactly those of the original, now in the museum at Constantinople. It was made not long after Alexander’s death, and is one of the greatest works of Hellenistic art (§ 737). (After Winter, A lex a;/ dennosaik)
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age
469
a government. Without financial anxieties they could devote themselves to research, for which the halls, laboratories, and library of the institution were equipped. Thus the scientists of the Hellenistic Age, especially this remarkable group at Alexandria, became the founders of systematic scientific research, and their books formed the sum or body of scientific knowledge for nearly two thousand years, until the revival of science in modern times.
The very first generation of scientists at the Alexandrian Museum boasted a great name in mathematics which is still famous among us — that of Euclid. His complete system of geometry was so logically built up, that in modern England Euclid’s geometry is still used as a schoolbook — the oldest schoolbook in use to-day. Archimedes then, for the first time, developed what is now called higher mathematics — certain difficult and advanced mathematical processes the knowledge of which having in the meantime been lost had to be rediscovered in modern times. Along with mathematics much progress was also made in astronomy. The Ptolemies built an astronomical observatory at Alexandria, and although it was, of course, without telescopes, important observations and discoveries were made. An astronomer of little fame named Aristarchus, who lived on the island of Samos, made the greatest of the discoveries of this age. He demonstrated that the earth and the planets revolve around the sun. Almost no one adopted his conclusion, however, and both the Hellenistic Greeks and all ancient scientists of later' days wrongly believed that the earth was the center around which the sun and the planets revolved (§1059). One Hellenistic astronomer at the cost of immense labor, made a catalogue of eight or nine hundred fixed stars, to serve as a basis for determining any future changes that might take place in the skies.
Astronomy had now greatly aided in the progress of geography. Eratosthenes, a great mathematical astronomer of Alexandria, very cleverly computed the size of the earth by observing
744. Mathematics; Euclid and Archimedes. Astronomy: Aristarchus ,
745- Eratosthenes computes the size of the earth
470 A ncien t 7 im es
Fig. 222. Diagram roughly indicating how the Size of the Earth was first calculated
The sun standing at noon directly over the First Cataract (line AB) was of course visible also at Alexandria. The result was just the same as if someone had stood at the First Cataract holding vertically upright a surveyor’s pole tall enough to be seen from Alexandria. For Eratosthenes at Alexandria the sun was like the top of the pole. With his instruments set up at Alexandria, therefore, Eratosthenes found that the sun over the First Cataract (line AB) was *]\ degrees south of the zenith of his instrument at Alexandria (line AC). The lines AB and AC diverge 7^ degrees at all points, whether in the skies or on earth. Hence Eratosthenes knew that the First Cataract was 7J degrees of the earth’s circumference from Alexandria; that is, the distance between Alexandria and the First Cataract was 7^ degrees of the earth’s circumference, or one fiftieth of its total circumference of 360 degrees. Now the actual distance between Alexandria and the First Cataract was supposed to be a little less than 500 miles. This distance (500 miles) then was one fiftieth of the earth’s circumference, giving a few hundred less than 25,000 miles for the total circumference of the earth; and for its diameter about 7850 miles, which is within 50 miles of being correct
that when the summer sun, shifting steadily northward, reached its farthest north, it shone at noonday straight down to the bottom of a well at the First Cataract of the Nile (Fig. 211).
To this notion of the size of the earth, much information had been added regarding the extent and the character of the
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 471
inhabited regions reached by navigation and exploration in this age. At home, in Greece, one geographer undertook to measure the heights of the mountains, though he was without a barometer. ^The campaigns of Alexander in the Far East had greatly extended the limits where the known world ended^ Bold Alexandrian merchants had sailed to India and around its southern tip to Ceylon and the eastern coast of India, where they heard fabulous tales of the Chinese coast beyond.
In the Far West as early as 500 B.C. Phoenician navigators had passed Gibraltar, and turning southward had probably reached the coast of Guinea, whence they brought back marvelous stories of the hairy men whom the interpreters called "Gorillas”! A trained astronomer of Marseilles named Pytheas fitted out a ship at his own expense and coasted northward from Gibraltar. He discovered the triangular shape of the island of Britannia, and penetrating far into the North Sea he was the first civilized man to hear tales of the frozen sea beyond and the mysterious island of Thule (Iceland) on its margin. He discovered the influence of the full moon on the immense spring tides, and he brought back reports of such surprising things that he was generally regarded as a sensational fable monger.
With a greater mass of facts and reports than anyone before him had ever had, Eratosthenes was able to write a very full geography. His map of the known world (p. 472), including Europe, Asia, and Africa, not only showed the regions grouped about the Mediterranean with fair correctness, but he was the first geographer who was able to lay out on his map a cross-net of lines indicating latitude and longitude. He thus became the founder of scientific geography.
In the study of animal and vegetable life Aristotle and his pupils remained the leaders, and the ancient world never outgrew their observations. While their knowledge of botany, acquired without a microscope, was of course limited and contained errors, a large mass of new facts was observed and
746. Explorations eastward
747. Explorations westward and northward; Pytheas and the tides
748. Eratosthenes, founder of scientific geography, makes first map with latitude and longitude
749, Botany, zoology, anatomy, and medicine
472
Ancient Times
750. Earliest state libraries of the Greeks; Alexandrian library
arranged. For the study of anatomy there was a laboratory in Alexandria, at the Museum, which the Ptolemies furnished with condemned criminals on whom vivisection was practiced. In this way the nerves were discovered to be the lines along which messages of pain and pleasure pass to the brain. The brain was thus shown to be the center of the nervous system. Although such research came very near to discovering the circulation of the blood, the arteries were still misunderstood to be channels for the circulation of air from the lungs. Alexandria
became the greatest center of medical research in the ancient world, and here young men went through long studies to train themselves as physicians, just as they do at the present day.
Notwithstanding the popularity of the natural sciences, there was now also much study of language and of the great mass of older literature. Although the ancient Orient had long before known royal libraries (§ 226), the first library founded and supported by a Greek government had been formed by the city of Heracleia, on the Black Sea, during the childhood of Alexander the Great (not long before 350 b. c.). Later the kings of Perga-mum also founded a very notable library (Fig. 214). All these efforts were far surpassed by the Ptolemies at Alexandria.
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 473
Across the park from their palace they built a library for the Museum, where they had finally over half a million rolls.
The art of cataloguing and managing such a .great collection 751. Rise of of books had to be taken up from the beginning. A gifted agemenTand philosopher and poet named Callimachus was made a librarian catal°gumg I by the first Ptolemy. Callimachus catalogued all the known ^ books of value, both by titles and authors, and this first great book catalogue filled one hundred and twenty books or sections. As the founder of library management he introduced many improvements. One of his sayings was, *' A big book is a big nuisance,” by which he probably meant that a book in a single long and bulky roll was very inconvenient to handle (cf. Fig. 191). Hence he introduced the method of cutting up a work into a series of rolls, each roll called a " book,” meaning a " part.” Thus arose the division of the Homeric poems, the history of Herodotus, and other works into " books.”
The immense amount of hand copying required to secure 752. Great good and accurate editions of famous works for this library the Aiexan- . gradually created' the new science of publishing correctly old g^ithig17 and often badly copied works. The copies produced by the ?nd Pu™shj librarians and scholars of Alexandria became the standard edi- copies) tions on which other ancient libraries and copyists depended.
The Hellenistic world was everywhere supplied with " Alexandrian editions,” and from these are descended most of the manuscripts now preserved in the libraries of Europe, from which, in turn, have been copied our printed editions of Homer,
Xenophon, and other great Greek authors. Unfortunately the library of Alexandria perished (§ 965), and the earliest example of a Greek book which has survived to us is a roll which was found in an Egyptian tomb by modern excavators only a few years ago (Fig. 223).
The new art of editing and arranging the text of books natu- 753. Lan-rally required much language study. Where two old copies dif- ®segofSdii>y’ fered, the question would often arise, which one was correct. g°™easrsand Many strange and old words needed explanation, just as when
474
Ancient Times
we read Chaucer, and there were constant questions of spelling. The Alexandrian scholars therefore began to make dictionaries. At the same time grammatical questions demanded more
Fig. 223. A Page from the Earliest Surviving Greek Book.
This book was found lying beside the body of a man buried in an Egyptian cemetery, and because of the rainless climate of Egypt it has been preserved, in spite of its being written on perishable papyrus paper (cf. Figs. 58, 13 r, 253, and 267). What we have called a page is really a column of writing, and the book consisted of a series of such columns side by side on the roll (see Fig, 191). This book contains a poem called The Persians, by the Greek poet Timotheos, who died 357 B.C. His name (Timotheos) may be seen in the third line from the bottom, at the beginning of the line. The poem tells the story of the battle of Salamis. This copy of the work was written in the lifetime of Alexander the Great. The column shown here is like those on the rolls which once filled the Alexandrian library, and shows us how the pages looked over which the great men of science there so industriously pored (§ 753)
and more attention. At last in 120 B.C. a scholar named Dionysius wrote the first Greek grammar. It contained the leading grammatical terms, like the names of the parts of speech, which
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 47 5
we still use. As all these terms were explained and conveniently arranged in the grammar of Dionysius, his book was used for centuries and thus became the foundation of all later grammars of the languages of civilized peoples, including our own. Such a term as our " subjunctive mode ” is simply a translation of the corresponding Greek term created by the Hellenistic scholars.
Literature was to a large extent in the hands of such learned 754. Litera-men as those of Alexandria. The great librarian Callimachus ture was a famous poet of the age. These scholars no longer chose great and dramatic themes, like war, fate, and catastrophe, as the subjects of their writing. They loved to picture such scenes as the shepherd at the spring, listening to the music of overhanging boughs, lazily watching his flocks, and dreaming the while of some winsome village maid who has scorned his devotion. Such pictures of country life set in the simplicity and beauty of peaceful hillsides, and wrought into melodious verse, delighted the cultivated circles of a great world-city like Alexandria more than even the revered classics of an older day. In such verse the greatest literary artist of the age was a Sicilian named Theocritus, whose idyls have taken a permanent place in the world’s literature for two thousand years. At the same time the everyday life of the age was also pictured at the theater in a modern form of play, known as the "new comedy.”
With many amusing incidents the townsmen saw their faults and weaknesses of character here depicted on the stage, and Menandgj^at Athens, the ablest of such play-writers, gained a great reputation for his keen knowledge of men and his ability to hit them off wittily in clever comedies.
Section 70. Education, Philosophy, and Religion
In such a cultivated world of fine cities, beautiful homes, 7^55. Educa-sumptuous public buildings, noble works of art, state libraries [ary schools'1
and scientific research, it was natural that education should afld gymna_
7 _ siums
have made much progress. The elementary schools, once private,
476
/incieni i imes
756. Influence of gymnasium toward higher studies
Fig. 224. Wall Lecture Hall
COVERED WITH SCHOOLBOYS1
of a Gymnasium
AT PR1EXE, STILL
Names
were now often supported by the State. When the lad had finished at the elementary school, his father allowed him to attend lectures on rhetoric, science, philosophy, and mathematics in the lecture rooms of the gymnasium building. The wall of such a
hall at Priene (Fig. 224) is still scribbled all over with the names of the boys of more than two thousand years ago, who thus recorded their permanent claims to certain seats near the wall.
The gymnasium thus became a place of helpful intellectual stimulus. When the fathers were no longer nimble enough for athletic games they often sat about in the colonnades watching the contests, or idling in groups, discussing the last lecture in science or the latest discovery in the laboratory of the Museum. Here many an argument in science or philosophy might be overheard by the young fellows, fresh from the gymnasium baths, as they wandered out to greet their waiting fathers and wend their way homeward. Such an atmosphere was one to create great interest in science and philosophy, and often a youth besought his father to give him a few years’ higher study at the Museum or at Athens.
This lecture hall opened on the colonnades around the court of the gymnasium at Priene (Fig.211, P). The smooth blocks of marble are scratched with the names of hundreds of schoolboys, who heard lectures and classes here twenty-two hundred years ago. In order to set up a permanent claim to his seat, a boy would scratch into the wall the words, " Seat of Cleon, the son of Clearchos.” When the wall was'entirely filled with these names, the boys evidently mounted on the benches and then on the backs of comrades to find enough room to write their claims
The Civilization of the Helle>iistic Age 477
Furthermore, in the pursuit of a profession, a special training 757. Pro-had now become indispensable to a young man’s success. Like scientific 3nd the medical student, the architect now studied his profession and specialization bent industriously over books that told him how to erect an arch that would be safe and secure, and what were the proper proportions for a column. Young fellows who wished to become engineers studied a host of things in mechanics, like bridge-building and devices for moving heavy bodies. It was anjige _oLJechnical training. This specialization in the professions was also to be found among the scientists, who now specialized each in a particular branch, like astronomy, or mathematics, or geography. The youth who wished to study science turned to the great scientific specialists at the Alexandrian Museum.
As he strolled for the first time through the beautiful gardens 758. The and into the Museum building, he found going on there lectures Museun^asa on astronomy, geography, physics, mathematics, botany, zoology, university anatomy, medicine, or rhetoric, grammar, and literature. When he was sufficiently familiar with the known facts about these subjects, he could share in the endeavor to discover new facts about them. He might cross the court to the halls where the cries of suffering animals told him that vivisection was going ^
on; he might climb the tower of the astronomical observatory, . ■ -and sit there night after night at the elbow of some eminent , , ‘ astronomer, or assist Eratosthenes at noonday in taking an ob- 1 / . servation of the sun for his computation of the earth’s size <*"
(§ 745). Or he might withdraw to the quiet library rooms and t assist in making up the lists of famous old books, to be put • together in Callimachus’ great catalogue. If he showed ability y-t enough, he might later be permitted to lecture to students himself, and finally become one of its group of famous scientific men.
On the other hand, Alexandria was not at first interested in 75g.^The philosophy, out of which science had grown (§ 494). Athens 4e Peripa-was still the leading home of philosophy. The youth who went there to take up philosophical studies found the successors of
478
Ancient Times
760. Unrivaled authority of Aristotle’s works
761. Two philosophies of practical living: Stoicism and Epicureanism
Plato still continuing his teaching in the quiet grove of the Academy (§ 671), where his memory was greatly revered. Plato’s pupil Aristotle, however, had not been able to accept his master’s teachings. After the education of the young Alexander (§ 687), Aristotle had returned to Athens and established a school of his own at the Lyceum (§ 558), where he occupied a terrace called the " Walk ” (Greek, peripatos'). Here, he directed one group of advanced students after another in the arrangement and study of the different sciences, like anatomy, botany, zoology. All of these groups collected great masses of scientific observations, which were arranged under Aristotle’s guidance. The result was a veritable encyclopedia of old and new facts. The work was never completed, and many of the essays and treatises which it included have been lost. When Aristotle died, soon after the death of Alexander, his school declined.
Aristotle’s works formed the greatest attempt ever made in ancient times to collect and to state in a clear way the whole mass of human knowledge. They never lost their importance and they justly gave him the reputation of having possessed the greatest mind produced by the ancient world. His works finally gained such unquestioned authority in later Europe that in medieval times men turned to Aristotle’s books for the answer to every scientific question. Instead of endeavoring to discover new facts in nature for themselves, they turned to Aristotle for the "solution of every scientific problem. The writings of no other man have ever enjoyed such widespread and unquestioned authority.1
But many Greeks found little satisfaction in the learned researches of Plato’s Academy and of Aristotle’s Peripatetic school (from peripatos, " walk They desired some teaching which would lead them to a happy and contented frame of mind in living, and enable one to live successfully. To meet this growing desire two more schools of philosophy arose at Athens, l See Robinson, Medieval and A'fodem Times, pp. 252 ff.
The Civilisation of the tlellenistic Age 479
The first was founded by an Oriental, a Semite named Zeno, born in Cyprus. He taught in the famous old "Painted Porch” in the market place of Athens (§ 572). Such a porch was called a Stoa, and Zeno’s school was therefore called the Stoic school. Zeno taught that there was but one good and that was virtue1, and but one evil and that was moral wrong. The great aim of life should be a tranquillity of soul, which comes from virtue, and is indifferent both to pleasure and to pain. His followers were famous for their fortitude, and hence our common use of the word "stoicism” to indicate indifference to suffering. The Stoic school was very popular and finally became the greatest of the schools of philosophy. The last school, founded by Epicurus in his own garden at Athens, taught that the highest good was pleasure, both of body and of mind, but always in accordance with virtue. Hence we still call a man devoted to pleasure, especially in eating, an " epicure.” The school of Epicurus, too, flourished and attracted many disciples. Men later distorted his teachings into a justification for a life of sensual pleasure. The oriental proverb, " Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die,” has therefore been commonly applied to them.
These schools lived on the income of property left them by wealthy pupils and friends. The head of the school, with his assistants and followers, lived together in quarters with rooms for lectures, books, and study. The most successful of these organizations was that of Aristotle, at least as long as‘he lived. The Museum of Alexandria was modeled on these Athenian organizations, and they have also become the model of academies of science and of universities ever since. We may regard Hellenistic Athens then as possessing a university made up of four departments: the Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, and the Garden of Epicurus. Thus in the day when her political power had vanished, Athens had become even more than Pericles had hoped she might be. She was not only the teacher of all Greece, but she drew her pupils from all parts of the civilized world.
762. The University of Athens and its historic influence
480
Ancient Times
763. The fall of the old Greek gods
764. Increased popularity of oriental gods
For such highly educated men the beliefs of Stoicism or Epicureanism served as their religion. The gods had for such men usually ceased to exist, or were explained as merely glorified human beings. A romance writer of the day, a man named Euhemerus, wrote an attractive tale of an imaginary journey which he made to the Indian Ocean, where he found a group of mysterious islands. There, in a temple of Zeus, he found a golden tablet inscribed with a story telling how the great gods worshiped by the Greeks were once powerful kings who had done much for the civilization of mankind, and when they died they had been deified. This story of a novelist of the Hellenistic Age was widely believed, but these gods no longer attracted the reverence of religiously minded men. Moreover, there was now little pressure on any man to keep silence about his beliefs regarding the gods. There was great freedom of conscience — far more freedom than the Christian rulers of later Europe granted their subjects. The teachings of Socrates would no longer have caused his condemnation by his Athenian neighbors.
The great multitude of the people had not the education to understand philosophy, nor the means to attend the philosophical schools. Yet gods in some form they must have. With the weakening of faith in the old gods, those of the Orient, which we have already seen invading Greek life (§ 657), became more and more popular. So the Ptolemies introduced as their great State god an oriental deity named Serapis, and they built for him a magnificent temple at Alexandria. From Babylonia the mysterious lore of the Chaldean astrologers (§§ 238, 239) was spreading widely through the Mediterranean. It was received and accepted in Egypt, and even Greek science did not escape its influence. Oriental beliefs and oriental symbols were everywhere. Men had long since grown accustomed to foreign gods, and they no longer looked askance at strange usages in religion. It was in such an age as this that Christianity, an oriental religion, passed easily from land to land (§ 1069).
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 481
Section 71. Formation of a Hellenistic World of Hellenic-Oriental Civilization ; Decline of Citizenship and the City-State
It is a great mistake to suppose that Marathon and Salamis once and for all banished the influence of the Orient from the Mediterranean, as an impenetrable dam keeps back a body of water. While Alexander’s victories and conquests destroyed the military power of the Orient, the daily life and the civilization of the people of the Orient continued to be a permanent force exerting a steady pressure upon the life of the eastern Mediterranean world, in commerce, in form of government, in customs and usages, in-art, industry, literature, and religion. When Christianity issued from Palestine, therefore, as we shall see (§1067), it found itself but one among many other influences from the Orient- which were passing westward. Thus while'Greek civilization, with its language, its art, its literature, its theaters and gymnasiums, was Hellenizing the Orient, the Orient in the same way was exercising a powerful influence on the West and was orientalizing the eastern Mediterranean world. In this way there was gradually formed an eastern Mediterranean world of Hellenic-oriental civilization.
In-this larger world the old Greek city-citizen, who had made Greek civilization what it was, played but a small part. He felt himself an individual belonging in an international world, a far larger world than the city in which he lived. But this larger world brought home no sense of citizenship in it. For in the great Hellenistic states there was no such thing as national citizenship. The city-citizen had no share in guiding the affairs of the great nation or empire of which his city-state was a part. It was as if a citizen of Chicago might vote at the election of a mayor of the city but had no right to vote at the election of a president of the United States. There was not even a name for the empire of the Seleucids, and their subjects, wherever
765. Continued intrusion of oriental influences in the eastern Mediterranean
766. The Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean and its lack of citizenship
482
Ancient Times
767. The contributions of the city-state and the end of its usefulness
768. Hellenistic world of
the eastern Mediterranean under the power of the western Mediterranean
they went, bore the names of their home cities or countries.1 The conception of " native land ” in the national sense was wanting, and patriotism did not exist.
The centers of power and progress in Greek civilization had been the city-states, but the finest and most influential forces operating within the city-state had now disappeared. So, for example, the old city gods were gone. Likewise the citizen-soldier who defended his city had long ago given way, even in Greece, to the professional soldier who came from abroad and fought for hire. The Greek no longer stood weapon in hand ready to defend his home and his city-community against every assault. He found the holding of city offices becoming a profession, as that of the soldier had long been. Losing his interest in the State, he turned to his personal affairs, the cultivation of himself. The patriotic sense of responsibility for the welfare of the city-state which he loved, and the fine moral earnestness which this responsibility roused, no longer animated the Greek mind nor quickened it to the loftiest achievements in politics, in art, in architecture, in literature, and in original thought. The Greek city-states, in competition among themselves, had developed the highest type of civilization which,the world had ever seen, but in this process the city-states themselves had politically perished. In many Greek cities only a discouraged remnant of the citizens- was left after the emigration to Asia (§ 724). The cattle often browsed on the grass in the public square before the town hall in such cities of the Greeks. Not even their own Hellas was a unified nation.
A larger world had engulfed the old Greek city-states. But this Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean had by 200 B.C. reached a.point in its own wars and rivalries when it was to feel the iron hand of a great new military power from the distant world of the western Mediterranean. At this point,
1 It was as if the citizens of the United States were termed Bostonians, New Yorkers, Philadelphians, Chicagoans, etc.
The Civilization of the Hellenistic Age 483
therefore (200 B.C.), we shall be unable to understand the further story of the eastern Mediterranean, until we have turned back and taken up the career of the western Mediterranean world. There in the West for some three centuries the city of Rome had been developing a power which was to unite both the East and the West into a vast empire including the whole Mediterranean.
QUESTIONS
Section 68. What was the prevalent language of the Hellenistic Age ? How is the Rosetta Stone an example of this fact ? Describe the improvements in houses. What written documents tell us of this age, and how have they been preserved? Describe the new Hellenistic cities, especially Priene. What new forms of architecture came in? Describe the commerce of Alexandria; its parks and public buildings. Describe the important examples of the sculpture of tragic and violent action. What can you say of such subjects in painting?
Section 69. What can you say of inventions in the Hellenistic Age? of improvements in time measurement? of the achievements of Archimedes? Tell about the life of the Alexandrian scientists. Which of them wrote a geometry that is still in use ? What great truth did Aristarchus discover? How did Eratosthenes compute the size of the earth? Describe the growth of geographical knowledge; the world map of Eratosthenes; the study of animal life and medicine. What can you say of the rise of libraries ? Who was the first great-librarian, and what did he do? What effect had the libraries on publishing? on language study? Discuss the changes in literature.
Section 70. Discuss the gymnasium as a source of education. What professions could a boy study? How could he take up scientific study and research ? Where did a youth study philosophy ? What two philosophical schools first arose at Athens ? What did Aristotle do ? What can you say about his rank as a thinker ? Name the two later schools of philosophy at Athens. What was their purpose? What had happened to the old gods?
Section 71. What kind of a world had now grown up in the eastern Mediterranean? What can you say of citizenship there? Under what form of state had Greek civilization chiefly developed? What had now become of the Greek city-state ? What was now to become of the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean world ?
CHAPTER XXII
769. The
Mediterranean and its shore lands form the main part of the ancient world
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF ITALY
Section 72. The Western Mediterranean World
While we have been following the history of the eastern Mediterranean and the peoples grouped about it, the story of. its western shores has largely dropped out of sight. Before we turn to this Western world, however, let us endeavor to gain a picture of the Mediterranean world as a whole. This sea is a very large body of water, almost as long as Europe
Note. The above headpiece shows an ancient bronze wolf (sixth century b. c.), wrought by Greek artists in Italy (§ 831), and illustrates the influence of Greek civilization in Rome even before 500 B.C. The two infants nourished by the she-wolf are later additions put there in accordance with the tradition at Rome that the city was founded by these twin brothers named Romulus and Remus. Their ancestor, so said the tradition, was ./Eneas (§ 1003), one of the Trojan heroes, who had fled from Troy after its destruction (§ 375), and after many adventures had arrived in Italy. His son founded and became king of Alba Longa (§ 783). In the midst of « family feud among his descendants, these twin boys, the sons of the War-god, Mars, were bom, and after they had been set adrift in the Tiber by the ruling king, they gently ran aground at the base of the Palatine Hill, where a she-wolf found and nourished them. When they grew up they returned home to Alba Longa, claimed their rights, and eventually founded Rome. Similar legends formed all that the Romans knew of their early history through the period of the kings (see p. 497, footnote) and far down into the Republic.
484
«
ITALY
AND ADJACENT LANDS before
THE SUPREMACY OF ROME
Scale of Miles (5 10 20 30 40 GO 100 150
Etruscans J Italians Carthaginians Gaul, Liguria, Apulia and Calabria Greek Colonies are indicated by in-lining names in blue
The Western Mediterranean World 485
, itself. Its length is about twenty-four hundred miles, and laid out across the United States, it would reach from New York over into California. It is important for us to bear in mind that the ancient world was largely made up of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. To these shore lands we have chiefly to add the Black Sea and the oriental lands on the east. The stage of ancient history was then, to a large extent, the Mediterranean and its shores.
Now the Mediterranean is not a single compact body of water, like one of our Great Lakes." A land bridge made up of Italy and Sicily extends almost across this great sea and divides it into two parts, an eastern and a western basin. There are no accepted geographical names for these two basins, but we may call them, for convenience, the eastern and the western Mediterranean worlds. We have been following the story of civilized men in the eastern Mediterranean world; we must now turn back and take up the story of the western Mediterranean world also.
The story of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean world began very early under the leadership of the Orient. On the other hand, the peoples of the western Mediterranean world were too far away to receive from the Orient such strong influences toward civilization. Hence the West had lagged far behind, and much of it had made little advance in civilization since the Stone Age life of the Swiss lake-villages. But a study of the map (p. 288) shows us that the western Mediterranean world is not wholly separated from the eastern, which, with its Greek and Hellenistic civilization, overlapped at its western end with .the western Mediterranean world. Here then, in southern Italy and Sicily, we shall see the eastern Mediterranean civili^ng the western.
The most important land in the western Mediterranean world in early times was Italy. It slopes westward in the main; it thus faces and belongs to the western Mediterranean world. The Italian peninsula, thrusting far out into the sea (see map,
770. Division of the Mediterranean into an eastern and a western basin
771. Spread of civilization from the eastern Mediterranean world to the backward western Mediterranean
772. Italy: its geography and climate
486
/incienz i imes
773. Earliest migrations into Italy
774. Earliest metal in Italy and its oriental names
p. 484), is nearly six hundred miles long; that is,, about half again as long as the peninsula of Florida. Italy1 is not only four times as large as Greece, but, unlike Greece, it is not cut up by a tangle of mountains into tortuous valleys and tiny plains. The main chain of "the Apennines, though crossing the peninsula obliquely in the north, is nearly parallel with the coasts, and many of its outlying ridges are quite so. There are larger plains for the cultivation of grain than we find anywhere in Greece; at the same time there is much more room for upland pasturage of flocks and herds. A considerably larger population can be supported in the plains of Italy than in Greece. At the same time the coast is not so cut up and indented as in Greece; there are fewer good harbors. Hence agriculture and live stock developed much earlier than trade.
The fertile plains and forest-clad slopes of Italy have always attracted the peoples of northern Europe to forsake their own bleak and wintry lands and migrate to this warm and sunny peninsula in the southern sea. By 2000 B.C. the lake-dwellers of Late Stone Age Switzerland (§§ 27-34) pushed southward through the Alpine passes and occupied the lakes of northern Italy. The remains of over a hundred of their pile-supported settlements (Fig. 225) have also been found under the soil of the Po valley, once a vast morass, which these people reclaimed by erecting their pile dwellings further and further out in it. The city of Venice, still standing on piles, although it is built mostly of stone, is a surviving example of the way the lake-dwellers once built their little wooden houses on piles in the same region. They had their influence on the later Romans, who afterward made their military camps on a plan exactly like that of the Po valley pile villages (Fig. 225).
When these people reached the Po valley, they had already received metal, which is found in all their settlements. The oriental source of this metal is still evident in the names which
^ The area of Italy is about 110,000 square miles, about twice as large as Illinois,-and not quite four times the area of South Carolina.
The Western Mediterranean World 487
copper and bronze brought with them frqm the East into Italy. Our word " copper ” had the form cuprum in Italy, from the name of the island of Cyprus (ancient Cuprus) (see map, p. 288), whose rich mines supplied the Mediterranean lands with copper from very early times. Our word " bronze ” is probably derived from the first part of the name of the city of Brondesium (later Brundisium, now called Brindisi) at the back of the heel of Italy, where it was so near the vEgean that it very early received bronze from there (§ 336).
While the pile villagers were settling in the Po valley, the tribes forming the western end of the Indo-European migration (Fig. 112) began to feel the attractiveness of the warm and verdant hills of Italy.
Probably not long after Greek peninsula (§37 blood had entered the
Fig. 225. Ground Plan of a Prehistoric Pile Village in Northern Italy
The settlement was surrounded by p moat 775. West-(A) nearly loo feet across, filled with water ern w*nS from a connected river (C). Inside the moat Europeans was an earth wall (B) about 50 feet thick enters Italy at the base. The village thus inclosed was about 2000 feet long; that is, four city blocks. The whole village, being in the marshes of the Po valley, was supported on piles, like the lake-villages (Fig. 15).
The plan and arrangement of streets are those of the Roman military camp later derived from it
the Greeks had pushed southward into the 1), the western tribes of Indo-European beautiful western Mediterranean world,
488
Ancient Times
into which the Italian peninsula extends. They came in successive migrations, but the most important group who settled in the central and southern parts of the peninsula were the Italic tribes, the earliest Italians. Their name, first applied by the Greeks to the South, was finally extended to the whole peninsula ; hence the name " Italy.” Probably within a few centuries they had also overflowed into Sicily. rj6. Uncivi- We remember that the Greeks, in conquering the .-Egean, “ta*‘and took possession of a highly civilized region on the borders of the West Orient. This was not the case with the Indo-European in
vaders of Italy. They found the western Mediterranean world still without civilization. It had no architecture, no fine buildings, no fortified cities, only the rudest arts and industries, no writing, and no literature. As the Italic tribes fought their way into the country the earlier dwellers in Italy must have taken to flight before them, as the vEgeansfled before the on-coming Greeks. Pictures of these early Westerners, the descendants of Stone Age Europe, are preserved on the Egyptian monuments of the thirteenth century b. c. They took service in the Egyptian army and were perhaps the very fugitives who were driven out before the Italic invasion of the West. Their weapons were huge bronze swords, which were simply enlarged Egyptian daggers (see tailpiece, p. 519) such as they had long imported. Thus these prehistoric Westerners had enough skill in working metals to invent the sword,1 which Europe still continues to use. 777. The Besides the Italic invaders there were in the western Mediter-
rivais con-t£rn ranean world three rival peoples, all of whom came from the Italic tibes- eastern Mediterranean world. While fighting among themselves, first, the the Italic peoples suddenly saw landing on the western coast of Italy a bold race of sea rovers whom we call the Etruscans. They were a people whose origin is still uncertain; they probably had an earlier home in western Asia Minor, and the
1 A curved blade, of one edge only, was known in the Egyptian Empire and * also in the Assyrian Empire, but it was little used and never became one of the recognized arms of an oriental army. The two-edged sword, the descendant of the dagger, as used by the Roman army, was of Western origin.
The Western Mediterranean World 489
Egyptian monuments tell us of their sea raids on the coast of the Delta as far back as the thirteenth century B.C., at a time when they were perhaps leaving Asia Minor in search of a new home in Italy. In any case the Etruscans were settled in Italy by 1000 b.c. They thrust back the Indo-European tribes, and finally gained control of the west coast of Italy from the Bay of Naples almost to Genoa, including much of
The Four Rival Peoples of the Western Mediterranean : Etruscans, Italic Tribes, Greeks, and Carthaginians
the inland country as far back as the Apennines and even into the Po valley. They seemed destined to become the final lords of Italy, and they continued as an important people of the West far down into Roman history, as we shall see.
The Carthaginians were the second of the three rivals of 778. Second, the Italic tribes. During their great mercantile prosperity g^nianstha"/’ after 1000 B.C., the Phoenicians carried their commerce far ^
into the western Mediterranean, as we have already stated /
(§ 397). On the African coast opposite Sicily they established/^
490
Ancient Times
779. Third, the Greeks
780. The
Greeks repulse the Carthaginians from Sicily and the Etruscans from Great Greece
781. Empire of Dionysius of Syracuse nd its fall
a flourishing commercial city called Carthage, which was before long the leading harbor in the western Mediterranean (Fig. 239). The Carthaginians soon held the northern coast of Africa westward to the Atlantic. Besides gaining southern Spain, they were also absorbing the islands of the western Mediterranean, especially Sicily.
The Carthaginians were endeavoring to make the western Mediterranean their own, when the Italic peoples saw their third rivals invading the West. They were the Greeks. We have already followed the expansion of the Greeks as they founded their city-states along the coast of southern Italy and in Sicily in the eighth century B.C. (§§437-443). The strife among these city-states made the Greeks of the West as unable to unite into a Greek nation as Greece itself had been. The strongest of all the western Greek cities was Syracuse, which took the lead more than once. We recall how the Athenians tried to conquer the West by "capturing Syracuse (§ 602).
Although we have spoken of these three peoples — Etruscans, Carthaginians, and Greeks—as the three rivals of the Italic tribes in the West, these Italic tribes were at first so insignificant that the rivalry was long a three-cornered one, with the Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy maintaining themselves on two fronts against both Carthaginians and Etruscans. We remember how in the famous year of Salamis the Greeks of Syracuse won a great battle against the Carthaginians (§514) and saved Sicily from being conquered by them (480 B.C.). Only a few years later it was also Syracuse which met the bold Etruscan sea robbers as their fleets appeared in the South, and totally defeated them (Fig. 226). The western Greeks therefore played an important part in the political situation, first by long preventing the Carthaginians from seizing Sicily and southern Italy, and second by breaking the sea power of the Etruscans.
By 400 B.C. Dionysius, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse, was building up a powerful empire in Sicily and southern Italy, which looked like a permanent union of the western Greeks
The Western Mediterranean World 491
as a nation. But the successors of Dionysius were not as efficient as he. They called in the great philosopher Plato, and they attempted to carry out some of his idealistic theories of government (§ 673), but the result was a disastrous collapse of the young Syracusan Empire (357-354 B.C.). Plato himself expressed the fear that the Greek language was then about to die out in Sicily, and that the Carthaginians or one of the rising Indo-European tribes of Italy would triumph in Sicily.
Although the western Greeks, like the homeland, failed to unite in a strong and permanent state, the influence of their civilization in the West was all the more important. Their civilization was essentially the same as that which we have already studied (Chapters XI-XXI). At the very time when Syracuse was victoriously beating back the Carthaginians and Etruscans on two fronts, some of the noblest monuments of Greek architecture were rising in these Western cities (Fig. 219, and Plate VII, p. 560). In such wonderful buildings as these, great architecture made its first appearance in the western Mediterranean. The same was true of many other contributions of Greek culture with which we are now familiar. Thus fifteen hundred years after the Italic tribes had first settled in Italy, there grew up on the south of them a wonderful world of civilization, which went on growing and developing to reach its highest in that Hellenistic culture which brought forth an Archimedes at
FiG.226. Etruscan Helmet captured by the Greeks of Syracuse in their Victory over the Etruscans AT CUM^E IN 474 B.C.
Hiero, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse, dedicated this helmet at Olympia as part of the spoil which he took from the Etruscans in his great naval victory of Cumae (§ 780). It is now in the British Museum, and it still bears the dedicatory inscription placed upon it by the Syracusan tyrant nearly twenty-four hundred years ago
782. Western Greek cities bring civilization into the western Mediterranean world
492
Ancient Times
783. The.
tribes of Latitim, and Alba Longa the leading Latin town
Syracuse (§ 742). Let us now turn back to follow the career of the barbarous Italic tribes of central Italy under the leadership of Rome, and watch them slowly gaining organization and power, and finally civilization, as they are dominated first by the Etruscan and then by the Greek culture which we have been' recalling.
Section 73. Earliest Rome
On the south or east bank of the Tiber, which flows into the sea in the middle of the west coast of Italy (see map, p. 484), there was a group of Italic tribes known as the Latins. In the
Fig. 227. A Glimpse across the Plain of Latium and the Appian Way to the Distant Alban Mountains
In the foreground is a short stretch of the Appian Way, the earliest fine road built by the Romans. It extended from Rome southward to Capua, and was finally extended to Brundisium. The large round tower is a famous tomb, built for a noble Roman lady named Cecilia Metella
days when1 the Etruscan sea-raiders first landed on the shores north of the Tiber, these Latin tribes had occupied a plain (Fig. 227) less than thirty by forty miles,1 that is, smaller than many an American county. They called it " Latium,” whence
1 Latium probably contained something over seven hundred square miles.
The Western Mediterranean World 493
their own name, " Latins.’' Like their Italic neighbors they lived, scattered in small communities, cultivating grain and pasturing flocks on the upland. Their land was not very fertile, and the battle for existence developed hardy and tenacious children of the soil. Once a year they went up to the Alban Mount (Fig. 227), where all the Latin tribes united in a feast of their
chief god, Jupiter, whose rude mud-brick sanctuary was on the mount. Close by was a small town called Alba Longa, whose leadership the Latin tribes followed when they were obliged, as they very often were, to unite and repel the attacks of their hostile neighbors on all sides. They watched very anxiously the growth of the flourishing Etruscan towns on the other side of the Tiber, and they did what they could to keep the Etruscans from crossing to the Latin side.
494
Ancient Times
784. The
emergence of early Rome
When these Latin peasants needed weapons or tools, they were obliged to carry up a little grain or an ox to a trading post on the south side of the Tiber, just above the coast marshes, which extended some ten or twelve miles inland from the river’s mouth. Shallow water at this point, and an island (Fig. 228), made an easy crossing of the river, and the metal tools of the early settlers had enabled them to build a stanch
Fig. 228. The Tiber and its Island at Rome
The Tiber is not a large river, but when swollen by the spring freshets, it still sometimes floods a large portion of Rome, doing serious damage. The houses which we see on the island are some of them old, but not as old as the ancient Rome we are to study. The bridges, however, are very old. The one on the right of the island was built of massive stone masonry by L. Fabricius in 62 B.C. It has been standing for over two thousand years. Many great Romans, like Julius Caesar, whose names are familiar to us, must have crossed this bridge often
bridge here. Overlooking the bridge was a bold hill called the Palatine, and a square stronghold crowning the hill guarded the river crossing. Several neighboring hills bore straggling villages, but the stronghold on the Palatine was their leader. Here, stopped by the shoals and the bridge, moored now and then an Etruscan ship which had sailed up the Tiber, the only navigable river in Italy. On the low marshy ground, encircled by the hills, was an open-air market, beside an old cemetery belonging
The Western Mediterranean World 495
to the villages (Fig. 229). Here in the Forum, as they called this valley market by the cemetery, our Latin peasant could meet the Etruscan traders and exchange his grain or his ox for the metal tools or weapons which he needed. These were now of iron, but he remembered the stories of his fathers, telling how all their tools and weapons were formerly of bronze. The population of the villages was very mixed — some Latin families who had taken to trading or owned fields near by, Etruscan traders and landowners, and a few oversea strangers of various nationalities, with many outcasts and refugees from outlying communities.
Such must have been the condition of the group of villages called Rome probably as early as 1000 B.C. (but cf. Fig. 229).
The fears of the Latin tribes regarding an invasion of the Etruscans were finally realized. The Etruscan towns after 800 B.C. stretched far across northern Italy — a great group of allied city-kingdoms, each with its fortified city. Perhaps as early as 750 b.c. one of their princes crossed the Tiber, drove out the last of the line of Latin chieftains, and took possession of the stronghold on the Palatine. From this place as his castle and palace he gained
Fig. 229. Grave of Prehistoric Villager FOUND UNDER THE FoRUM AT ROME
Excavations under the Forum (plan, p. 500) have disclosed a cemetery of graves like this. The skeleton which we see here is that of one of the prehistoric men who lived in the villages on the summits of the neighboring hills, later united to form Rome (§ 785). The tools, weapons, and pottery found in these graves show that these people lived not many generations after 1000 B.C., in the days when bronze was giving way to iron (§ 784)
785. Rome
seized by Etruscans (about 750 B.C.)
Ancient Times
control of the villages on the hills above the Tiber, which then gradually merged into the city of Rome. These Etruscan kings soon extended their power over the Latin tribes of the Plain of
Fig. 230. A Street of Etruscan Tombs at Ancient Cere not far North of Rome
The tomb-chamber, or sometimes several such chambers within, contained a sarcophagus in which the body was laid. It was often accompanied with jewelry of gold and silver, furniture, implements, and weapons (Fig. 231), besides beautiful vases (Fig. 164). The walls of the chambers were often painted with decorative scenes from the life of the Etruscans and from scenes of Greek mythology,'learned by the Etruscans from their intercourse with the Greeks. The Etruscans buried here lived in a strong walled town of which the ruins He near by. Their manufactures, especially in bronze, flourished, and they carried on profitable commerce through their harbor town, only a few miles below their city. In one of these tombs the name of the deceased is inscribed on the wall as "Tarkhnas,” which can be nothing else than Tarquinius, the name preserved in Roman tradition as that of the latest kings of Rome
Latium, and the town of Alba Longa by the Alban Mount, which once led the Latins, disappeared. Thus Rome became a city-kingdom under an Etruscan king, like the other Etruscan
The Western Mediterranean World 497
cities which stretched from Capua far north to the harbor of Genoa. And such it remained for two centuries and a half. Although Rome was ruled by a line of Etruscan kings, it must be borne in mind that the population of Latium which the Etruscan kings governed continued to be Latin and to speak the Latin tongue.1
Etruscan ships had known Greek
1 The above presentation makes the line of early kings at Rome (about 750 to about 500 B.C.) exclusively Etruscan. The traditional founding of Rome not long before 750 B.C. would then correspond to its capture and establishment as a strong kingdom by the Etruscans. We possess no written doc- FlG. 231. ETRUSCAN CHARIOT OF BRONZE uments of Rome for # #
this early period. We This magnificent work is the finest surviving are obliged to make product of Etruscan skill in bronze (§ 787). It our conclusions largely was found in an Etruscan tomb (Fig. 230) and on the basis of a study is- now in the possession of the Metropolitan of archaeological re- Museum of New York. It probably dates from mains - surviving in - the sixth century B.C.
Rome and Latium and '
vicinity. Had these remains, together with the important elements of Etruscan civilization adopted by the Romans, formed our only evidence, no one would ever have suggested any other theory than that the kings of Rome were Etruscan. The later Romans themselves, however, with evident disinclination to believe that their early kings had been outsiders, cherished a tradition that their kings were native Romans. This tradition, with many picturesque and pleasing incidents (headpiece, p. 484), has found a place in literature, and is still widely believed. It is possible that there may be some slight measure of truth in this tradition, but it is not very probable in view of all the known evidence.
•786. The Etruscans learn Greek writing
498
Ancient Times
787. Etruscans learn Greek industries, art, and architecture
waters since Mycenaean days, and the Etruscans were constantly trafficking in the Greek harbors. There they learned to write their language with Greek letters. Many tombs (Fig. 230) containing such inscriptions still survive in Italy. Although we know the letters and can pronounce the Etruscan words,
Fig. 232. A View of the Tiber with the Aventine Hill and the Etruscan Drain
As we look down the Tiber in this view, we stand not far from our former position looking up the river (Fig. 228) (cf. map, p. 500)' The Aventine Hill is at the left. Along its foot, at the water’s edge, extend the houses of modern Rome. At this end of this row of houses we see the arched opening of the ancient Etruscan sewer, or drain (§ 7SS), which served to drain the Forum under which it passed. The Romans called it the Cloaca Maxima (chief sewer). Although much altered in later times, its most ancient portions are probably the oldest surviving masonry at Rome
scholars are still unable to understand them; nor can the race of the Etruscans as yet be determined from them.
This intercourse with Greece brought in beautiful Greek pottery (Fig. 164), and the Etruscans quickly learned to make similar decorative paintings. Many such paintings still cover the walls of Etruscan tombs and show us how the Etruscans looked, the clothing they wore, and the weapons they carried.
The Western Mediterranean World 499
Having learned to mine copper, they early produced such fine work in' bronze (Fig. 231) that it even excelled the metal work of the Greeks for a time, and they developed a flourishing commerce in this industry. They likewise borrowed a great deal from Grecian architecture, but unlike the Greeks they made plentiful use of the arch, with which they had probably become acquainted in Asia Minor (Fig. 224). It was the Etruscans who introduced the arch into Italy. Their architecture was the earliest known in the city of Rome, and always had a great influence upon the architecture of the Romans.
The Etruscan kings introduced great improvements into Rome. The Forum, the low market valley, was often flooded in the rainy season, and they built a heavy masonry drain arched at the top, which carried off the water to the river and made the city much more healthful. This ancient sewer drain still survives (Fig. 232). On the hill called the Capitol, between the Forum and the Tiber, they built a temple to Jupiter, the State god, which survived for centuries. But the cruelty and tyranny of the Etruscan rulers finally caused a revolt, led probably by the Etruscan nobles themselves, and the kings of Rome were driven out. The fugitive king and his followers fled northward to their kinsmen, to Caere, where Etruscan tombs which probably belonged to them still survive (Fig. 230). Thus about 500 B.C. the career of Rome under kings came to an end; but the two and a half centuries of Etruscan rule left their mark on Rome, always afterward discernible in architecture, religion, tribal organization, and some other things.
Section 74. The Early Republic : its Progress and Government
During this Etruscan period, Greek influences were equally important in Latium. Down at the dock below the Tiber bridge, ships from the Greek cities of the south were becoming more and more common. Long before the Etruscan kings were
788. Rule of the Etruscan kings of Rome and their expulsion (about 500 B.C.)
789. Greek alphabet adopted in Rome
Soo
Ancient Times
driven out, the Roman trader had gradually learned to pick out the names of familiar objects of trade in the bills handed him by the Greek merchants. Erelong the Roman traders too were scribbling memoranda of their own with the same Greek
Map of Early Rome showing the Successive Stages of its Growth
letters, which thus became likewise the Roman alphabet, slightly changed to suit the Latin language. Thus the oriental alphabet was carried one step further in the, long westward journey which finally made it the alphabet with which this book is printed. In the hands of the Carthaginians and Romans in the west, and the Arameans (§ 205) on the east, the
The Western Mediterranean World 501
Phoenician alphabet and its descendent alphabets now stretched from India to the Atlantic (Fig. 160).
There had been no Roman ships at the Tiber docks at first, but as time passed a Roman mechanic here and there learned to build a ship like those of the Greeks alongside it. As Roman traffic thus grew, it was found very inconvenient to pay bills
A B
Fig. 233. Specimens of Early Roman Copper Money
In the time of Alexander the Great (second half of the fourth century B.C.), the Romans found it too inconvenient to continue paying their debts in goods, especially in cattle {§ 784). They therefore cast copper in blocks, each block with the figure of an ox upon it (see A, above), to indicate its value. The Roman word for cattle {pecus) was the origin of their frequent word for property {pecunia) and has descended to us in our common word ” pecuniary.” These blocks were unwieldy, and influenced by the Greeks, the Romans then cast large disks of copper (&, above), which also were very ponderous, each weighing nearly a pound Troy. Hence this coin, called an as, was divided into twelve smaller coins, each called an ounce (Roman unci a), and there were copper coins of two, three, four, and six uncias. When two generations later (268 B.C.) the Romans began to coin silver (see Fig. 235), copper was no longer used for large payments and the 'as was reduced in size to one sixth its former weight
with grain and oxen while the Greek merchant at the dock paid his bills with copper and silver coins. For a long time instead of the oxen themselves, rough bars of copper were used, each stamped with the figure of an ox (Fig. 233, A). It was not until over a hundred and fifty years after the Etruscan kings had been driven out that the Romans issued actual copper coins (Fig. 233, B). Later, as contact with the Greek cities increased,
790. Greek influence in shipbuilding, business, money, and measures in Rome
502
Ancient Times
791. Traces of Greek speech in Rome and Latium
792. Greek influences — religion
793. Oracles
the Romans also began to issue silver coins, using as a basis the Attic drachma (§ 832). In the same way, too, the Romans gradually adopted the oriental measures of length and of bulk with which the Greeks measured out to them the things they bought.
Greek speech too began to leave its traces in the Latin speech of Rome. The Latin townsmen and peasants learned the Greek words for the clothing offered to them for sale, or for household utensils and pottery and other things brought in by the Greeks. So the Phoenician garment which the Greek merchants called kitbn (§ 394), the Latin peasants pronounced ktun (ktodn), and in course of time they gave it a Latin ending ic arid dropped the k, so that it became our familiar word " tunic.”
But the Greeks also brought in things which could not be weighed and measured like produce, from a realm of which the Roman was beginning to catch fleeting glimpses. For the peasant heard of strange gods of the Greeks, and he was told that they were the counterparts or the originals of his own gods. For him there was a god over each realm in nature and each field of human life: Jupiter was the great Sky-god and king of all the gods ; Mai;s, the patron of all warriors ; Venus, the queen of love; Juno, an ancient Sky-goddess, was protectress of women, of birth and marriage, while Vesta, too, watched over the household life, with its hearth fire surviving from the nomad days of the fathers on the Asiatic steppe two thousand years before (§ 249); Ceres was the goddess who maintained the fruitfulness of the earth, and especially the grainfields (cf. English " cereal ”); and Mercury was the messenger of the gods who protected intercourse and merchandising, as his name shows. The streets were full of Greek stories regarding the heroic adventures of these divinities when they were on earth. The Roman learned that Venus was the Greek Aphrodite, Mercury was Hermes, Ceres was Demeter, and so on.
This process was aided by the influence of Greek oracles. The oracles delivered by the Greek Sibyl, the prophetess of
The Western Mediterranean World 503
Apollo of Delphi (Fig. 172), were deeply reverenced Italy. Gathered in the Sibylline Books, they were regarded by the Romans as mysterious revelations of the future. Another method of reading the future was brought in by the Etruscans, who were able to discover in the liver (Fig. 234) of a sheep killed for sacrifice signs which they believed revealed the future. This art had been received by the Etruscans from the
Fig. 234. Bronze Model of a Liver used by the Etruscans for Divination, after the Old Babylonian Manner
The surface of the model is divided by lines into sections, forming a kind of guiding diagram like the model livers of baked clay employed by the Babylonians (Fig. 94). The Etruscans must have received the art in the East, presumably in Asia Minor, before they migrated to Italy
Babylonians (Fig. 94) by way of Asia Minor, whence the Etruscans brought it to Italy.
An art like this appealed to the rather coldly calculating mind of the Roman. As he looked toward his gods he felt no doubts or problems, like those which troubled the spirit of Euripides (§ 581). He lacked the warm and vivid imagination of the Greeks, which had created the beautiful Greek mythology. He was inclined to regard acts of worship as the mere fulfillment of a contract by which the gods must bestow favors if the worshiper was faithful in the performance of his duties. In religion, therefore, the Roman saw only a list of mechanical
794. Mechanical character of Roman religion and the Roman mind
S°4
Ancient Times
795. Practical sagacity of the Romans
796. Elective consuls replace the kings; the Roman Republic is established
duties, ._such as the presentation of offerings, the sacrifice of animals, and the like, and such duties were easily fulfilled. In accordance with this rather legal conception of religion, he was fitted for great achievements in political and legal organization, but not for new and original developments in religion, art, literature, or discoveries in science.
Hence it is that in sketching the beginnings of Rome we have found no Homer to picture to us in noble verse the heroic days of her early struggles. Although less gifted than the Greeks, the Romans nevertheless possessed a remarkable ability in applying sober and practical common sense, enlightened by experietice, to every problem they met. As we shall see, the Romans so contrived their government that it was led and guided by the combined experience of the ripest and most skilled leaders among them. Thus the Roman State was never exposed to the momentary whims of an inexperienced multitude as in Athens. It was this wisdom and sagacity of the Romans in practical affairs which gave them marked superiority over the Greeks in such matters. Let us now see how Roman political wisdom developed the invincible Roman State.
When the Etruscan kings were driven out of Rome, about 500 B.C., the nobles, called patricians, who had been chiefly instrumental in expelling them, were in control of the government. But none of their number was able to make himself king. Perhaps by compromise with the people, the patricians agreed that two of their number should be elected as heads of the State. These two magistrates, called consuls, were both to have the same powers, were to serve for a year only and then give way to two Others. To choose them, annual elections were held in an assembly of the weapon-bearing men, largely under the control of the patricians. Nevertheless, we must call this new state a republic, of which the consuls were the presidents ; for the people had a voice in electing them. But as only patricians could serve as consuls, their government--was
The Western Mediterranean World 505
very oppressive. The people, called the plebs (compare our " plebeian ”), especially among the Latin tribes, refused to submit to such oppression.
The patricians were unable to get on without the help of the peasants as soldiers in their frequent wars. They therefore agreed to give the people a larger share in the government, by allowing them in their own assembly to elect four new officials, called tribunes. The tribunes had the right to veto the action of any officer of the government'—-even that of the consuls/ themselves. When any citizen was treated unjustly by a consul1 he had only to appeal to the tribunes, and they could rescind the consul’s unjust action and even save a citizen from sentence of death. The tribunes therefore gained great influence, because they could stop the enforcement of any law they thought -unjust. Later, as government business increased, their number was also increased.
In the beginning it would seem that almost all the business of government was in the hands of the consuls. They were the commanding generals of the army in war, they had charge of the public funds in the treasury, and they were the judges in all cases at law. It was difficult to combine all these duties. The consuls were often obliged to be absent from Rome for long periods while leading the army, and at such times they were of course unable to give any attention to cases at law, and two citizens having a lawsuit might be obliged to wait until the war was over. Much other ordinary business, like that of the treasury, demanded more time than the consuls could possibly give it. They found it difficult to carry on the volume of business which the government required.
This situation made it necessary to create new officers for various kinds of business. To take care of the government funds, treasury officials called qwzstors were appointed. A number of officials called censors were required to keep lists of the people, to assess the amount of taxes each citizen owed, to determine voting rights, and to look after the daily conduct
797. The
tribunes defenders of the people
798. Inability of the consuls to attend to all the public business
799. Growing body of government officials
Ancient Times
800. Public questions and the controlling power of the patricians
801. The
struggle of the plebs and patricians
of the people and see that nothing improper was permitted. Our own use of the word " censor ” is derived from these Roman officials. For the decision of legal cases a judge called a prcetoi■ was appointed to assist the consul, and the number of such judges slowly increased. In times of great national danger it was customary to appoint some revered and trustworthy leader as the supreme ruler of the State. He was called the Dictator, and he could hold his power but a brief period.
But a government is called upon to do some other things of great importance besides attending to administrative, financial, and legal business. Important public questions arise which are not mere items of routine business. Examples of such questions are declaring war, restoring peace, and making new laws of all sorts. The consuls had great power and influence in all such matters, but they were much influenced by a council of patricians called the Senate (from Latin senex, meaning "old man”), which had existed even as far back as the Etruscan kings, who used to call upon the Senate for advice. Now the patricians enjoyed the exclusive right to serve as consuls, to sit in the Senate, and to hold almost all of the offices created to carry on the business of government (§ 799). The power which the patricians held, therefore, quite unfairly exceeded that of the plebeians.
The tribunes, as we have seen (§ 797), could protect the people from some injustices, and save their lives if they were-illegally condemned to death. But they could not secure to the citizen all his rights. The tribunes could not recover for the cattle of the people the vanished grass in the public pastures, when they had been nipped clean by the great herds of the patricians. The tribunes could not secure for a citizen the right to be elected as consul, or to become a senator, or to marry a patrician s daughter. The struggle which had resulted in the appointment of the tribunes, therefore, went on — a struggle of the common people to win their rights from the wealthy and powerful. It was a struggle like that which we have followed
The Western Mediterranean World 507
in Athens and the other Greek states, tbut at Rome it reached a much wiser and more successful settlement. The citizens of Rome manfully stood forth for their rights, and without fighting, civil war, or bloodshed they secured them to a large extent in the course of the first two centuries after the founding of the Republic.
They insisted upon a record of the existing laws in writing, in order that they might know by what laws they were being judged. About fifty years after the establishment of the Republic, the earliest Roman laws were reduced to writing and engraved upon twelve tablets of bronze (450 B.C.). But at the same time the people demanded the right to share in the making of new laws, and to possess an assembly of the people, which might pass new laws.
Far back in the days of the kings the people had enjoyed the right to a limited share in the government. To express their opinion they gathered in an assembly called the Comitia. It was made up of groups of families or brotherhoods (like the Greek brotherhoods, § 385), each called a atria. Hence this assembly was called the Comitia airiata. Each such brotherhood assembled and voted by itself, and its decision then counted as one vote. A majority of the brotherhoods decided a question.
In the early days of the Republic, when the frequent wars kept the people much together in camp, arrayed in their fighting hundreds, or " centuries,” it easily became customary to call them together by centuries. Thus a new assembly by centuries arose, called for this reason the Comitia centuriata. Owing to the expense of arms and equipment, the men of wealth and influence in the centuries far outnumbered the poorer classes. The assembly by centuries was therefore controlled by the wealthy and noble classes ; they were soon electing the consuls, and erelong they had deprived the old assembly by brotherhoods of all its power.
At the same time another assembly of the people arose, intended to give them an opportunity to transact their own
802. The old laws reduced to writing and the question of new laws
803. The
earliest Roman assembly by brotherhoods (Comitia curiatd)
804. The
assembly by centuries
{Comitia centuriata)
5o8
Ancient Times
805. The
tribal
assembly
{Comitia tributa)
806. Lawmaking power of the assemblies and resulting laws making for equality of plebs with patricians
807. The
new nobility of former magistrates
plebeian public business concerning solely the common people. This third assembly came together by tribes, and it was therefore called the Comitia tributa, or tribal assembly. In this body every man’s vote was as good as another’s, and as it was presided over by the tribunes, elected to protect the people, the decisions of this-assenjbly really expressed the will of the people.
Having shaken off<the legal power of the Senate to control their action, these two assemblies, the centuriate and the tribal, became the lawmaking bodies of the Roman State. Eventually the people were also given voting rights in the centuriate assembly equal to those of the patricians and the wealthy. As a result the people were able to pass laws by which they, especially the last two assemblies, gained the right to make laws, and in this way' the people gradually secured a fairer share of the public lands and further social rights. Finally, and most important of all, these new laws increased the rights of the people to hold office. In the end Roman citizens elected their plebeian neighbors as censors and quaestors, as judges and at last even as consuls, and they saw men of the people sitting in the Senate.
This progress of the people in power brought with it important new developments affecting both society and government. Roman citizens had a deep respect for government and for its officials. The Roman consul appeared in public attended by twelve men called lictors, bearing the symbols of State authority. Each man carried a bundle of rods, suggesting the consul’s power to scourge the condemned; and from the midst of the rods rose an ax, symbolizing the consul’s legal right to inflict the death penalty. The other officials of high rank were likewise attended by a smaller group of lictors. The consuls and all the higher officials wore white robes edged with purple, a costume which only these men had the right to wear. When a magistrate went out of office he might assume his official garment from time to time on feast days. There soon grew up a group of once plebeian families, thus distinguished by the
The Western Mediterranean World 509
public service of its members, to whom the Roman citizens looked up with great respect. When the voters were called upon to select their candidates, they preferred members of these eminent families, especially for the consulship. A new nobility was thus formed, made up of such illustrious families and the old patricians.
This situation directly affected the Senate, the members of 808. The which had formerly been appointed from among the patricians ga^con-'^ by the consuls. A new law, however, authorized the censors make out the lists of senators, giving the preference to those who had been magistrates. Thus the new nobility 'of exmagistrates, formerly plebeians, entered the Senate, bringing in fresh blood from the ranks of the people.
As a result of these changes the Senate was made up of the 809. The three hundred men of Rome who had gained the most experi- fhTlea<fer-nS ence in government and in public affairs. When the herald’s ^consul trumpet echoed from the Forum, and the senators, responding to the call, crowded into the modest assembly hall beside the Forum and took their seats, the consul called them to order.
He was president of the Senate, and he and his colleague, the , other consul, were the heads of the State, with more power than any senator possessed. From his chair on the platform the consul looked down into the strong faces of wise and sagacious men, many of whom had already held his high office and knew far more about its duties than he did. Moreover, while he was in office for only a year, the men confronting him held their seats in the Senate for life, and most of them had been conducting public business there for years. The result was that their combined influence, operating steadily for many years, was too strong for the consul. Instead of telling the senators of his own plans and of the laws he desired, he found himseif listening to the proposals of the Senate and carrying out the will of the senators. As a result the consul became a kind of senatorial minister, carrying on the government according to instructions from the Senate. '
5io
Ancient Times
810. The
Senate gains control of lawmaking
811. The
Roman Senate the supreme leader of the State
In the matter of lawmaking a similar growth of the Senate’s influence took place. Although the populac assemblies (§§ 803805) had the right to make.laws, it was not in their power to propose a new law. They could vote upon it only after it had been proposed by a magistrate, especially by one of the tribunes, who were the presiding officers of the tribal assembly. The influence of the Senate on the magistrates was such that the magistrates discussed with the senators every law to be brought before the assemblies for adoption. The tribunes could stop the operation of any law, and hence the Senate had become accustomed to consult with them before a law was passed. The result was that the tribunes were given membership and seats in the Senate, and so added to the power and influence of that already powerful body.
By far the larger part of the Roman citizens lived too far away to come up to the city and vote. The small minority living in Rome, who could be present and vote at the meetings of the assemblies, were familiar with the. faces of the senators and they well knew the wisdom, skill, and experience of these old statesmen. They also knew that there was a strong feeling of patriotism among the senators, and standing at the open doors of the Senate hall they had heard the voice of many a gray-haired ex-consul whom they revered, as it rang through the Forum, in eloquent support of some patriotic measure or in earnest summons to national defense. Feeling too their own ignorance of public affairs, the Roman citizens were not unwilling that important public questions should be settled by the Senate. Thus the Roman Senate became a large committee of experienced statesmen, guiding and controlling the Roman State. They formed the greatest council of rulers which ever grew up in the ancient world, or perhaps in any age. They were a body of aristocrats, and their control of Rome made it an aristocratic state, in spite of its republican form. We are now to watch the steady development and
The Western Mediterranean World 511
progress of Roman power (see map, p. 516) under the wise and stable leadership of the Senate. We* should bear in mind, however, that the Senate’s power was a slow growth, continuing during the wars and conquests which we are now to follow.
Section 75. The Expansion of the Roman Republic and the Conquest of Italy.
It was a tiny nation which began its uncertain career after the expulsion of the Etruscan kings. The territory of the Roman Republic was the mere city with the adjacent fields for a very few miles around. On the other side of the Tiber lived the dreaded Etruscans, and on the Roman side of the river, all around the- little republic, lay the lands of the Latin tribes (§ 783), who had combined in what was called the Latin League (see map, p. 516). The league was independent and did. not acknowledge itself subject to Rome. But in their own struggle with their enemies, the Latin tribes found the leadership of the city indispensable-. The Latin League therefore made a perpetual treaty with Rome — a treaty uniting the league and the city in a combination for mutual defense under the leadership of Rome. But this arrangement produced only a loose union, not yet forming a unified nation. Nevertheless, the Roman Senate gave to the citizens of Latium privileges in Rome about equal to those of Roman citizens, and the Latins were therefore ready to fight for the defense of the city whose leadership they followed.
For two generations the new republic struggled for the preservation of its mere existence. This struggle against threatening enemies on all its frontiers, especially the Etruscans, was the motive power which stirred the little nation to constant effort, to vigorous life, and to steady growth. Fortunately for the Romans, within a generation after the foundation of the Republic the fleet of Syracuse utterly destroyed the Etruscan fleet (474 b.c.) (Fig. 226). Later the Etruscans
812. The
Latin League and the treaty with Rome
813. Early struggles of the Repub-lie: against Etruscans and Italic neighbors
512
Ancient Times
814. Agricultural colonization and expansion the Roman policy
were attacked in the rear by the Gauls (§722 and Fig. 215), who were at this time pouring over the Alpine passes into the valley of the Po and laying waste the Etruscan cities of the North. This weakening of the Etruscans at the hands of their enemies on both north and south probably saved Rome from destruction. It enabled the Romans to maintain a ten years’ siege of Veii, a strong southern fortress of the Etruscans only eight miles from Rome, till they captured and destroyed it (396 B.C.). At the same time the Italic tribes surrounding Latium on the south, east, and north were constantly invading and plundering the fields and pastures of the Latin tribes and threatening the city. Rome beat off these marauders, and by establishing a group of colonies along the coast south of the Tiber, formed a buffer against such invasions from the South. By 400 b. c. or a little after, the Romans had conquered and taken possession of a fringe of new territory on all sides, which protected them from their enemies.
In the new territory thus gained the Romans planted colonies of citizens, or they granted citizenship or other valuable privileges to the absorbed population. Roman peasants, obligated to bear Roman arms and having a voice in the government, thus pushed out into the expanding borders of Roman territory. This policy of agricultural expansion steadily and consistently followed by the Senate was irresistible, for it gave to Rome an ever-increasing body of brave and hardy citizen-soldiers, cultivating their own lands, and ready at all times to take up the sword in defense of the State which shielded them. The Roman policy was thus in striking contrast with the narrow methods of the Greek republics, which jealously prevented outsiders from gaining citizenship. It was the steady expansion of Rome under this policy which in a little over two centuries after the expulsion of the Etruscan kings made the little republic on the Tiber mistress of all Italy (see map, p. 516). •*>'
The second century of Roman expansion opened with a fearful catastrophe, which very nearly accomplished the complete
The Western Mediterranean World 513
destruction of the nation. In the first two decades after 400 B.C. the barbarian Gauls, who had been overrunning the territory of the Etruscans (§ 813), finally reached the lower Tiber, and the Roman army which went out to meet them was completely defeated. The city, still undefended by walls, was entirely at their mercy. They entered at once (382 B.C.), plundering and burning. Only the citadel on the Capitol hill held out against the barbarians. Long afterward Roman tradition told how even the citadel was being surprised at night by a party of Gauls who clambered up the heights, when the sacred geese, kept in a temple close by, aroused the garrison by their cackling, and the storming party was repulsed. Wearied by a long siege of the citadel the Gauls at length agreed to accept a ransom of gold and to return northward, where they settled in the valley of the Po. But they still remained a serious danger to the Romans.
As Rome recovered from this disaster, it was evident that the city needed fortifications, and for the first time masonry walls (plan, p. 500) were built around it. This gave the city a strength it had not before possessed. It gained the southern territory of the Etruscans, now much weakened by the inroads of the Gauls, and it also seized new possessions in the Campanian plain. The high-handed manner in which Rome was now -taking new lands seems to have alarmed even the Latin tribes, and they endeavored to break away from the control of the powerful walled city. In the two years’ war which resulted the city was completely victorious, 'and the Roman Senate forced the defeated Latin tribes to break up the Latin League (338 B.C.). The Roman Senate then proceeded to make separate treaties with each of the Latin tribes, and did not grant them as many privileges as formerly. Rome thus gained the undisputed leadership of the Latin tribes, which was at last to bring her the leadership of Italy.
The year 338 B.C., in which this important event took place, is a date to be well remembered, for it also witnessed
815. Capture of Rome by the Gauls (382 B.C.)
816. Subjugation of the Latin tribes and collapse of the Latin League (338 B.C.)
5i4
Ancient Times
817. The
leadership
of Greeks and Latins decided in the same year (338 B.C.)
818. The
new Samnite enemy and the opening of hostilities
819. The Samnite Wars (325290 B.C.) and the' battle of Sentinum (295 B.C.)
the defeat of the Greek cities at the hands of Philip of Macedon (§ 685). In the same year, therefore, both the Greeks and the Latins saw themselves conquered and falling under the leadership of a single state —- the Greeks under that of Macedonia, the Latins under that of Rome. But in Greece that leadership was in the hands of one man who might and did perish; while in Italy the leadership of the Latins was in the hands of a whole body of wise leaders, the Roman Senate. In sixty-five years they were now to gain the leadership of all Italy (see maps II, III, and IV, p. 516).
Meantime another formidable foe, a group of Italic tribes called the Samnites, had been gaining possession of the mountains which form the backbone of the Italian peninsula inland from Rome. They had gained some civilization from the Greek cities of the South, and they were able to muster a large army of hardy peasants, very dangerous in war. But they lacked the steadying and continuous leadership of a governing city like Rome. Some of them drifted down into the plains of Campania (see map, p. 484), where they captured Capua, one of the southern outposts of the Etruscans. Within forty years after the expulsion of the Gauls, the Samnites were in hostile collision with Rome. By 325 B.C. a fierce war broke out, which lasted with interruptions for a generation. The Romans lost several battles, and in one case were subjected by the Samnites to the ordeal of marching " under the yoke,” a humiliation which the Romans never forgot.1
But the resources of the Roman Senate were not confined to fighting. They gained lands and established Roman colonies on the east of the Apennines and in the plain of Campania. From these new possessions they were able to attack the Samnites from both sides of the mountains (see map II, p. 516). The Samnites attempted a combination of Rome’s enemies against her. They succeeded in shifting their army northward and
1 The defeated troops in token of their submission marched under 5 lance supported horizontally on two upright lances and called a " yoke.”
The Western Mediterranean World 515
joining forces with both the Etruscans and the Gauls. All central and much of northern Italy was now involved in the war. In the mountains midway between the upper Tiber and the eastern shores of Italy the Roman army met and crushed the combined forces of the allies in a terrible battle at Sentinum (295 B.C.). This battle decided the future of Italy for over two thousand years. It not only gave the Romans possession of central Italy, but it made them the leading power in the wljole peninsula (see map III, p. 516).
Henceforth the Etruscans were unable to maintain themselves as a leading power. One by one their cities were taken by the Romans, or they entered into alliance with Rome. The Gallic barbarians were beaten off, and the stream of Gallic invasion which was thus forced back in northern Italy by Rome flowed over eastward and southward into the Balkan Peninsula, as we have seen (§ 722). The settled Gauls, however, continued to hold the Po valley, and the northern boundary of the Roman conquests was along the Arnus River, south of the Apennines. Southward the resistance of the Samnites was easily crushed within five years after the battle at Sentinum. They and the other leading peoples of southern Italy, with the. exception of the' Greeks there, were forced to enter the Roman alliance. The Romans were supreme from the Arnus to the Greek cities of southern Italy (see map III, p. 516).
The great rivals in the Western world were now the Romans, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. As for the home cities of the Greeks, they were under the successors of Alexander, fighting among themselves for possession of the fragments of his empire (Chap. XX), while Rome was gaining the leadership of Italy. As for the western Greek colonies (§§ 440-441) four centuries of conflict among themselves had left them still a (iisunited group of cities fringing southern Italy and Sicily. They had long been fighting with the Italic tribes and other peoples of southern Italy, and a number of the Greek cities of the region had fallen. The survivors, alarmed at the
820. Rome the mistress of central and northern Italy to the Arnus River after Sentinum
821. Endeavor of the western Greeks to unite against Rome
III. Roman Power after the Samnite Wars (290 B.C.)
I. Italy at the Beginning of the Roman Republic (about 500 B.C.)
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IV. Roman Power after the War with Pyrrhus (275 B.C.)
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Expansion of Roman Power in Italy
The Western Mediterranean World 517
threatening expansion of Roman power, now made another endeavor to unite, and called in help from the outside.
The leading city of the Greeks in southern Italy was Taren-tum. Unable to secure effective aid from the now declining home cities of Greece, the men of Tarentum sent an appeal to Pyrrhus, the vigorous and able king of Epirus, just across from the heel of Italy. Pyrrhus fully understood the highly developed art of war as it had grown up with Epaminondas (§ 638) and Philip of Macedon (§ 681). Besides Thessalian horsemen, the best cavalry in the world, he had secured from the Orient a formidable innovation in the form of fighting elephants. With an army of well-trained Greek infantry of the phalanx besides, and his well-known talent as a soldier, Pyrrhus was a highly dangerous foe. His purpose was to form a great nation of the western Greeks in Sicily and Italy. Such a nation would have proved a formidable rival of both Rome and Carthage.
On the arrival of Pyrrhus he completely defeated the Romans at Heraclea! in 280 B.C., and in the following year they were routed again. Pyrrhus proceeded in triumph to Sicily, where he gained the whole island except the Carthaginian colony on the outermost western end (Lilybasum), which he could not capture for lack of,a fleet. He seemed about to succeed in his effort to establish a powerful western Greek empire, when he met with serious difficulties. The Carthaginians, who saw a dangerous rival rising only a few hours’ sail from their home harbor, sent a fleet to assist the Romans against Pyrrhus. When the ambassador of Pyrrhus arrived at Rome with proposals of peace, the Carthaginian fleet was at the mouth of the Tiber, and the Roman Senate resolutely refused to make peace while the army of Pyrrhus occupied Italian soil. At the same time the Greeks disagreed among themselves, as they always did at critical times. Pyrrhus then withdrew from Sicily, and finding himself unable to inflict a decisive defeat on the Romans, he returned to Epirus.
822. Pyrrhus of Epirus and his plan of forming an empire of the western Greeks
823. The war with Pyrrhus (280275 b.c.) ; Roman defeats at Heraclea (280 b.c.) and Asculum (279 B.C.)
Ancient Times
824. Rome in possession of the entire Italian peninsula; resulting rivalry between Rome and Carthage
One by one the helpless Greek cities now surrendered to the Roman army, and they had no choice but to accept alliance with the Romans (see map IV, p. 516). Thus ended all hope of a great Greek nation in the West. In two centuries and a quarter (500-275 B-c-) ^e tiny republic on the Tiber had gained the mastery of the entire Italian peninsula south of the Po valley (see map IV, p. 516). There were now but two rivals in the western Mediterranean world—Rome and Carthage. In following the inevitable struggle of these two for the mastery of the western Mediterranean world during the next two generations, we shall be watching the final conflict between the western wings of the two great racial lines, the Semitic and the Indo-European (Fig. 112). But before we take up this struggle we must learn more about the character and the civilization of the great Roman power which thus grew up in Italy. These men who won the supremacy of Italy for the little republic on the Tiber were the first generation of Romans about whom sufficient information has survived to make us well acquainted with them.
QUESTIONS
Section 72. Into what divisions does the Mediterranean fall? In which did civilization arise? Why? Describe Italy. Tel! about the earliest migrations into Italy and the incoming of metal. What Indo-European tribes came into Italy, and when? Did they find civilization there? What weapon had the western Mediterranean peoples devised? What three rivals of the Italic tribes came in? Tell about their coming. What did the Greeks accomplish against the Carthaginians and Etruscans? Did the western Greeks unite into a nation ? What did they bring into Italy?
Section 73. Describe Latium. What tribes settled there? What town first led them ? Where was the market of the Latins ? Who traded there? Describe the place. What was it called? Who seized it in the eighth century B.C.? What line of kings arose? Describe their rule and civilization.
Section 74. Whence did the Romans gain their alphabet ? What other Greek influences can you mention? What oriental mode of
The Western Mediterranean World 519
divination did the Etruscans and the Romans practice? What can you say of the religious ideas of the Romans? Who succeeded the Etruscan kings as rulers of Rome ? What magistrates did the people elect for their own protection? What great council arose? Who had the Exclusive right to serve as consuls and to sit in the Senate ? Describe the assemblies of the people. Who had the power to make laws ? What new nobility arose ? How did they gain control of the Senate ? How did the Senate gain the leadership of the State ? What can you say of this leadership ?
Section 75. What was the relation between Rome and the Latin tribes around it ? What was happening to the Etruscans after '500 B.C.? Describe the colonial policy of the Roman Senate. Tell about the coming of the Gauls. What happened to the Latin League in 338 B.C.? What happened in Greece the same year? Who were the Samnites? Tell the story of the Roman struggle with them. What battle ended it? When? Were the western Greeks able to unite against Rome? What did Tarentum do? Recount the war with Pyrrhus. What happened to the Greeks of Italy after the retirement of Pyrrhus ? How long had it taken Rome to gain the leadership of Italy ? ,
Note. The tailpiece below shows us the prehistoric warriors of the western Mediterranean in the thirteenth century B.C. Notice the heavy bronze swords carried with point up. They are simply elongated Egyptian daggers (Fig. 132 and § 776). The scene is engraved on the walls of the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt (Fig. 70)) built by Ramses II, in whose army these Westerners were serving. .
825. The problem of making Italy a nation
826. Self-governing local communities made allies
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CHAPTER XXIII
THE SUPREMACY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC IN ITALY AND* THE RIVALRY WITH CARTHAGE
Section 76. Italy under the Early Roman Republic
After the leadership of Italy had been gained by Rome, there were men still living who could, remember the Latin war (ended 338 B.C.), when Rome had lost even the surrounding fields of little Latium. Now, sixty-five years later, the city on the Tiber was mistress of all Italy. The new power over a large group of cities and states, thus gained within a single-lifetime, was exercised by the Roman Senate with the greatest skill and success. Had Rome annexed all the conquered lands, and endeavored to rule them from Rome, the population of Italy would have been dissatisfied, and constant revolts would have followed. How, then, was Italy to become a nation, controlled by Rome ?
The Romans began by granting the defeated cities a kind of citizenship. It entitled them to all the protection of the Roman State in carrying on commerce and business, to all
Note. The 'above headpiece represents the beautiful stone sarcophagus of one of the early Scipios, found in the family tomb on the Appian Way (Fig. 227). It is adorned with details of Greek architecture, which clearly show that it was done by a Greek artist (§ 831). Verses in early Latin, on the side of the sarcophagus, contain praises of the departed Scipio,
520
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 521
the rights of every Roman citizen in the law rourts, and, at the same time, to social privileges like that of intermarriage. But this citizenship did not entitle them to vote. In distant communities, however, no one felt the lack of this privilege, for in order to vote it was, necessary to go to Rome. Cities and communities controlled by Rome in this way were called " allies.” The protection of the powerful Roman State in carrying on business and commerce was of itself a very valuable advantage to the allies. They were therefore willing to place their troops entirely at the disposal of Rome, and also all their dealings with foreign peoples; for they still had full control of their own local internal affairs, except those of the army. In all this Rome wisely granted the different cities very different rights, and laid upon them highly varied restrictions. Thus no two cities were likely to* feel the same grievances or make common cause against Roman rule of Italy.
Rome had, however, gradually annexed a good deal of territory to pay her war expenses and to supply her increasing numbers of citizens with land. Her own full citizens thus occupied about one sixth of the territory of Italy. It consisted chiefly of the region between the Apennine Mountains and the sea, from Caere on the north to Capua and Cumae on the south (see map, p. 484). It likewise included some important areas in the Apennines and on the Adriatic coast. It was furthermore Rome’s policy to sprinkle Roman colonies through the territory of the allies. All Italy was thus more or less dotted with communities of Roman citizens. By these wise measures Rome gained and kept control of Italy.
Rome thus brought into a kind of unity what we may geographically call Italy; but an examination of its population will readily show us how far Italy really was from being a nation, even though controlled by Rome. Besides the Gauls, whose territory In the Po valley had not yet been taken over by the Romans, were the conquered Etruscans, who occupied a large part of northern Italy. In the central region were the Latins
827. Communities enjoying full Roman citizenship
828. Lack .of national 'unity in Italy: diversity of language
522
Ancient Times
829. Lack of national unity in Italy: no common traditions
830. Italy to become Latin in speech, Greek in ■civilization
and the other Italic tribes. These tribes all spoke related dialects, which were, however, so different that no one tribe could understand any of the others. Finally, in the South' were the Greek cities. There was therefore no common language in Italy, even among the Indo-Europeans, and this created a situation very different from that in Greece.
Neither did the peoples of Italy possess any common literary inheritance such as the Greeks had in the Homeric poems. 'Nothing in their history, like the Trojan War in that of the Greeks (§411), had ever given them common traditions. Roman organization had created a kind of United States of Italy, which might after a long time slowly merge into a nation. Meantime these peoples, of course, had no feeling of patriotism toward Rome. Speaking different languages, so that they did not understand one another when they met, they long remained quite distinct.
In language the future nation was to be Latin, the tongue of the ruling city ; geographically it comprised Italy ; politically it was Roman.1 When we consider Rome from the point of view of civilization, however, we are obliged to add a fourth name. For as time went on, Italy was to become in civilization more and more Greek. The Greek cities extended as far north as the plains of Campania, where Rome had early taken Capua, in size the second city of Italy. In the days of the war with Pyrrhus and after, the Roman soldiers had beheld with wonder and admiration the beautiful Greek temples in such cities as Paestum (Fig. 219) and Tarentum. Here for the first timethey saw also fine theaters, and they must have attended Greek plays, of which they understood little or nothing. But the races and athletic games in the handsome stadium of such a Greek city required no interpretation in order to be understood by the sturdy Roman soldiers.
^ Compare the similar application of three names to our own country. Politically we are the United States, geographically we are commonly called America, while our language is English.
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 523
In southern Italy the Romans had taken possession of the western fringe of the great Hellenistic world, whose wonderful civilization we have already studied (Chap. XXI). The Romans at once felt the superiority of this new world of cultivated life, which they had entered in southern Italy. When a highborn Roman family like that of the Scipios wished to have carved a beautiful sarcophagus (stone coffin) for their father, they employed a Greek sculptor from the South (headpiece, p. 520). At the same time the temples of Rome began to be laid out on an oblong ground plan, like those of the Greeks, and no longer on a square ground plan like those of the "Etruscans.
As Roman power expands we shall see this conquest of the Romans by Greek civilization making greater and greater progress.
It was as yet chiefly in commerce and in business that Greek influences were evident. Greek merchants from the Southern cities now enjoyed Roman protection when they traded in Rome. Greek silver money appeared in greater quantities after the capture of the Greek cities. Copper coins were no longer sufficient for Roman business, and not long after the fall of Tarentum, in 268 B.C. (§ 824), Rome issued her first silver coin (Fig. 235). Just as Athens had once done (§ 460), so Rome now began to feel the influence of money, and a moneyed class, largely merchants, arose. They were not manufacturers, as at Athens, and Rome never became a great industrial center.
Fig. 235. A Roman Denarius of Silver
After the capture of the. Greek cities of southern Italy, the Romans began the coinage of silver (268 B.C.) (see § 832). The large and inconvenient as (Fig. 233, B) was-no longer necessary for large payments, and it was thereafter reduced in size to one sixth. Silver was then used for all large transactions. On the value of this coin see § 832
831. Early evidences of Greek art and architecture in Rome
832. Greek influence On commerce and coinage of silver at Rome; rise of moneyed class
524
Ancient Times
833. Commercial expansion of Rome seaward
834. Early mercantile successes of the Semites, and the foundation of Carthage
Section 77. Rome and Carthage as Commercial Rivals
The old policy of agricultural expansion (§ 814) had slowly brought Rome the leadership within Italy. A new policy of commercial expansion was to bring her into conflict with the Mediterranean world outside of Italy. The farmers had looked no farther than the shores of Italy, but the transactions of the Roman merchants reached out beyond those shores. Roman ships issuing from the Tiber entered a triangular inclosure of the Mediterranean, called the Etruscan Sea. The sides of the triangle were formed by Corsica and Sardinia on the west and Italy on the east, while on the south the bottom of the triangle was formed by Sicily and the Carthaginian coast of Africa. A glance at the map (I, p. 552) shows us how Rome and Carthage faced each other across this triangular sea, where both were now carrying on extensive business.
It was indeed a dangerous rival which now confronted Rome across the Etruscan Sea. In the veins of the Carthaginians flowed the blood of those hardy desert mariners of Arabia, the Semitic caravaneers (§ 137) who had made the market places of Babylon the center of ancient Eastern trade two thousand years before Rome ever owned a ship. The fleets of their Phoenician ancestors had coursed the Mediterranean in the days when the Stone Age barbarians of Italy were eagerly looking for the merchant of the East and his metal implements (§ 328). While Rome was an obscure trading village on the Tiber, and before the Greeks ever entered these waters, the Phoenician merchants, the earliest explorers of the western Mediterranean, had perceived the advantageous position of the commanding projection where the African coast thrusts out toward Sicily. Here, on the northern edge of the region now called Tunis, they had planted the city which had become the commercial queen of the western Mediterranean and the most powerful rival of Rome (map I, p. 552).
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 525
This advantageous situation gave Carthage unrivaled com- 835. Cartha-mercial opportunities. Gradually, as her trade carried her in pension in both directions, she had gained the coast on both sides — £frl.ca and
’ 0 Spain
eastward to the frontiers of the Greek city of Cyrene, and westward to the Atlantic. Her merchants absorbed southern Spain, with its profitable silver mines, and they gained control of the import of British tin by way of the Strait of Gibraltar.
Outside of this strait their settlements extended northward along the coast of Spain and southward along the Atlantic coast of Africa to the edge of the Sahara. In this direction Hanno, one of their fearless captains, explored the coast pf Africa as far as Guinea (§ 747, and map I, p. 552).
It was only the incoming of the Greeks (§§ 440-441) which 836. Cartha-had prevented the Carthaginians from taking possession of the Mediterranean islands upon which their splendid harbor looked out. They usually held a large part of Sicily, the west end of islands which was almost visible from the housetops of Carthage.
They planted their colonies in the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, and they had ports in the Balearic Islands, between Sardinia and Spain. They closed the Strait of Gibraltar and the ports of the islands to ships from all other cities. Foreign ships intruding in these waters were promptly rammed and sunk by Carthaginian warships.
Unlike Rome, the military power of Carthage^ supported by 837. Lack the profits from trade, was built up entirely on a basis of money, soldiers'at
gmian expansion in the western Mediterranean
with which, as long as she prospered, she could support a large
Carthage; commercial
mercenary army. She had no farmers cultivating their own prosperity
_ . . . ill r ■ ■ it 3n<^ a mer"
land, from whom she could draw an army of citizen-soldiers as cenaryarmy did Rome. The rich and fertile region of Tunis just south of Carthage had indeed been taken by the Carthaginians from its native owners. Here the merchant princes of the city developed large and beautiful estates, worked by slaves; but such lands, supporting no small farmers, furnished no troops for the army.
■ This was a serious weakness in the organization of the Car- 838. Cartha-thaginian state. The rulers of the city never trusted the army, £mian state
526
Ancient Times
839. Carthaginian civilization
840. The city of Carthage
made up as it was of foreigners, and they always felt some distrust even toward their own generals, although they were, of course, born Carthaginians. The fear lest the generals should endeavor to make themselves kings of Carthage caused much friction between the government and the Carthaginian commanders, and was frequently a cause of weakness to the nation. Although there were two elective magistrates called Judges at the head of the State, Carthage was really governed by a group of merchant nobles, a wealthy aristocracy whose members formed a Council in complete control. They were what the Greeks called an oligarchy (§ 618); but they were energetic and statesmanlike rulers. Centuries of shrewd guidance on their part made Carthage a great state, far exceeding in power any of the Greek states that ever arose, not excluding Athens.
But Carthage remained in civilization an oriental power. Wherever her works of art are dug up to-day, they show all the earlier limitations of oriental art, and seem to have been little influenced by the Greeks. Only in Sicily did Carthaginian merchants yield to Greek influence, take up coinage, and issue silver money. In Carthage herself they retained the old oriental commercial use of bars of precious metal (§ 189). As her business grew, however, her merchants found it necessary to have some convenient medium of exchange, and they issued leathern money, the earliest predecessor of paper money, stamped with the seal of the State, guaranteeing its value. In literature their great explorer Hanno (§ 835) wrote an account of his exploration of the Atlantic coast of Africa; and Mago, one of their statesmen, who organized and developed the great farming district of Tunis, wrote a treatise on agriculture, which the Roman Senate had translated into Latin. It became the standard book on agriculture in Italy.
In matters of household equipment and city building the Carthaginians were quite the equals of the Greeks. The city of Carthage itself was large and splendid (Fig. 239). It was in area three times as large as Rome. Behind wide docks and
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 527
extensive piers of masonry, teeming with ships and merchandise, the city spread far inland, with spacious' markets and busy manufacturing quarters humming with industry. Beyond the dwellings of the poorer craftsmen and artisans rose the stately houses of the wealthy merchants, with rich and sumptuous tropical gardens. Around the whole swept imposing walls and massive fortifications, inclosing the entire city and making its capture almost an impossibility. Behind the great city, outside the walls, stretched a wide expanse of waving palm groves and tropical plantations, dotted with the luxurious country houses of the splendid commercial lords of Carthage, who were to lead the coming struggle with Rome.
Back in the days of the Latin war (ended 338 B.C.), or a little before, when the Roman merchants were still doing a small business, they had been willing that the Senate should make a treaty with Carthage, drawing lines which the ships of neither side should cross. Indeed, about the middle of the Sam-nite Wars the Roman Senate had made a second treaty with Carthage (306 B.C.), in which it was agreed that no Roman ships would enter the harbors of Sicily and no Carthaginian ships should trade in the ports of Italy. The capture of the Greek cities of Italy by the Romans had left the Greeks of Sicily to face the power of Carthage entirely alone. In times past they had done this with great success (§ 780), but now, unable to unite against Carthage, they were slowly yielding, and the Carthaginians were steadily pushing eastward and absorbing Sicily. The merchants of Italy looked over at the busy harbors of Sicily, where so much profitable trade was going on, and it filled them with growing impatience that they were not permitted to do business there. With increasing vexation they realized that Rome had gained the supremacy of Italy and pushed her frontiers to the southernmost tip of the peninsula, only to look across and find that the merchant princes of Carthage had made the western Mediterranean a Carthaginian sea.
841. Early
commercial treaties and the growing friction between Carthage and Rome
842. Danger to Rome in the threatened loss of the Strait of Messina
843. War
strength of the Romans
844. Roman improvements in arms and tactics
528 Ancient Times
Indeed, Carthage was gaining a position which might cut off Rome from communication with even her own ports on the Adriatic side of Italy. To reach them, Roman ships must pass through the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. The advance of Carthage in Sicily might enable her at any time to seize the Sicilian city of Messina and close this strait to Roman ships. We can understand the dread with which Italian merchants looked southward, thinking of the day when Carthaginian warships in the harbor at Messina would stop all traffic between the west coast of Italy and the Adriatic.
The Roman Senate without doubt shared these apprehensions. Many a Roman senator must have asked himself the question, What would be Rome’s chances of success in a struggle with the mighty North-African commercial empire? Rome had little or , no navy. The Roman army had been barely able to maintain itself against a modern Hellenistic' commander like Pyrrhus. The ancient regulation drawing the soldiers only from among the owners of land had formerly limited the size of the army, but it was greatly increased in size by the admission of the new class of men having property in money (§ 832). The introduction of pay for citizens in the army had also increased the possible length of military service among a people still chiefly made up of farmers obliged to return home to plow, sow, and reap. The Romans could thus put a citizen army of over three hundred thousand men into the field. Besides the troops made up of Roman citizens, the principle was adopted of having each army include also about an equal number of troops drawn from the allies. This plan, therefore, doubled the number of available troops. The Roman army consequently far exceeded in size any army ever organized in the Mediterranean world.
In arms and tactics the Romans had been able to make some improvements in the Hellenistic art of war (§ 681). The spear was now employed by the Romans only as the battle opened, when it was hurled into the ranks of-the enemy
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 529
at short range. After this the battle was fought by the Romans ■ with short swords, which were much more easily handled at close quarters than long spears (Fig. 236). At the same time the Romans had likewise improved the phalanx, which we remember had thus far been a massive unit, possessing as a whole no flexibility (§ 637). It had no joints. The Romans gave it joints and flexibility by cutting it up in both directions; that is, lengthwise and crosswise.
They divided the phalanx lengthwise into three divisions, one forming the front, one the middle, and one the rear (Fig. 237). Each division was about six men deep, and there was only a narrow space between the divisions. The front division was made up of the young and vigorous troops, while the older men were placed in the other two divisions. If the steady old troops behind saw that a gap was being made in the front division, it was the business of the second division to advance at once and fill the gap. This made it necessary to cut up the divisions crosswise, into short sections, so that a section could advance without carrying the whole division forward. Such a section of a division had a front
fNAnakSPvsMi;il!^l
AyriA!■!!< i 57' 1 ^xi F-F C
'/ ‘ rj
Fig. 236. A Roman Soldier of the Legion
The figure of the soldier is carved upon a tombstone, erected in his memory by his brother. His offensive weapons are hisspear (pilum), which he holds in his extended right hand with point upward, and his heavy short sword (glcidhis), which he wears girded high on his right side (see § 844). As defensive equipment he has a helmet, a leathern corselet stopping midway between the waist and knees, and a shield {scutum)
845. The
Romans cut up the phalanx into divisions and maniples
S30
Ancient Times
about twenty men long, and being, as we have said, six men deep, there were a hundred and twenty men in each section of a division. These sections were called maniples. Each maniple in advancing to fill a gap before it was like a football "back” when he springs forward to stop a gap in the line before him. But it is important to notice that thus far all three divisions of the phalanx were invariably kept together ; they were inseparable. The middle and rear divisions
A Maniple of the Front Division Bear
Hear Division [=1 c=i c=i i i r-J c=] a i l
Middle Division ■ 11 ,— 11 , 11 , 11 , 11 , 11 '' 11 11 • > I I 'Front Tlivifiitwm —11 11 il. _ 11 11 , i1 11 jI . 11~. j , Front
Fig. 237. Plan of a Roman Threefold Line of Battle with Detail of a Single Maniple above it
Here we see the once solid and indivisible phalanx of the Greeks broken up into three divisions lengthwise (lower diagram),— a front, middle, and rear division, — and likewise cut up crosswise into short sections (maniples). In the front and middle divisions these maniples were six men deep and twenty men long (see upper diagram) and half as long in the rear division. These sections (maniples) were so placed that the openings between them did not coincide, but the maniples of the middle division covered the openings, or joints, in the front division (§ 845)
were always only supports of the front division immediately before them. It had not yet occurred to the Romans to shift the middle or rear division, as football backs are shifted, to fight facing in another direction, or to post them in another part of the field; leaving the first division to fight unsupported (Fig. 237). When a great Roman, during the struggle with Carthage, discovered the possibility of thus shifting the middle and rear divisions (§874), a new chapter in the art of war began.
For purposes of mustering and feeding an army, the Romans divided it into larger bodies, called legions, each containing
The Supremacy of the Roman Republic in Italy 531
usually forty-five hundred men, of whom three hundred were cavalry, twelve hundred were light-armed troops, while the three thousand forming the body of the legion were the heavyarmed men making up the three divisions just described. Each maniple of one hundred and twenty men was divided into two centuries of sixty men each, for a " century ” soon ceased always to contain a hundred men. Each century had a commander called a centurion. A centurion and his century roughly corresponded to our captain and his company.
Notwithstanding these improvements, the Romans did not at first see the importance of a commander in chief of long experience — a man who made warfare his calling and had become a professional military leader like the Hellenistic commanders (§ 630). Hence the Romans intrusted their armies without hesitation to the command of their consuls, who as presidents of the republic had often never had any experience in military leadership. Moreover, the consuls might be leading their troops just on the eve of battle, and find themselves deprived of command by the expiration of their term of office. In the Samnite Wars this difficulty had shown the Romans the necessity of extending a consul’s military power under such circumstances. When this was done he was called a proconsul. But the Romans were still without professional generals like Xenophon (§ 630). At the same time the introduction of pay for officers and soldiers had made extended service possible, and an experienced body of lower officers such as the centurions had grown up.
In military discipline the Romans surpassed all other peoples of ancient times; for even among the Greek troops there was great lack of discipline. We hear of a Roman father who ordered his son to be executed in the presence of the army, because the young man had, in disobedience of orders, accepted single combat with an enemy and slain him. Even an ex-consul, having won a victory after receiving orders from the Dictator not to give battle, was condemned to death by the Dictator as
846. Legions
and centurions
847. Lack of experienced commanding generals
848. Roman discipline and*the fortified camp
S32
Ancietit ltmes
the legal consequence of disobedience to a superior. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he was saved by his influential friends. In accordance with the strict system maintained in all their operations it was the invariable practice of a Roman army when it halted to construct a square fortified camp, surrounded by a ridge of earth bearing a stockade of wooden posts driven into the crest of the ridge. This camp was a descendant of the old prehistoric pile village of northern Italy (Fig. 225).
QUESTIONS
Section 76. How much time elapsed from the final subjection of Latium to Roman leadership of all Italy ? How did Rome govern the defeated cities of Italy? How much Italian territory was occupied by Roman citizens? Where was it? Where did Rome place her colonies? Was Italy a unified nation? Why not? Mention the races and languages of Italy. What was the future language to be? Mention some early influences of Greek art and architecture in Italy; of Greek business methods in Italy. What financial changes took place at Rome as a result?
Section 77. Had agriculture carried the Romans outside of Italy? Was commerce now to do so? Into what triangular sea does the Tiber flow? What great commercial rival of Rome lay on the same sea? Who were the ancestors of the Carthaginians? What had they achieved in business? What region did Carthage commercially control? How did she treat ships of other peoples in this region? Describe the military organization of Carthage. Had she any citizen-soldiers ? What was the character of the Carthaginian State ? of Carthaginian civilization ? Describe the city and surroundings. What was happening to the Greeks of Sicily? In whose hands was the western Mediterranean commercially? Describe the danger at Messina.
Tell about the war strength of the Romans by land. Describe their improvement of the phalanx. What was the purpose of the legion? How large was it? What was a centurion ? Had the Romans any commanding generals of long experience ? Did they have any professional soldiers ? What can you say about the discipline of a Roman army? What did the Romans do when they camped? Where had the plan of the Roman camp originated ?
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ROMAN CONQUEST OP THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
Section 78. The Struggle with Carthage: the Sicilian War, or First Punic War
Whatever might be the risks involved in a struggle with Carthage, the Romans were soon convinced that it could not be avoided. During a siege of Messina at the hands of the Syracusans, one party in the besieged place called in the aid of the Romans, while another party appealed to Carthage. The result was that a Carthaginian garrison quickly occupied the citadel of Messina, and the Carthaginians were then in command of the Strait of Messina. The Romans had long hesitated, but now they took the memorable step, and. a Roman army, responding to the appeal of Messina, left the soil of
Note. The above fragment of a wall-painting at Pompeii shows us a Roman warship, seemingly in battle, for the wreck of another warship is visible at the left. Notice the two steering oars at each side of the stern — a device found on Nile ships three thousand years earlier (Fig. 41). The rudder had not yet developed from these steering oars. The Romans ascribed their success, in spite of inexperience, against the Carthaginians to a new boarding grappler, which they invented and called a "crow” (corvus). It consisted of a heavy upright timber, which was made to fall over with the end on the enemy’s rail, where an iron hook attached to the end of the "crow” grappled and held the opposing craft until the Romans could climb over into it. In the hand-to-hand fighting which followed, the sturdy Romans more than made up for their inexperience in seamanship.
533
849. Opening of the Sicilian War (First Punic War) with Carthage at Messina (264 B.C.)
534
Ancient ± rrntfo
850. The
Romans build a fleet
851. Roman victory and disaster at sea
852. Final naval victory of the Romans (241 B.C.)
Italy and crossed the sea for the'first time in Roman history. The struggle with Carthage had begun (264 B.C.).
An alliance with Syracuse soon gave the Romans possession of eastern Sicily, but they were long unable to make much progress into the central and western portion of the island. The chief reason for this was the lack of a strong war fleet. The Romans, therefore, adopting a naval policy like that of Themistocles (§ 506), determined to build a fleet. The Senate rapidly pushed the building of the new fleet, and in the fifth year of the war it put to sea for the first time. It numbered a hundred and twenty battleships, of which a full hundred were large, powerful vessels with five banks of oars.
In spite of inexperience, the Roman fleet was victorious in two successive battles off the coast of Italy. It looked as if the war would be quickly over. The Senate, however, finding that the legions made little progress in Sicily, determined, to invade Africa and strike Carthage at home. The invasion was at first very successful, but its progress was unwisely interfered with by the Senate, who recalled one of the consuls with many of the troops. The result was that the remaining consul, with his reduced army, was disastrously defeated. Then one Roman fleet after another was destroyed by heavy storms at sea, and one of them was badly defeated by the Carthaginians. The Romans thus lost their newly won command of the sea, and were long unable to make any progress in the war.
Year after year the struggle dragged on, while Hamilcar Barca, the Carthaginian commander, was plundering the coasts of Italy with his fleet. The treasury at Rome was empty, and the Romans were at the end of their resources; but by private contributions they succeeded in building another fleet, which put to sea in 242 B.C. with two hundred battleships of five banks of oars. The Carthaginian fleet was defeated and broken up (241 B.C.), and as a result the Carthaginians found themselves unable to send reenforcements across the sea to their army in Sicily.
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 535
They were therefore at last obliged to accept hard terms of peace at the hands of the Romans. The Carthaginians were to give up Sicily and the neighboring islands to Rome, and to pay the Romans as war damages the sum of thirty-two hundred talents, over three and a half million dollars, within ten years. Thus in 241 B.C., after more than twenty-three years of fighting, the first period of the struggle between Rome and Carthage ended with the victory of Rome. ’
The struggle had been carried on till both contestants were completely exhausted. Both had learned much in the art of war, and Rome for the first time had become a sea power. At the same time she had taken a step which forever changed her future and altered her destiny; for the first time she held territory outside of Italy, and from this step she was never able to withdraw. It has been compared with the action of the United States in taking Porto Rico and the Philippines; for in gaining interests and responsibilities across the sea, a nation is at once thrown into conflict with other powers having similar interests, and this conflict of interests never reaches an end, but leads from one war to another.
Section 79. The Hannibalic War (Second Punic War) and the Destruction of Carthage
Both the rivals now devoted themselves to increasing their strength, nor did Rome hesitate to do so at the expense of Carthage. Taking advantage of a revolt among the hired Carthaginian troops in Sardinia, the Romans accepted an invitation from these mercenaries to invade both Sardinia and Corsica; and in spite of protests from Carthage, only three years after the settlement of peace Rome took possession of these two islands. Rome now possessed three island outposts against Carthage. Some years later the 1 Romans were involved in a serious war by an invasion of the Gauls from the Po valley. The Gauls were disastrously defeated, and their territoiy was
853. Peace at the end of the Sicilian War (241 B.C.)
854. Some results of the Sicilian War
855* Roman seizure of Sardinia and Corsica and conquest of the Po valley
536
Ancient Times
856. New
Carthaginian conquests in Spain and the rise of Hannibal
857. Hannibalic War is provoked by a frontier quarrel in Spain (219 B.C.)
858. Opening of the Hannibalic War (218202 b.c.) ; Hannibal’s reasons for invading Italy by land from the north
seized by the Romans without granting the Gauls any form of citizenship. Thus Roman power was extended northward to the foot of the Alps, and the entire peninsula from the Alps southward was held by Rome (map II, p. 552).
To offset this increase of Roman power and to compensate for the loss of the three large islands, the Carthaginian leaders turned toward Spain. Here still dwelt the hardy descendants of the Late Stone Age Europeans of the West (§325). Hamil-car, the Carthaginian general, planned to secure the wealth of their silver mines, to enlist the natives in the army, and thus to build up a power able to meet that of Rome. He died before the completion of his plans, but they were taken up by his gifted son Hannibal, who extended Carthaginian rule in Spain as far north as the Ebro River (map II, p. 552). Although only twenty-four years of age, Hannibal was already forming colossal plans for a bold surprise of Rome in her own territory, which by its unexpectedness and audacity should crush Roman power in Italy.
Rome, busily occupied in overthrowing the Gauls, had been unable to interfere with the Spanish enterprises of Carthage. She had, however, secured an agreement that Carthage should not advance northward beyond the Ebro River. To so bold and resolute a leader as Hannibal such a stipulation was only an opportunity for a frontier quarrel with Rome in Spain. In the tremendous struggle which followed he was the genius and the dominating spirit. It was a colossal contest between the nation Rome and the man Hannibal. We may therefore well call it the Hannibalic War.
While the Roman Senate was demanding that the leaders at Carthage disavow his hostile acts, Hannibal, with a strong and well-drilled army of about forty thousand men, was already marching northward along the east coast of Spain (map, p. 538). Several reasons led him to this course. He knew that since the Sicilian war the defeated Carthaginian fleet would be unable to protect his army if he tried to cross by water from Carthage and
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 537
to land in southern Italy. Moreover, his cavalry, over six thousand strong, was much too numerous to be transported by sea. In southern Italy, furthermore, he would have been met at once by a hostile population, whereas in northern Italy there were the newly conquered Gauls, burning for revenge on the Romans, their conquerors. Hannibal intended to offer them an opportunity for that revenge by enlistment in his ranks. Moreover, he had reports of dissatisfaction among the allies of Rome also, and he believed that by an early victory in northern Italy he could induce the allies to forsake Rome and join him in a war for independence which would destroy Roman leadership in Italy. For these reasons, while the Roman Senate was planning to invade Spain and Africa, they found their own land suddenly invaded by Hannibal from the north.
By clever maneuvering at the Rhone, Hannibal avoided the Roman army, which had arrived there on its way to Spain. The crossing of the Rhone, a wide, deep, and swift river, with elephants and cavaliy and the long detour to avoid the Romans so delayed Hannibal that it was late autumn when he reached the Alps (218 B.C.). Overwhelmed by snowstorms; struggling over a steep and dangerous trail, sometimes so narrow that the rocks had to be cut away to make room for the elephants; looking down over dizzy precipices, or up to snow-covered heights where hostile natives rolled great stones down upon them, the discouraged army of Hannibal toiled on day after day, exhausted, cold, and hungry. At every point along the straggling line, where help was most needed, the young Carthaginian was always present, encouraging and guiding his men. But when they issued from the Alpine pass, perhaps Mt. Cenis, into the upper valley of the Po, they had suffered such losses that they were reduced to some thirty-four thousand men.
With this little, army the dauntless Carthaginian youth had entered the territory of the strongest military power of the time — a nation which could now call to her defense over seven hundred thousand men, citizens and allies. From this vast number
859. Hannibal evades the Romans at the Rhone and leads his army across the Alps (218 B.C.)
860. Inferior size of Hannibal’s army compared with Roman resources
538
Ancient limes
861. Superiority of Hannibal’s military knowledge over that of the Roman consuls
Rome could recruit army after army; but Hannibal, on the other hand, as long as Carthage did not control the sea, could expect no reenforcements from home except through Spain. A military success was necessary at once in order to arouse the hopes of the Gauls and secure recruits from among them.
Hannibal, who was in close contact with a number of Greeks, was thoroughly acquainted with the most highly developed
The Route and Marches of Hannibal from 218 to 203 b.c.
The dates indicate the progress of the march. During Hannibal’s long stay in southern Italy, he made many marches and local movements not indicated in the above sketch. Indeed, we know very little about many of his operations in this region
methods of warfare. The exploits of Alexander, who "had died a little over a century before Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, were familiar to him, and it is not impossible that the fascinating story of Alexander’s campaigns was read to the young Carthaginian as he lay with his Greek companions around the camp fires in Italy. Furthermore, we recall that Roman consuls, commanding the Roman armies, were simply magistrates like our mayors pr presidents, often without much more knowledge of handling
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 5 39
an army than has a city mayor in our time. Gifted with little imagination, blunt and straightforward, brave and eager to meet the enemy at once, the Roman consuls were no match for the crafty young Carthaginian.
By skillful use of his cavalry, in which the Romans were weak, Hannibal at once won two engagements in the Po valley. The Gauls began to flock to his standards, but they were raw, undisciplined troops. He was still outside the barrier of Roman fortresses defending the Apennines, and this he must not fail to pierce without delay. By early spring, therefore (217 B.C.), amid fearful difficulties which would have broken the courage of most commanders, Hannibal successfully passed the belt of Roman strongholds blocking the roads through the Apennines. Even after he had crossed the Arnus, the Roman consul Flamin-ius had no notion of the Carthaginian advance, though he soon learned that the Carthaginians were between him and Rome. Nevertheless, on the shores of Lake Trasimene, Hannibal easily surprised the army of the unsuspecting consul on the march, ambushed the legions both in front and rear, and cut to pieces the entire Roman army, so that only a handful escaped and the consul himself fell. But a few days’ march from Rome, Hannibal might now have advanced directly against the city; but he had no siege machinery (headpiece, p. 140), and his forces were not numerous enough for the siege of so strong a fortress. Moreover, his cavalry, in which he was superior to the Romans, would have been useless in a siege. He therefore desired an-other victory in the hope that the allies of Rome would revolt and join him in attacking the city.
Hannibal therefore marched eastward to the Adriatic coast, where he secured numerous horses, much needed by his cavalry, and also found plentiful provisions, besides an opportunity to drill his Gallic recruits. At this dangerous crisis the Romans appointed a Dictator, a stable old citizen named Fabius, whose policy was to wear out Hannibal by refusing to give battle and by using every opportunity to harass the Carthaginians. This
862. Hannibal’s first three victories
863. A year of delay and preparation (217216 B.C.)
540
Ancient limes
864. The
dispositions at the battle of Cannse
policy of caution and delay did not meet with popular favor at Rome. The people called Fabius the Laggard (Cunctator), a name which ever afterward clung to him; and the new consuls elected for 216 b. c. were urged to take action and destroy the Carthaginian army .without more delay. They therefore recruited an army of nearly seventy thousand men and pushed southward toward the heel of the Italian peninsula to meet Hannibal. The Carthaginian deftly outwitted them and, marching to Cannas, captured the Roman supplies. The consuls were then obliged to give battle or retire for more supplies.
Heavy Infantry Center
|
" - |
||
|
Qavalry |
Cavalry | |
Cavalry
Cavalry ■ Heavy Inf antry Center ■ Cavalry
I
6000
African
Infantry A
I
6000
African
Infantry
I j Heavy Infantry Center j j
Former Position of Africans
Former Position of Africans
Position of the two armies as the battle began black = Carthaginians shaded = Romans
Roman center surrounded after the Roman cavalry was routed and the two African divisions were pushed forward
Plan of the Battle of Cannae (§§ 864-865)
With their fifty-five thousand heavy-armed infantry the consuls were almost twice as strong as Hannibal, who had but thirty-two thousand such troops. On the other hand, Hannibal had , about ten thousand horse against six thousand of the Roman cavalry, while both armies were about equally strong in lightarmed troops. Varro, the Roman consul, had been merely a successful business man at Rome. He drew up his heavy-armed troops in a deep mass in the center, with a short front. Had he spread them out, so that their superior numbers might form a longer front than that of Hannibal, they might have enfolded and outflanked the Carthaginian army. Both armies divided their cavalry, that it might form the two wings. Instead of massing all his heavy-armed troops in the center to meet the
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 541
great mass of the Roman center, Hannibal took out some twelve thousand of his heavy-armed African infantry in two bodies of six thousand each and stationed them in a deep column behind each of his cavalry wings (plan A, p. 540).
Hannibal’s stronger cavalry put to flight the Roman horse forming both wings. Then as his well-trained horsemen turned back to attack the heavy mass of the Roman center in the rear, he knew that it was too late for the Romans, perceiving their danger, to retreat and escape, for they were caught between the Carthaginian center before them and the Carthaginian cavalry behind them. Only the sides of the trap were open. Then came a great moment in the young Carthaginian’s life.
With unerring judgment, just at the proper instant, he gave the orders which closed up the sides of the trap he had so cleverly prepared. The two bodies of Africans which he had posted behind the cavalry wings, on ^ Carthag1nian
each side, pushed quietly forward helmet picked up on the till they occupied positions on Battlefield at Cannae each side of the fifty-five thousand brave Romans of the center, who were thus inclosed on all sides (plan £, p. 54°)- What ensued was simply a slaughter of the doomed Romans, lasting all the rest of the day. When night closed in the Roman army was annihilated. Ex-consuls, senators, nobles, thousands of the best citizens of Rome had fallen in this frightful battle. Every family in Rome was in mourning. Of the gold rings worn by Roman knights as an indication of their rank, Hannibal is reported to have sent a bushel to Carthage. Even in modern times pieces of armor have been picked up on the battlefield (Fig. 238).
Thus this masterful young Carthaginian, the greatest of Semite generals, within two years after his arrival in Italy and
865. Hannibal annihilates the Roman army at the battle of Cannas (2l6 B.C)
542
Ancient limes
866. Hannibal organizes the revolting Roman allies against Rome and calls in the Macedonians
867. Hannibal’s statesmanship and the difficulties of his position
868. Roman diplomacy checkm&tes Macedonia and Roman determination recovers the revolting cities
before he was thirty years of age, had defeated his giant antagonist in four battles and destroyed three of the opposing armies. He might now count upon a revolt among the Roman allies. Within a few years southern Italy, including the Greek cities, and even Syracuse in Sicily forsook Rome and joined Hannibal. .Only some of the southern Latin colonies held out against him. To make matters worse for Rome, immediately after Cannae, Hannibal sent messengers to Macedonia, and one of the later Philips then reigning there agreed to send help to the Carthaginians in Italy.
In all this Hannibal was displaying the judgment and insight of a statesman combined with amazing ability to meet the incessant demands of the military situation. This required him to lay out campaigns, to drill the inexperienced new recruits, to insure supplies of food and fresh horses for his army, while at the same time he was forced also to find the money with which to pay his turbulent and dissatisfied mercenaries. In carrying out all this work he was untiring, and his eye was everywhere. It was no uncommon ’thing for some private soldier to wake in the morning and find his young general sleeping on the ground by his side. There was a consuming fire of desire in his soul to save Carthage; and now his glorious victories were drawing together the foes of Rome in a great combination which he believed would bring about the destruction of his country’s hated antagonist.
But opposing the burning zeal of a single gifted soul were the dogged resolution, the ripe statesmanship, the unshaken organization, and the seemingly inexhaustible numbers of the Romans. It was a battle of giants for the mastery of the world; for the victor in this struggle would without any question be the greatest power in the Mediterranean. Had the successors of Alexander in the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean discerned the nature of this gigantic struggle in Italy, and been able to combine against Rome, they might now have crushed her forever (see map I, p. 448). But the Roman Senate, with clever
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 543
statesmanship, made an alliance with the Greeks, thus stirring up a revolt in Greece against the Macedonians and preventing them from furnishing help to Hannibal. In spite-of Hannibal’s victories, the steadiness and fine leadership of the Roman Senate held central Italy loyal to Rome. Although the Romans were finally compelled to place arms in the hands of slaves and mere boys, new armies were formed. With these forces the Romans proceeded to besiege and capture the revolting allied cities one after another. Even the clever devices of Archimedes during a desperate siege (§ 742) did not save Syracuse from being recaptured by the Romans (212 b. c.).
Capua likewise, the second city of Italy, which had gone over to his cause, was besieged by the Romans in spite of all Hannibal’s efforts to drive them away. As a last hope he marched upon Rome itself, and with his bodyguard rode up to one of the gates of the great city, whose power seemed so unbroken. For a brief time the -two antagonists faced each other, and many a Roman senator must have looked over the walls at the figure of the tremendous young Carthaginian who had shaken all Italy as with an earthquake. But they were not to be frightened into offers of peace in this way, nor did they send out any message to him. His army was not large enough to lay siege to the greatest city of Italy, nor had he been able to secure any siege machinery (§ 632), and he was obliged to retreat without accomplishing anything. Capua was thereupon captured by the Romans and punished without mercy.
The hitherto dauntless spirit of the young Carthaginian at last began to feel the crushing weight of Roman confidence. When he had finally been ten years in Italy, he realized that unless powerful reenforcenents could reach him, his cause was hopeless. His brother Hasdrubal in Spain had gathered an army and was now marching into Italy to aid him. At the Metaurus River, in the region of Seotinum, where the fate of Rome had once before been settled (§ 819), Hasdrubal was met by a Roman army. He was completely defeated and
869. Hannibal’s fruitless advance to Rome and the recapture of Capua by the Romans (211 B.C.)
870. Hannibal’s reenforcements intercepted and destroyed (207 B.C.)
544
871. The
decline of Hannibal’s power in Italy and the rise of Scipio
872. Scipio and Hannibal meet at Zama (202 B.C.); the tactics of Hannibal
slain (207 B.C.). To the senators waiting in keenest anticipation at Rome the news of the victory meant the salvation of Italy and the final defeat of an enemy who had all but accomplished the destruction of Roman power. To Hannibal, anxiously awaiting tidings of his brother and of the needed reenforcements, the first announcement of the disaster and the crushing of his hopes was Ihe head of Hasdrubal hurled into the Carthaginian camp by a Roman messenger.
For a few years more Hannibal struggled on in the southern tip of Italy, the only territory remaining of all that he had captured. Meantime the Romans, taught by sad experience, had given the command of their forces in Spain to Scipio, one of the ablest of their younger leaders. He had routed the Carthaginians and driven them entirely out of Spain, thus cutting off their chief supply both of money and of troops. In Scipio the Romans had at last found a general, with the masterful qualities which make a great military leader. He demanded of the Senate that he be sent to Africa to invade the dominions of Carthage as Hannibal had invaded those of Rome.
By 203 B.C. Scipio had twice defeated the Carthaginian forces ' in Africa, and Carthage was forced to call Hannibal home. He had spent fifteen years on the soil of Italy, and the great struggle between the almost exhausted rivals was now to be decided in Africa. At Zama, inland from Carthage, the final battle of the war took place. Hannibal, having insufficient cavalry, foresaw that his weak cavalry wings would be defeated by Scipio’s opposing heavy bodies of horsemen. When, as he expected, the Roman cavalry wings disappeared in pursuit of his own fleeing horsemen, the wings of both armies were cleared away for one of those unexpected but carefully planned maneuvers by which the great Carthaginian had destroyed the Roman army at Cannag. From behind his line Hannibal moved out two divisions in opposite directions, elongating his own line beyond the ends of the Roman line, which he intended to inclose on either side. In football language, Hannibal had ordered his
Roman Conquest of the Western Mediterranean 545
backs to spread out and to execute a play around both the Roman ends at once. The fate of two empires was trembling in the balance as Hannibal’s steel trap thus extended its jaws on either side to enfold the Roman army.
But behind the Roman army there was a mind like that of Hannibal. The keen eye of the Roman commander discovered the flash of -moving steel behind the Carthaginian lines. He understood the movement and at once grasped the danger which threatened his army. As a result of Cannae, Scipio had long before abandoned all Roman tradition, and had taught his front division to fight without the support of the rear divisions behind them (§ 845). In football language again, he too had learned to shift his backs and had taught the line to hold without them. The shrewd young Roman commander therefore gave his orders without hesitation. For the first time in history the rear divisions behind the front of a Roman center left the front division to fight alone. As quietly as on a parade march they parted to the left and right and, marching behind the fighting line in opposite directions, they took up their posts, extending the Roman front at either end where at first the cavalry wings had been. When Hannibal’s spreading divisions pushed out beyond the Roman ends, where they were expected to carry out their "around-the-end” movements, they found facing them a Roman wall of steel, and the battle continued in two parallel lines longer than before. The great Carthaginian had been foiled at his own game by an equally great Roman. When the Roman cavalry returned from their pursuit and fell on the Carthaginian flank,. Hannibal beheld his lines crumbling and giving way in final and complete defeat.
In.this great battle we see the conclusion of a long and remarkable development in the art of war, from the wild disorder of entirely undisciplined fighting (Fig. 88) to the formation of a heavy phalanx of disciplined men, the earliest trained-fighting team as it appeared in the Orient (Fig. 87). Then in Europe, after Philip and Alexander, the deep phalanx as
873. The
countermoves of Scipio bring Roman victory at Zama
874. The new art of war; division tactics
546
Ancient Times
875. The
treaty ending the Hanni-balic War (201 b.c)
876. The fate of Hannibal
877. The destruction of Carthage (146 b.c.) : Third Punic War
used by the Greeks was no longer regarded by the Romans as a rigid, indivisible fighting unit, but it was broken up into a fighting line in front and a group of shifting backs behind. On the field of Zama, Scipio and Hannibal had advanced to a new stage in the art of warfare, and had created what is now known as " diyisipn-tactips ” — the art of manipulating an army on the field in divisions shifted behind the line of battle as a skillful football leader shifts his backs, trusting to the line to hold while he does so.
The victory of Rome over Carthage made Rome the leading power in the whole ancient world. In the treaty which followed the battle of Zama, the Romans forced Carthage to pay ten thousand talents (over $11,000,000) in fifty years and to surrender all her warships but ten triremes. But what was worse she lost her independence as a nation, and according to the treaty she could not make war anywhere without the consent of the Romans. Although the Romans did not annex her territory in Africa, Carthage had become a vassal state.
Hannibal had escaped after his lost battle at Zama. Although we learn of his deeds chiefly through his enemies, the story of his dauntless struggle to save his native country, begun when he was only twenty-four and continued for twenty years, reveals him as one of the greatest and most gifted leaders in all history — a lion-hearted man, so strong of purpose that only a great nation like Rome could have crushed him. Indeed, Rome now compelled the Carthaginians to expel Hannibal, and, a man of fifty, he went into exile in the East, where we shall find him stirring up the successors of Alexander to combine against Rome.
Such was the commercial ability of the Carthaginians that they'continued to prosper even while paying the heavy tribute with which Rome had burdened them. Meantime, the new mistress of the western Mediterranean kept an anxious eye on her old rival. Even the stalwart Romans remembered with uneasiness the invasion of Hannibal. Cato, a famous old-fashioned
Koman conquest oj the Western Mediterranean 547
senator, was so convinced that Carthage yas still a danger to Rome that he concluded all his speeches in the Senate with the words, " Carthage must be destroyed.” For over fifty years more the merchants of Carthage were permitted to traffic in the western Mediterranean, and then the iron hand of Rome was laid upon the doomed city for the last time. To defend herself against the Numidians behind her, Carthage was finally obliged to begin war against them. This step, which
Fig. 23'9. The Harbors of Carthage as they are To-day
Of the city destroyed by the Romans almost nothing has survived. It
was rebuilt under’Julius Caesar, but, as we see here, very little of this later city has survived. Thorough and systematic excavation would probably recover many valuable remains of ancient Carthaginian civilization, of which we know so little -
the Romans had long been desiring, was a violation of the treaty with Rome. The Senate seized the opportunity at once and Carthage was called to account. In the three years’ war (Third Punic War) which followed, the beautiful city was captured and completely destroyed (146 B.C.) (see Fig. 239). Its territory was taken by Rome and called the Province of Africa. A struggle of nearly one hundred and twenty years had resulted in the annihilation of Rome’s only remaining rival in the West (see map III, p. 552).
548
Ancient Times
878. Rome, supreme in the West, turns eastward
Thus the fourfojd rivalry in the western Mediterranean, which had long included the Etruscans and Carthaginians, the Greeks and the Romans, had ended with the triumph of the once insignificant village above the prehistoric market on the Tiber (§ 784). Racially, the western wing of the Indo-European line had proved victorious over that of the Semite line (Fig. 112). The western Mediterranean world was now under the leadership of a single great nation, the Romans, as the eastern Mediterranean world had once been under the leadership of the Macedonians. We must now turn back and follow the dealings of Rome with the Hellenistic-oriental world of the eastern Mediterranean, which we left (Chap. XXI) after it had attained the most highly refined civilization ever achieved by ancient man (see map II, p. 448).
QUESTIONS
Section 78. At what point did Rome and Carthage come into conflict? How? When? Had the Romans any sea power? How did they get it? Give a brief statement of the course of the Sicilian War. What were the main results ?
Section 79. What territory did the Romans gain shortly after the Sicilian War? Whither did Carthage go for new resources? Who provoked the ensuing war ? Describe Hannibal’s plan of campaign in full. Recount his march into Italy. How did his numbers compare with those of Rome? What can you say of his military knowledge? Describe his first three encounters with the Romans. Where did he then go ? What did the Romans do ? Draw two plans, and tell the story of the battle of Cannas. What political moves did Hannibal then make? How did the Romans meet them? What course did Rome follow toward her revolting allies ? What happened at Capua? What did Hannibal’s brother do?
What were the Rbmans meantime doing in Spain ? Who was the Roman leader there ? Recount the battle of Zama. What advance in the art of warfare was shown there ? What were the main results of the Hannibalic War? What became of Hannibal? Recount the destruction of Carthage. How long had the struggle between Rome and Carthage lasted ? Who was now leader of the West ?
CHAPTER XXV
WORLD DOMINION AND DEGENERACY
Section 80. The Roman Conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean World
While the heirs of Alexander were carrying on their ceaseless feuds, plots, wars, and alliances in the eastern Mediterranean, as we have seen them doing down to about 200 B.C. (Chap. XX), the vast power of Rome had been slowly rising in the West. The serious consequences of Rome’s growth, and, especially of her expansion beyond the sea, were now evident. The Roman Senate could not allow any state on the Mediterranean to develop such strength as to endanger Rome in the way Carthage had done during the Hannibalic War. For this and other reasons the western giant was now to overshadow the whole Hellenistic world of the East, and finally to draw the
Note. The relief above, found in the Theater of Marcellus, built by Augustus (§ 994), gives us a very vivacious glimpse of a battle between gladiators and wild beasts, just as the Romans saw it. The gladiators in this combat wear only a tunic and have no defensive armor except a helmet and a shield. Note the expression of pain on the face of the gladiator at the left, whose arm is being lacerated by the lion.
549
879. Coming conflict between the western and the eastern (Hellenistic) Mediterranean world
Ancient Times
880. Causes of the Roman war with Macedon
881. Battle of Cynoscephalas (197 B.C.); Macedon a vassal of Rome
three great states of Alexander’s heirs into his grasp. Let us see what the reasons for the first collision were (see map II, p. 448).
Hannibal had induced Macedonia - to combine with him against Rome (§ 866). This hostile step could not be overlooked by the Romans after the Hannibalic War. Philip, the Macedonian king, was a gifted ruler and an able military commander like his great ancestor, the father of Alexander the Great, a hundred and fifty years earlier. The further plans of this later Philip filled the Senate with anxiety. For he had arranged a combination between himself and Antiochus the Great (the third of the name), the Seleucid king of Syria. By this alliance the two were to divide the dominions of Egypt between them. Because of what he had already done, and also because of what he would do if allowed to go on and gain greatly increased power, the Romans were now obliged to turn eastward and crush Philip of Macedon (map II, p. 448).
The Greek states had no reason to support the rule of Macedonia over them; Antiochus was too busy seizing the Asiatic territory of Egypt to send any help to Macedonia; and hence a year after the close of the Hannibalic War, Philip found himself without strong allies, face to face with a Roman army. By his unusual skill as a commander he evaded the Roman force for some time. But in the end the massive Macedonian phalanx, bristling with long spears, was obliged to meet the onset of the Roman legions, with their deadly short swords and the puzzling divisions behind the lines shifting into unexpected positions which the phalanx was not flexible enough to meet. On the field of Cynoscephalas (dog’s heads), in 197 B.C., the Macedonian army was disastrously routed, and the ancient realm of Alexander the Great became a vassal state under Rome. As allies of Rome, the Greek states were then granted their freedom by the Romans.
This war with Macedon brought the Romans into conflict with Antiochus the Great, the Seleucid king, who held a large part of the vast empire of Persia in Asia. For Antiochus now
World Dominion and Degeneracy
551
endeavored to profit by Philip’s defeat and to seize some of Philip’s former possessions which the Romans had declared free. A war with this powerful Asiatic empire was not a matter which the Romans could view without great anxiety. Moreover, Hannibal, expelled from Carthage (§ 876), was now in Greece with Antiochus, advising him. In spite of the warnings and urgent counsels of Hannibal, Antiochus threw away his opportunities in Greece until the Roman legions maneuvered him back into Asia Minor, whither the Romans followed, him, and there the great power of the West for the first time confronted the motley forces of the ancient Orient as marshaled by the successor of Persia in Asia (see map II, p. 448).
The conqueror of Hannibal at Zama was with the Roman army to counsel his brother, another Scipio, consul for the year, and therefore in command of the legions. There was no hope for the undisciplined troops of the Orient when confronted by a Roman army under such masters of the new tactics as these two Scipios. At Magnesia, the West led by Rome overthrew the East led by the dilatory Antiochus (190 B.C.), and the lands of Asia Minor eastward to the Halys River submitted to Roman control. Under the ensuing treaty Antiochus was not permitted to cross the Halys River westward or to send a warship west of the same longitude. Within twelve years (200 to 1(89 B.C.) Roman arms had reduced to the condition of vassal states two of the three great empires which succeeded Alexander in the East — Macedonia and Syria (see map III, p. 448). As for Egypt, the third, friendship had from the beginning existed between her and Rome. A little over thirty years after a Roman army had first appeared in the Hellenistic world, Egypt acknowledged herself a vassal of Rome (168 B.C.).
Although defeated, the eastern Mediterranean world long continued to give the Romans much trouble. The quarrels of the eastern states among themselves were constantly carried to Rome for settlement. It became necessary to destroy Macedonia as a kingdom and to make her a Roman province. At
882. Roman conflict with the Seleucid Empire, resulting from the conquest of Maced on
883. The overthrow of Antiochus at Magnesia (190 B.C.) and the voluntary vassalship of Egypt (l68 B.C.)
884. Annihilation of Macedon and the subjection of the Greeks
885. The
rapidity of the Roman conquests
886. Rome’s great task of imperial organization
552 Ancient Times
the same time Greek sympathy for Macedonia was made the pretext for greater severity toward the Greeks. Many were carried off to Italy as hostages, and among them no less than a thousand noble and educated Achaeans were brought to Rome. When in spite of this the Achaean League (§725) rashly brought on a war with Rome, the Romans applied the same methods which they were using against Carthage. The same year which saw the destruction of Carthage witnessed the burning of Corinth also (146 B.C.). Greek liberty was of course ended, and while a city of such revered memories as Athens might be given greater freedom (§ 726), those Greek states whose careers of glorious achievement in civilization we have followed, were reduced to the condition of Roman vassals.
It was little more than three generations since the Republic on the Tiber took the fateful step of beginning the conflict with Carthage for the leadership of the West. That struggle had led her into a similar conflict for the leadership of the East. There were old men still living who had talked with veterans of the Sicilian War with Carthage, and the grandsons of the Romans who had fought with Hannibal had burned Carthage and Corinth at the end of the great wars. For nearly a century and a quarter (beginning 264 B.C.) one great war had followed another,’'knd the Roman republic, beginning these struggles as mistress of Italy only, had in this short space of time (from greatgrandfather to great-grandson) gained the political leadership of the civilized world (cf. maps I, II, and III, p. 552).
The Roman Senate had shown eminent ability in conducting the great wars, but now, having gained the supremacy of the Mediterranean world, Rome was faced by the problem of devising successful government for the vast dominions which she had so quickly conquered. In extent they would have reached entirely across the United States. To organize such an empire was a task like that which had been so successfully accomplished by Darius, the organizer of the Persian Empire (§ 267). We shall find that the Roman Senate utterly failed
JbI 0° LoDglVadfl^151
Greenwich
\ Map I ^
Roman Power at the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 B.C.)
Scale of Miles 0 100 300 500
<phrat£r
s'
A1 ex an dry
L '—3 Roman Power
| Carthaginian Power r~ .• 7-i Macedonian and Seleucid Empires | Ptolemaic Empire
Longitude . 1'0° & W^sl 0° Longltud^ 1
Orcenvdoh 40° 50° ~/p
I \ Map III ^
Expansion of Roman Power kfrom the End of the Hannibalian ~S\ V to the Beginning of the Revolutit
-Jp-^ (201-133 B.C}
\ ? Scale of Miles ’ V / / 0 100 300 500 \o 1
Corsicj
'fphrates
•s* CV^
piete s\ Alexandr/a\
Strait o Oxbraltl
3 Roman Power ] Ptolemaic Empire
Allies of Rome
Sequence Map showing the Expansion of the Roman Pc
to the Deai
Longl|ud«/I,OV East? ^O4 VI
mgliude 10°
Greenwich 40° f>Q°
j \ Map II /
f Expansion of Roman Power U. between the Sicilian and Hannibalian Yl Wars with Carthage (241-218 B.C.)
_ ____Scale of Miles
\ ^ o ioo aoo 500 ^
fp_hrctet
►Syracuse^
^rete S Alexandr/
\ ~ I Roman Power
) Carthaginian Power I I Macedonian and Seleueid Empires | Ptolemaic Empire
LoDgitudu/l
OreeDwich 40° 5(("
) \ Map IV /
Expansion of Roman Power ^ from the Beginning of the Revolution \\ to the Death of Caesar (133-44 B.C.)
Scale of Miles "
\ J . 0 100 300 500
■$/eratcs
Ae 4^rete S\
Cy t3S£rw!f Xan
Kom an Power Allies of Rome
rom the Beginning of the Wars with Carthage (264 b.c.) Iesar (44 B.C.)
World Dominion and Degeneracy 553
in the effort to organize the new dominions. The failure had a most disastrous influence on the Romans themselves and, together with the ruinous effects of the long wars on Italy, finally overthrew the Roman republic — an overthrow in which Rome as a nation almost perished. Let us now glance at the efforts of Rome to govern her new dominions and then observe the effect of the long wars and of world power on the Romans and their life.
Section 81. Roman Government and Civilization in the Age of Conquest
The Romans had at first no experience in governing their conquered lands, as the United States had none when it took possession 'of the Philippines. Most of the conquered countries the Romans organized as provinces, somewhat after the manner of the provinces of the old Persian Empire. The people of a province were not permitted to maintain an army, but they were obliged to pay taxes and, lastly, to submit to the uncontrolled rule of a Roman magistrate who was governor of the province. It was chiefly the presence and power of this governor which made the condition of the provinces beyond the sea so different from that of the Roman possessions in Italy. The regulations for the rule of the provinces were made in each case by the Roman Senate, and on the whole they were not oppressive. But the Senate made no provisions for compelling the Roman governor to obey these regulations.
Such a governor, enjoying unlimited power like that of an oriental sovereign, found himself far from home with Roman troops at his elbow awaiting his slightest command. He had complete control of all the taxes of the province, and he could take what he needed from its people to support his troops and the expenses of his government. He usually held office for a single year and was generally without experience in provincial government. His eagerness to gain a fortune in his short term
887. Establishment of Roman provinces
888. The unlimited power and corruption of the Roman provincial governors
554
/inciem i imts
8S9. The new wealth of Rome
890. Growth of commerce and the rise of banking
of office and his complete ignorance of the needs of his province frequently reduced his government to a mere system of looting and robbery. The Senate soon found it necessary to have laws passed for the puriishment of such abuses; but these laws were found to be of little use in improving the situation.
The effects of this situation were soon apparent in Italy. In the first place, the'income of the Roman government was so enormously increased that it was no longer necessary to collect direct taxes from Roman citizens. This new wealth was not confined to the State. The spoils from the wars were usually taken by the victorious commanders and their troops. At the same time the provinces were soon filled with Roman business men. There were contractors called publicans, who were allowed to collect the taxes for the State at a great profit (§ 623), or gained the right to work State lands. We remember the common references to these publicans in the New Testament, where they are regularly classified with " sinners.” With them came Roman money-lenders, who enriched themselves by loaning money at high rates of interest to the numerous provincials who Were obliged to borrow to pay the extortionate taxes claimed by the Roman governors. The publicans were themselves moneylenders, and all these men of money plundered the provinces worse than the greedy Roman governors themselves. As these people returned to Italy, there grew up a wealthy class such as had been unknown there before.
Their ability to buy resulted in a vast import trade to supply the demand. From the Bay of Naples to the mouth of the Tiber the sea was white with Roman ships converging on the docks of Rome. The men who controlled all this traffic became wealthy merchants. To handle all the money in circulation, banks were required. During the Hannibalic War the first banks appeared at Rome occupying a line of booths on each side of the Forum. After 200 B.C. these booths gave way to a fine basilica (§ 732) like those which had appeared in the Hellenistic cities (Fig. 271,3). Here the new wealthy class
World Dominion and Degeneracy
met to transact financial business, and here large companies were formed for the collection of taxes and for taking government contracts to build roads and bridges or to erect public buildings. Shares in such companies were daily sold, and a business like that of a modern stock exchange developed in the Forum.
Under these influences Rome greatly chafed. Wi,h i
creasing wealth and l|8|k !
growing population, ^SSlllk Kl
there was »a great increase in the demand for dwellings.
Rents at once rose, and land in the city yjQ
greatly increased in value. A good form of paying investment was apartments for rent, and as the value of property rose, a larger return in rents could be secured by increasing the number of floors. Hence owners began to erect tall buildings with several stories, though these ancient " skyscrapers ” were never as tall as ours. It became necessary to limit their height by law, as we do, and when badly built, as they sometimes were, they fell down, as they have been known to do in our own cities.
When a returned governor of Africa put’ up a showy new house, the citizen across the way who still lived in his father’s
Fig. 240. An
Old Roman Atrium-HoTjse
There was no attempt at beautiful architecture, and the bare front showed no adornment whatever. The opening in the roof, which lighted the atrium (§ 892), received the rainfall of a section of the roof sloping, toward it, and this water collected in a pool built to receive it in the floor of the atrium below (Fig. 241, B). The tiny area, or garden, shown in the rear was not common. It was here that the later Romans added the Hellenistic peristyle (Fig. 242)
891. Rome becomes a profitable real-estate center
556
Ancient Times
892. The old-fashioned Roman house
TO
I 1 L J © 0
lm r|_^_
Fig.
241.
Plan of a Roman with Peristyle
House
old house began to be dissatisfied with it. It was built of sun-dried brick, and, like the old settler’s cabin of early America, it had but one room. In this room all the household life centered. The stool and spinning outfit of the wife and the bed. of the
citizen were each assigned to a comer, while the kitchen was simply another comer where the family meals were cooked over an open fire. There was no chimney, and the smoke passed out of a square hole in the middle of the roof. The whole place was so begrimed by smoke that the room was called the atrium, a word perhaps connected with the Latin word for "black” (Fig. 240). Here, then, the family took their meals, here they slept, and here in full view of pots and kettles,
The earliest Roman house had consisted of a single room, the atrium (A), with the pool for the rain water (B). Then a small alcove, or lean-to, was erected at the rear (C), as a room for the master of the house. Later the bedrooms on each side of the atriiihi were added. Finally, under the influence of Greek life (§ 893), the garden court (Z) and Fig. 242) with its surrounding colonnaded porch (peristyle) (Fig. 208) and a fountain in the middle (E) was built at the rear. Then a dining room, sitting room, and bedrooms were added, which opened on this court, and being without windows, they were lighted from the court through the doors. In town houses it was quite easy to partition off a shop, or even a whole row of shops, along the front or side of the house, as in the Hellenistic house (Fig. 208). The houses of Pompeii (Fig. 255) were almost all built in this way
beds and tables, the master of the house received his friends and transacted his affairs with business or official callers.
The Roman citizen of the new age had walked the streets of the Hellenistic cities. Indeed, he had long before been familiar with the comfort, luxury, and beauty with which the Greek
World Dominion and Degeneracy
houses of Capua and Naples were filled (§§ 728 and 738). At 893. The
first he added bedrooms on either side of his atrium and an RoSs
additional small room at its rear, as the master’s office and pri- Pew modern
r house
vate room. Soon, however, even the enlarged atrium-house
Fig. 242. Peristyle of a Pompeian House
We must imagine ourselves standing with our backs toward the atrium (having immediately behind us the room C in Fig. 241). We look out into the court, the garden of the house (Fig. 241,D). The marble tables and statues and the marble fountain basin in the middle (Fig. 241, £), just as we see them here in the drawing, were all found by the excavators in their places, as they were covered by volcanic ashes over eighteen hundred years ago (Fig. 255). Here centered the family life, and here the children played about the court, brightened with flowers and the tinkling music of the fountains
(Fig. 240) was not large enough, and behind it was added the Hellenistic court surrounded by its colonnaded porch (Figs. 241 and 242), from which opened bedrooms, a dining room, a library, rest rooms, and at the rear the kitchen. As luxury increased a second story might be added to receive the bedrooms
558
Ancient Times
894. The
luxurious furnishings and adornment of the wealthy Roman’s house
895. The
new conveniences and luxuries of the wealthy Roman household
and perhaps the dining room also. The atrium then became a large and stately reception hall where the master of the house could display his wealth in statues, paintings, and other works of art — the trophies of war from the East.
The old Roman houses had been unadorned and had contained nothing but the bare necessities. Carthaginian ambassadors had been much amused to recognize at successive dinners in Rome the same silver dishes which had been loaned around from house to house. Not long before the Carthaginian wars an exconsul had been fined for having more than ten pounds’ weight of silverware in his house. A generation later a wealthy Roman was using in his household silverware which weighed some ten thousand pounds. One of the Roman conquerors of Macedonia entered Rome with two hundred and fifty wagonloads of Greek statues and paintings. The general who crushed the yEtolians carried off over five hundred bronze and marble statues, while the destroyer of Carthage filled all Rome with Greek sculptures. A wealthy citizen in even so small a city as Pompeii paved a dining alcove with a magnificent mosaic picture of Alexander in battle (Fig. 202), which had once formed a floor in a splendid Hellenistic house in Alexandria. In the same way the finest furniture, hangings, and carpets of the East now began to adorn the houses of the wealthy in Rome.
All those conveniences which we have found in the Hellenistic dwellings (§ 728) were likewise quickly introduced, such as pipes for running water, baths, and sanitary conveniences. The more elaborate houses were finally equipped with tile pipes conducting hot air for warming the important rooms, the earliest system of hot-air heating yet found. The kitchen was furnished with beautiful bronze utensils, far better than those commonly found in our own kitchens (Fig. 243). On social occasions the food on the table included imported delicacies and luxuries, purchased at enormous expense. A jar of salted fish from the Black Sea cost seventy-five or eighty dollars, and the old-fashioned senator Cato, in a speech in the Senate, protested against such
World Dominion and Degeneracy 559
luxury, stating that " Rome was the only city in the world where such a jar of fish cost more than a yoke of oxen.” Such luxury required a great body of household servants. There was a doorkeeper at the front door (he was called " janitor ” from the Latin word janua, meaning " door ”), and from
Fig. 243. Bronze Kitchen Utensils excavated at Pompeii
This kitchen ware used by the cooks of Pompeii was found still lying in the kitchens of the houses as they were uncovered by the excavators. The pieces have been lettered, and the student will find it interesting to make a list of them by name, identifying them by letter and indicating their use as far as possible
the front door inward there was a servant for every small duty in the house, even to the attendant who rubbed down the master of the house after his bath. Almost all these menials were slaves, but it was not always possible to secure a slave as cook, and a wealthy Roman would pay as much as five thousand dollars a year for a really good cook.
896. Numerous household servants chiefly slaves
Ancient Times
897. Works of Greek art in Rome and their refining influence
898. Hellenistic architecture in Rome; the basilica and the theater
899. Andro-nicus and his translations of Greek literature into Latin (240207 B.C.)
While the effect of all this luxury introduced from the East was on the whole very bad, nevertheless the former plain, matter-of-fact, prosaic life of the Roman citizen was stimulated and refined both at home and in the Senate hall by the most beautiful creations of Greek genius. Even while eating his dinner, the commonplace citizen of Pompeii sat looking at the heroic death of the Persian nobles of Darius (Fig. 202). But there were never any Roman artists capable of producing such works as these.
A Roman senator returning from Alexandria could not but feel that Rome, in spite of some new and modem buildings, was very plain and unattractive, with its simple temples and old public buildings; and he realized that Alexandria was the greatest and most splendid city in the world. Roman emulation was aroused and forms of Hellenistic architecture, like the basilica on the Forum (§ 890), were beginning to appear in Rome. It was not long, too, before a Greek theater appeared, improved by the Romans with awnings to keep out the hot sunshine, a curtain in front of the stage, like ours, and seats in the orchestra circle where once the Greek chorus had sung (Plate VII, p. 560).
At the close of the Sicilian War (241 B.C.) a Greek slave named Andronicus, who had been taken as a lad by the Romans when they captured the Greek city of Tarentum (§ 824), was given his freedom by his master at Rome. Seeing the interest of the Romans in Greek literature, he translated the Odyssey (§ 4ro) into Latin as a schoolbook for Roman children. For their elders he likewise rendered into Latin the classic tragedies which we have seen in Athens (§ 579), and also a number of Attic comedies (§ 582). This worthy Greek, Andronicus, was the first literary man in history to attempt artistic translations possessing literary finish. He was, therefore, the founder of the art of literary translation. Through * his work the materials and the forms of Greek literature began to enter Roman life.
From a painting by C. Scott White
Plate VII. The Greek Theater at Taormina, with its Roman Additions The Greek colony {§ 441) of Tauromenium (modern Taormina) was on the east coast of Sicily (map, p. 484). We here look down from the seats of the theater, across the stage below (§ S98), where a gap in the Roman colonnade behind the stage reveals a long vista of the beautiful Sicilian shore; while in the distance towers the majestic volcano of Etna (nearly 11,000 feet high), often displaying a wisp of smoke above its crown of snow
I
World Dominion and Degeneracy 561
The Romans had been accustomed to do very little in the way of educating their children. There were no schools at first, but the good old Roman custom had been for the father to instruct his own children. Even when schools arose, there was no literature for the Roman lads to learn, as Greek boys had learned Homer and the other poets (§ 555). The Roman father’s respect for law and order led him to have his son taught the "Twelve Tables” of the law, and recite them to the schoolmaster, as English-speaking children are taught the Ten Commandments. Such schools had been very poorly equipped; some of them, indeed, were held in the open air in a side street or a corner of the Forum. At best they had met in a bare room belonging to a dwelling house, and there were no schoolhouses.
Gradually parents began to send their children to the schools which the freed Greek slaves of Rome were beginning to open there. Moreover, there was here and there a household which possessed an educated Greek slave, like Andronicus, who might become the tutor of the children, giving regular instruction and teaching his pupils to read from the new primer of Andronicus, as we may call his Latin translation of Homer. Now and then Greek teachers of renown appeared and lectured in Rome. Young Roman nobles thus gained the opportunity of studying rhetoric and public speaking, which they knew to be of great practical use in the career of public office to which they all aspired. Indeed, it was not uncommon for a young Roman of station to complete his higher education in Athens itself (§ 762).
As Rome gained control of Greece, the mingling of Greek and Roman life was increasingly intimate. When a thousand of the leading Achasans were brought to Rome as hostages (§ 884), there was among them a Greek statesman of great refinement and literary culture named Polybius. He was taken into the family of the Scipios, traveled about with them on their great campaigns, and occupied a position of dignity and respect. He witnessed the destruction of both Carthage and
900. The old-fashioned Roman schools
901. Greek influences in the new education in Rome
902. The influence of cultivated Greeks in Rome; Polybius
562
Ancient limes
903. Greek foundations of Latin literature
904. Rise of Latin literature
Corinth, and finally wrote an immortal history, in Greek, of the great Roman wars. Such cultivated Greeks had a great influence on the finer Romans like the Scipios. Polybius tells how he stood with the younger Scipio and watched the burning of Carthage, while his young Roman lord burst into tears and quoted Homer’s noble lines regarding the destruction of Troy.
Such familiarity with the only literature known to the Romans, such daily and hourly intimacy with cultivated Greeks, aroused the impulse toward literary expression among the Romans themselves. To be sure, the Latins, like all peasant peoples, had had their folk songs and their simple forms of verse, but these natural products of the soil of Latium soon disappeared as the men of Latin speech felt the influence of an already highly finished literature. Latin literature, therefore, did not develop along its own lines from native beginnings, as did Greek literature, but it grew up on the basis of a great inheritance from abroad. Indeed, we now see, as the Roman poet Horace said, that Rome, the conqueror, was herself conquered by the civilization of the Greeks.
Poets and writers of history now arose in Italy, and educated Romans could read of the great deeds of their ancestors in long epic poems modeled on those of Homer. In such literature were gradually recorded the picturesque legends of early Rome, like the story of Romulus and Remus and similar tales (p. 484, note), extending down through the early kings (p. 497, note). It is from these sources, now no longer regarded as history, that the early history of Rome used to be drawn. The Greek comedies of Menander (§ 754) attracted the Romans greatly; imitating these, the new Latin play writers, especially Plautus (died about 184 B.C.) and Terence (died about 159 B.C.), produced very clever comedies caricaturing the society of Rome, to which' the Romans listened with uproarious delight. Their production on the stage led to the highly developed theater buildings which we have already mentioned (§ 898).
World Dominion and Degeneracy 563
As the new Latin literature, grew, papyrus rolls bearing Latin works were more and more,common in Rome. Then publishers, in back rooms filled with slave copyists, began to appear in the city. One of the Roman conquerors of Macedon brought back the books of the Macedonian king, and founded the first private library in Rome. Wealthy Romans were now providing library rooms in their houses. A group of literary men arose, including the finest of the Roman leaders, and no man could claim to belong to this cultivated world without acquaintance with a well-stocked library of Greek and Latin books. Such Romans spoke Greek almost if not quite as well as Latin. These educated men were finally in sharp contrast with the uneducated mass of the Roman people, and there thus arose the two classes, educated and uneducated — a distinction unknown in the days of the early farmer republic.
Section 82. Degeneration in City and Country
The new life of Greek culture and luxury brought with it many evils. Even the younger Scipio, an ardent friend of Greek literature and art, expressed his pained surprise at finding Roman boys in a Greek dancing school, learning unwholesome dances, just as many worthy people among us disapprove of the new dances now widely cultivated in America. Cato, one of the hardiest of the old-fashioned Romans, denounced the new culture and the luxury which had come in with it (§ 895). As censor he had the power to stop many of the luxurious new practices, and be spread terror among the showy young dandies and ladies of fashion in Rome. He and other Romans like him succeeded in passing law after law against expensive habits of many kinds, like the growing love of showy jewelry among the women, or their use of carriages where they formerly went on foot. But such laws could not prevent the slow corruption of the people. The old simplicity, purity, and beauty of Roman family life was disappearing, and divorce was
905. Publishers, libraries, and the educated class
906. Corrupting influences of the new luxury; laws against extravagance
xxrirVttc-rtto
907. Inability of the masses to appreciate Greek literature
908. Gladiatorial combats as a political influence
909. Amphitheater for gladiatorial combats, and circuses for chariot races
becoming common. The greatest days of Roman character were past, and Roman power was to go on growing, without the restraining influence of old Roman virtue.
This was especially evident in the lives of the uneducated and poorer classes also. To them, as indeed to the vast majority of all classes, Greek civilization was chiefly attractive because of the numerous luxuries of Hellenistic life. The common people had no comprehension of Greek civilization. At the destruction of Corinth, Polybius saw Roman soldiers shaking dice on a wonderful old Greek painting which they had torn down from the wall and spread out on the ground like an old piece of awning. When a cultivated Roman thought to gain popular favor by arranging a program of Greek instrumental music at a public entertainment, the audience stopped the performance and shouted to the musicians to throw down their instruments and begin a boxing match! Contrast this with the Athenian public in the days of Pericles 1
It was to Roman citizens with tastes like these that the leaders of the new age were obliged to turn for votes and for support in order to gain office. To such tastes, therefore, the Roman nobles began to appeal. Early in the Sicilian War with Carthage there had been introduced the old Etruscan custom, of single combats between condemned criminals or slaves, who slew each other to honor the funeral of some great Roman. These combatants came to be called gladiators, from a Latin word gladius, meaning " sword.” The delight of the Roman people in these bloody displays was such that the officials in chargc of the various public feasts, without waiting for a funeral, used to arrange a long program of such combats in the hope of pleasing the people, and thus gaining their votes and securing election to future higher offices.
These barbarous and bloody spectacles took place at first within a temporary circle of seats, which finally became a great stone structure especially built for the purpose. It was called an amphitheater, because it was formed by placing two (amphi)
World Dominion and Degcneracy 565
theaters face to face (Fig. 262). Soon afterward combats between gladiators and wild beasts were introduced (headpiece, p. 549). The athletic contests which had so interested the Greeks were far too tame for the appetite of the Roman public. The chariot race, however, did appeal to the Romans, and they began to build enormous courses surrounded by seats for vast numbers of spectators. These buildings they called circuses.
The common people of Rome were thus gradually debased and taught to expect such public spectacles, sometimes lasting for days, as their share of the plunder from the great conquests. At the same time, as their poverty increased, the free food once furnished them by the wealthy classes far exceeded what private donors were able to give. It was therefore taken up by the State, which arranged regular distributions of grain to the populace. Vicious as this custom was, it was far from being so great an evil as the bribery which the candidates for office now secretly practiced. Laws passed to prevent the practice were -of slight effect. The only Roman citizens who could vote were those who attended the assemblies at Rome, and henceforth we have only too often the spectacle of a Roman candidate controlling the government that ruled the world by bribing the little body of citizens who attended the Roman assemblies.
All these practices enormously increased the expenses of a political career. The young Roman, who formerly might have demonstrated his ability and his worthy character in some minor office as a claim upon the votes of the community, was now obliged to borrow money to pay for a long program of gladiatorial games. In secret he might also spend a large sum in bribing voters. If elected he received no salary, and in carrying on the business of his office he was again obliged to meet heavy expenses. For the Roman government had never been properly equipped with clerks, bookkeepers, and accountants; that is, the staff of public servants whom we call the " civil service.” The newly elected official, therefore, had to supply
910. Distribution of free grain to the poor, and bribery
911. Expenses of a political career; lack of a civil service
566
Ancieni 1 im.es
912. Growth of selfinterest; the unrepublican character of returned provincial governors
913. Growth of great estates ; decline of the small farms
914. Captives of war as slaves
a staff of clerks at his own expense. Even a consul sat at home in a household room turned into an office and carried on government business with his own clerks and accountants, of whom one was usually a Greek.
The Roman politician now sought office, in order that through it he might gain the influence which would bring him the governorship of a rich province. If he finally gained his object, he often reached his province burdened with debts incurred in winning elections in Rome. But the prize of a large province was worth all it cost. Indeed, the consulship itself was finally regarded as merely a stepping-stone to a provincial governorship. When a retired provincial governor returned to Rome, he was no longer the simple Roman of the good old days. He lived like a prince and, as we have seen, he surrounded himself with royal luxury. These men of self-interest, who had held the supreme power in a province, were a menace to the republic, for they had tasted the power of kings without the restraints of Roman law and Roman republican institutions to hamper them.
But the evils of the new wealth were not less evident in the coimtry. It was not thought proper for a Roman senator or noble to undertake commercial enterprises or to engage in any business. The most respectable form of wealth was lands. Hence the successful Roman noble bought farm after farm, which he combined into a great estate or plantation. The capitalists who had plundered the provinces did the same. Looking northward from Rome, the old Etruscan country was now made up of extensive estates belonging to wealthy Romans of the city. Only here and there were still to be found the little farms of the good old Roman days. Large portions of Italy were in this condition. The small farm seemed in a fair way to disappear as it had done in Greece (§ 626). [
It was impossible for a wealthy landownei^ to work these great estates with free, hired labor. Nor was he obliged to do so. From the close of the Hannibalic War onward the Roman conquests had brought to Italy great numbers of
World Dominion and Degeneracy 567
captives of war from Carthage, Spain, Gaul, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor. These unhappy prisoners were sold as slaves. The coast of the Adriatic opposite Italy alone yielded one hundred and fifty thousand captives. An ordinary day laborer would bring about three hundred dollars at auction, a craftsman or a good clerk was much more valuable, and a young woman who could play the lyre would bring a thousand dollars. The sale of such captives was thus enormously profitable. We have already seen such slaves in the households at Rome. The estates of Italy were now filled with them.
Household slavery was usually not attended with much hardship, but the life of the slaves on the great plantations was little better than that of beasts. Worthy and free-born men from the eastern Mediterranean were branded with a hot iron like oxen, to identify them forever. They were herded at night in cellar barracks, and in the morning were driven like halfstarved beasts of burden to work in the fields. The green fields of Italy, where sturdy farmers once watched the growing grain sown and cultivated by their own hands, were now worked by wretched and hopeless creatures who wished they had never been bom. When the supply of captives from the wars failed, the Roman government winked at the practices of slave pirates, who carried on wholesale kidnaping in the Mgean and eastern Mediterranean for years. They sold the victims in the slave market at Delos, whence they were brought by Roman merchants to Italy.
Thus Italy and Sicily were fairly flooded with slaves. The brutal treatment which they received was so unbearable that at various places in Italy they finally rose against their masters. Even when they did not revolt, they were a grave danger to public safety. The lonelier roads of Italy were infested by slave herdsmen, lawless ancient cowboys who robbed and slew and in many districts made it unsafe to live in the country or travel the country roads. The conditions in Sicily were worse than in Italy. . In central and southern Sicily the revolting
915. Brutal treatment of plantation slaves
916. Slave revolts and disorders
568
Ancient Times
917. Hostility between the rich and the poor, especially the small farmers
1
918. Destruction of. farms and farm life in 1 taly by war
slaves gathered some sixty thousand in number, slew their masters, captured towns, and set up a kingdom. It required a Roman consul at the head of an army and a war lasting several years to subdue them.
During the uprising of the slaves in Sicily the small farm owners, free men, went about burning the fine villas of the wealthy plantation proprietors. The slave rebellion therefore was a revelation of the hatred not only among the slaves but also among the poor farming class of freemen — the hatred toward the rich landowners felt by all the lower classes in the country, slave or free. The great conquests and the wealth they brought in had made the rich so much richer and the poor so much poorer that the two classes were completely thrust apart and they no longer had any common life. Italy was divided into two great social classes dangerously hostile to each other. The bulk of the population of Italy had formerly been small farmers, as we have seen. Let us examine the effect of the great wars on the small farmers.
War seemed a great and glorious thing when we were following the brilliant victories of Hannibal and the splendid triumph of Scipio at Zama. But now we are to see the other side of the picture. Never has there been an age in which the terrible and desolating results of war have so tragically revealed the awful cost of such glory. The happy and industrious families cultivating the little farms which dotted the green hills and plains of Italy had now been helplessly scattered by the storms of war, as the wind drives the autumn leaves. The campaigns of Hannibal left southern Italy desolate far and wide, and much of central Italy was in little better condition. These devastated districts left lying waste were never again cultivated, and slowly became pasture lands. In regions untouched by invasion, fathers and elder sons had been absent from home for years holding their posts in the legion, fighting the battles which brought Rome her great position as mistress of the world. If the soldier returned he often found the monotonous
World Dominion and Degcneracy 569
round of farm duties much too tedious after his adventurous life of war abroad. Leaving the plow, therefore, he returned to his place in the legion to resume the exciting life of war and plunder under some great leader whom he loved. Home life and wholesome country influences were undermined and broken up. The mothers, left to bring up the younger children alone, saw the family scattered and drifting away from the little farm, till it was left forsaken.
Too often as the returning soldier approached the spot where he was bom he no longer found the house that had sheltered his childhood. His family was gone and his little farm, sold for debt, had been bought up by some wealthy Roman of the city and absorbed into a great plantation like those which the Romans had found surrounding Carthage (§ 837). His neighbors, too, had disappeared and their farms had likewise gone to enlarge the rich man’s great estate. Across the hills on a sunny eminence he saw the stately villa, the home of the Roman noble, who now owned the farms of all the surrounding country. He cursed the wealth which had done all this, and wandered up to the great city to look-for free grain from the government, to enjoy the games and circuses, and to increase the poor class already there.
Or if he found his home and his little farm uninjured, and was willing to settle down to work its fields as of old, he was soon aware that the hordes of slaves now cultivating the great plantations around him were producing grain so cheaply, that when he had sold his harvest he had not received enough for it to enable him and his family to live. At the same time the markets of Italy were filled with cheap grain from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. With this imported grain often given away by the government, he could not compete, and slowly he fell behind; he borrowed money, and his debts increased. Forced to sell the little farm at last, he too wandered into Rome, where he found thousands upon thousands of his kind, homeless, embittered, and dependent upon the State for food.
919. The small farms bought up by wealthy plantation owners
920. Inability of the farmer to compete with slave labor and cheap imported grain
570
Ancient Times
921. Degeneration and discontent in Italy
922. Economic and agricultural decline in Greece
923. Decline of Hellenistic civilization
The sturdy farmer-citizens who had made up the bulk of the citizenship of Rome, the yeomanry from whom she had drawn her splendid armies, — these men who had formed the very substance of the power upon which the Roman Senate had built up its world empire, were now perishing. After the Macedonian wars the census returns showed a steady decline in the number of citizens of the republic in Italy. At the same time there was serious discontent among the cities of the allies in Italy because they had never been given full citizenship. They saw the government of a world empire in the hands of a corrupt Senate and a small body of more and more brutalized citizens at Rome, and they demanded their share in the control of the great empire to whose armies they had contributed as many troops as the citizens of the Republic had done.
The wealth and power which Roman world dominion had gained had thus brought Rome and Italy to the verge of destruction. Nor was the situation any better in the most civilized portions of the empire outside of Italy, and especially in Greece. Under the large plantation system, introduced from Asia Minor, where it had grown up under the Persians (§ 269), the Greek farmers had disappeared (§ 626), as those of Italy were now beginning to do. Add to this condition the robberies and extortions of the Roman taxgatherers and governors, the continuous slave raids of the .^Egean pirates, whose pillaging and kidnaping the Roman Republic criminally failed to prevent, the shift of Greek commerce eastward (§ 724), and we have reasons enough for the destruction of business, of agriculture, and of prosperity in the Greek world.
But that wondrous development of higher civilization which we found in the Hellenistic world (Chap. XXI) was likewise showing signs of decline. The sumptuous buildings forming the great home of science in Alexandria (§ 743) now represented little more than the high aims once cherished and supported by the Macedonian kings of Egypt. For when such State support failed, with its salaries and pensions to scientists
World Dominion and Degcneracy 571
and philosophers, the line of scientists failed too. Hence we see how largely science in the Hellenistic Age was rooted in the treasuries of the Hellenistic kings, rather than in the minds of the Greek race as it had been of old, when for sheer love of knowledge the Greek philosopher carried on his studies without such support.
The Mediterranean was now the home of Greek civilization in the East and of Roman civilization in the West, but the failure of the Roman Senate to organize a successful government for the empire they had conquered, — a government even as good as that of Persia under Darius (§ 286), — this failure had brought the whole world of Mediterranean civilization perilously near destruction. In the European background beyond the Alpine frontiers, there were rumblings of vast movements among the northern barbarians, threatening to descend as of old and completely overwhelm the civilization which for over three thousand years had been slowly built up by Orientals and Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean world. It now looked very much as if the Roman State was about to perish,, and with it the civilization which had been growing for so many centuries. Was civilized man indeed to perish from the earth ? Or would the Roman State be able to survive and to preserve civilization from destruction ?
Rome was a city-state. The finest fruits of civilization in art, literature, science, and thought had been produced under the government of city-states, as we have seen (§ 767). But among the Greeks this very limited form of state had outlived its usefulness and had over and over again proved its inability to organize and control successfully a larger world, that is, an empire. The city-state of the Roman Republic had now also demonstrated that its limited machinery of government was- quite unfitted to rule successfully the vast Mediterranean world which it was now endeavoring to control. Would it be able to transform itself into a great imperial State, with all the many offices necessary to give
924, Failure of Roman government of the Mediterranean world ; perilous situation of civilization
925. The failure of the city-state in imperial government
926. The responsibility of Rome to organize and defend the civilization of the Mediterranean world •
572 Ancient Times
successful government to the peoples and nations surrounding the Mediterranean ? Would it then be able to do for the Mediterranean world what the oriental empires had once done for a world equally large in Western Asia and Egypt ?
We stand at the point where the civilization of the Hellenistic world began to decline, after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth (146 B.C.). We are now to watch the Roman people in the deadly internal struggle which we have seen impending between rich and poor. They had at the same time to continue their rule of the Mediterranean world as best they could, while the dangerous internal transformation was going on. In the midst of these grave responsibilities they had also to face the barbarian hordes of the North. In spite of all these threatening dangers, we shall see them gaining the needed imperial organization which enabled the Roman State to hurl back the Northern barbarians, to hold the northern frontiers for five hundred years, and thus to preserve the civilization which had cost mankind so many centuries of slow progress — the civilization which, because it was so preserved, has become our own inheritance to-day. This achievement of Rome we are now to follow in the final chapters of the story of the ancient world.
QUESTIONS
Section 80. As mistress of the western Mediterranean world, what was to be Rome’s attitude toward the other nations of the Mediterranean? Why was Rome bound to subdue Philip of Macedon? Describe the struggle between Rome and Macedon. By extending her power over Macedon, with what other eastern empire was Rome in contact? Describe the struggle between Rome and the Seleucid Empire. What then happened to Macedon? to the Greeks? What two splendid cities were destroyed in the same year by the Romans ? What can you say of the rapidity of the Roman conquests ? Describe the task of government now confronting Rome.
Section 81. Had the Romans any experience in governing provinces ? Describe the rule of the usual Roman governor. What can you say of the increase of Roman wealth ? What was the effect on
World Dominion and Degeneracy 573
business at Rome? What kind of a house had the Roman formerly lived in? What kind did he now build? How was it furnished, and whence did its luxuries often come ? How did this compare with the situation before the Carthaginian wars ? What can you say of the servants in a wealthy household ? Describe the effect of Greek works of art in Rome. Were there any Roman artists equal to those in Greece? Tell how Greek literature became known in Rome. Describe the old Roman schools. How did educated Greeks affect teaching in Rome? Tell about Polybius. How did Latin literature arise ? What can you say of libraries and the educated class ?
Section 82. How was the new luxury affecting Roman life? What were the tastes of the ordinary Roman ? Describe the rise of gladiatorial combats. What can you say about the expenses of a political career ? What was happening to the small farms ? Describe slavery on the large estates; slave revolts. Describe the effect of the wars on the small farmers; the effect of the large estates and cheap grain. Describe the situation of Italy as a whole; of Greece and the JEgean world. What was the situation of Hellenistic civilization as a whole? How then had Roman leadership of the Mediterranean world succeeded thus far? Did a city-state possess the organization fitted to rule a great empire ? What three great tasks faced the Roman government: first in Italy, second in the whole Mediterranean world, and third on the northern and eastern frontiers?
Note. The sketch below shows us a comer of a Roman library. The books are all in the form of rolls (Fig. 191), arranged in large pigeonhole sections like rolls of wall paper, with the ends pointing outward and bearing tags containing the titles of the books. Thus the librarian was quickly able to find a given book or to return it to the shelves at the proper place, as he is engaged in doing in this relief.
CHAPTER XXVI
927. The dangerous situation to be met by the Senate
A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION AND THE END OF THE REPUBLIC
Section 83. The Land Situation and the Beginning of the Struggle between Senate and People
We must now recall the problems noticed at the close of the last chapter, demanding settlement by the Roman Senate. In Italy there was in the first place the perilous condition of the suryiving farmers and the need of increasing in some way their numbers and their farms. Equally dangerous was the discontent of the Italian allies, who had never been given the vote or the right to hold office. The problems outside of Italy were not less pressing. They were, likewise, two in number. There was first the thoroughgoing reform of provincial government and the creation of a system of honest and successful administration of the great Roman Empire. And second there was the settlement of the frontier boundaries of the Empire and the repulse of the invading barbarians who were
Note. The above headpiece shows us the two sides of a coin issued by Brutus, one of the leading assassins of Julius Caesar (§ 969). On one side the coin bears the head of Brutus, accompanied by his name and the title Imperator (abbreviated to IMP). On the other side are two daggers, intended to recall the assassination of Caesar, and between them appears the cap of liberty, to suggest the liberty which the Romans supposedly gained by his murder. In order that the meaning of all this might be perfectly clear, there appears, below, the inscription EID MAR, which means the Ides of March (the Roman term for the fifteenth of March), the date of Caesar’s murder (§ 969).
574
A Century of Revolution 575
threatening to crush the Mediterranean world and its civilization, as the prehistoric Greeks had crushed JEgean civilization (§ 380).
The Senate which was to meet this dangerous situation had been in practical control of the Roman government since the days of the Samnite War. The senators now formed an oligarchy of selfish aristocrats as in the Greek cities (§ 618). Yet there were no laws which had created the undisputed power of the Senate. It was merely by their great prestige and their combined influence as leading men and former magistrates (§ 811) that they maintained the control of the State. The legal power of the Roman State really rested in the hands of the Roman people, as they gathered in their assemblies (§ 806), and this power had never been surrendered to'the Senate by any vote or any law.
The crying needs of the farming clajs in Italy failed to produce any effect upon the blinded and selfish aristocrats of the Senate as a whole. Even before the Hannibalic War the need of newly distributed farm lands was sorely felt. Led by the brave Flaminius, who afterward as consul fell at the head of his army in Hannibal’s ambush at Trasimene (§ 862), the Assembly had passed a law in defiance of the Senate, providing for a distribution of public lands which the senators desired for themselves and their friends of the noble class. As a result Flaminius was always hated by the senatorial party, and ever after was regarded as the popular leader who opened the struggle between people and Senate, and having thus shown the people their power, had begun the dangerous policy of allowing the unstable populace to control the government. The conflict between Senate and people had subsided during the Hannibalic War, but when this great danger had passed, it would seem that a tribune named Licinius, who understood the needs of the people, had succeeded in having a law passed by the Assembly, which forbade any wealthy citizen from holding over five hundred acres of the public lands, or pasturing more than a hundred cattle or five hundred sheep on
928. Shortcomings of the Senate and lack of a legal basis for their power
929. The assignment of new farms to landless farmers and the opening of the struggle between Senate and people
576
Ancient limes
930. The
absorption of the public lands by the nobles
931. Tiberius Gracchus, tribune (133 B.C.)
these lands. Such was the power of the senatorial party, however, that these Licinian laws had become a dead letter.1
In gaining control of Italy, Rome had finally annexed about half of the peninsula, and no more land could now "be taken without seizing that of the Italian allies. About a decade before the destruction of Carthage and Corinth the last Roman colony had been founded. The only way to secure new farms for assignment to landless farmers was by making the Licinian laws effective, that is, by taking and assigning to farmers the public lands already belonging to the State — what we call "government lands” in the United States. But for generations these lands had been largely held under all sorts of arrangements by wealthy men, and it was sometimes difficult to decide whether a noble’s estate was his legal properly or merely public land .which he was using. Under these circumstances we can easily imagine with what stubbornness and anger great landholders of the senatorial party would oppose any effort to redistribute the public lands on a basis fair to all.
Flaminius had taught the people their power (§ 929). Since then they had lacked a skillful leader. The unselfish patriot who undertook to become the leader of the people and to save Italy from destruction by restoring the farmer class was a noble named Tiberius Gracchus. He was a grandson of the elder Scipio, the hero of Zama, and his sister had married the younger Scipio. Elected tribune (133 B.C.), he used to address the people with passionate eloquence and tell them of their wrongs: The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking places, where they may make their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the blessings of air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro with your wives and children. . . . You fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others. You are called the masters of the woild ; yet there is no clod of earth that you can call your own.”
^ 1 The usually accepted earlier date for the Licinian laws (376 B.C.) is quite impossible; nor is the date above suggested at all certain.
A Century of Revolution 577
As tribune, Tiberius Gracchus submitted to the Assembly a law for the reassignment of public lands and the protection and support of the farming class. It was a statesmanlike and moderate law. It called for little, if anything, more than what was already demanded by the Licinian laws. It was an endeavor to do for Italy what Solon had done for Attica (§ 469), and was decidedly more moderate than the legislation of Solon. After a tragic struggle in which the new tribune resorted to methods not strictly legal, he succeeded in passing his law. In the effort to secure reelection, that he might insure the enforcement of his law, Gracchus was slain by a mob" of senators, who rushed out of the Senate house and attacked the tribune and his supporters. This was the first murderous deed introducing a century of revolution and civil war (133—31 B.C.), which terminated in the destruction of the Roman Republic.
Ten years after the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, his younger brother Gaius gained the same office (123 B.C.). He not only took up the struggle on behalf of the landless farmers, but he made it his definite object to attack and weaken the Senate. He endeavored to enlist on the side of the people every possible enemy of the Senate. He therefore organized the capitalists and men of large business affairs, who, of course, were not senators. Because of their wealth they had always furnished their own horses and served in the army as horsemen. They were therefore called knights; or, as a group, the equestrian order. Gaius Gracchus secured the support of these men by obtaining for them the right to collect the taxes in Asia, and he gave them great power by founding a court made up of knights for the trial of dishonest and extortionate Roman governors appointed by the Senate. At the same time he proposed to give to the Italian allies the long-desired full citizenship — a proposal which angered the people as much as it did the Senate. His efforts finally resulted in a riot in which Gaius Gracchus was killed, as his brother had been (121 B.C.).
932. Land laws of Tiberius Gracchus, and his death (132 B.C.)
933. Struggle
of Gaius Gracchus with the Senate, and his death
(123121 B.C.)
578
Ancient Times
934. Unreliability of popular support
935. The war with Jugur-tha, and the appointment of the people’s commander against the Senate
Section 84. The Rise of One-Man Power: Marius and Sulla
The weakness in the reforms of the Gracchus brothers lay chiefly in their unavoidable reliance upon votes; that is, upon the unstable support of the people at the elections and at the meetings of the popular assembly. It was difficult to hold the interest of the people from election to election. In the Gracchan elections, when work on the farms was pressing, the country people around Rome would not take the time to go up to the city and vote, although they were the very ones to be benefited by the’ Gracchan laws. The work of Flaminius, and especially of the Gracchi, had taught the people to look up to a leader. This tendency was the beginning of one-man power. But the leader to whom the people now turned was not a magistrate, as the Gracchi had been, but a military commander.
Meantime the blindness and corruption of the Senate offered the people more than one opportunity for gaining power. The misrule of the Senate abroad was now so scandalous that the people seized this opportunity. In a war between Rome and Jugurtha, ruler of the great kingdom of Numidia beside Carthage in North Africa, the African king, knowing the weakness of the Romans of this age, succeeded in bribing the consul, and thus inflicted a crushing defeat on the Roman army. The war then dragged disgracefully on. These events so incensed the people of Rome, that in spite of the fact that the Senate’s commander, an able and honest consul named Metellus, had finally met and defeated Jugurtha, the Assembly passed a law appointing their own general to supersede Metellus. The people thus assumed charge of a great foreign enterprise, and, what was more important, the people by this actio?i seized control of the army. The Senate was unable to prevent the Assembly’s action from going into effect. The interests of the people were no longer dependent wholly upon civil magistrates, changing from election
A Century of Revolution 579
to election, but upon military force under a leader who might be given a long command.
The commander on whom the people relied was himself a man of the people, named Marius, who had once been a rough plowboy. He was fortunately an able soldier, and he quickly brought the war with Jugurtha to an end, after the Senate’s leaders had allowed the war to drift on for six years. When the news of his victory reached Rome the people promptly elected him consul for the second time, before his return. In 104 B.C. he returned to Rome, and the people beheld the captive Numidian king led through the streets in chains. Meantime the two powerful tribes of German barbarians, the Cimhrians and the Teutons, combined with Gauls, had been shifting southward and crossing the northern frontiers of Rome. In Gaul and on the Gallic frontiers six Roman armies, one after another, had been disastrously defeated. It looked as if the Roman legions had at last met their match. There was great anxiety in Rome, and the people determined to reelect Marius consul and send him against the terrible northern barbarians. Meeting the Teutons in southern Gaul, the people’s hero not only defeated but practically destroyed the first German host (102 B.C.). Shortly afterward, when the Cimbrians had finally succeeded in crossing the Alps into the Po valley, Marius met and crushed them also. A soldier of the people had saved Rome.
Marius was not only an able soldier, but he was also a great organizer, and he introduced changes in the Roman army which were epoch-making both in the history of warfare and in the political history of Rome. In order to secure sufficient men for the legions, he_ abolished the old custom of allowing only citizens of property to serve in the army, and he took in the poor and the penniless. Such men soon became professional soldiers. As once in Greece (§ 629), so now in Rome, the day of the citizen-soldier. had passed. The long wars had made many a Roman citizen practically a professional soldier, as we have noticed. The army of Marius was largely a professional army,
936. Marius, the people’s commander, defeats Jugurtha and the German barbarians
937, Marius abolishes property qualification for military service; the rise of a professional army
Ancient Times
938. The
cohort as the tactical unit, devised by Marius
939. Failure of Marius as a statesman; the Senate regains leadership
and although the obligation to serve in the army still rested on every Roman citizen, it was less and less rigidly enforced.
The youths who permanently took up the life of the soldier could be so well drilled that they were able to cany out maneuvers impossible for an army made up of citizens serving for a limited time. Marius therefore completely reorganized the legion. He raised its numbers from forty-five hundred to six thousand. He divided each six thousand into ten groups of six hundred each. Such a body of six hundred was called a cohort. It formed the unit in the shifting maneuvers, which, as we have seen, meant victory or defeat in battle (§ 874). So perfectly drilled and so fearless were these units, that the cohorts would move about the field with the precision of clockwork and with complete confidence in the plan of the commander, just as the individuals in a perfectly trained football squad respond almost automatically to the signal. The production of the cohort, as we shall see, made it possible to complete the final chapter in the development of the art of warfare in ancient times.
But in spite of his ability as a soldier and as an army organizer, Marius was not a statesman. Having risen from the ranks, he was at heart a rough Roman peasant. He hated the aristocrats of the city; he did not know how to deal with them, nor did he understand the leadership of the popular party which had given him his great military commands. Elected consul for the sixth time in the year 100 B.C., he failed utterly to control the leaders of his party in the political struggles in Rome. They went to such excesses that two of them were slain in a riot. Moderate men were estranged from the cause of the people, and the Senate gained the upper hand again. Marius retired in disgrace, but his leadership had revealed to the people how they might gain control over the Senate by combining on a military leader, whose power, therefore, did not consist in the peaceful enforcement of the laws and usages of the Roman State, but in the illegal application of military force.
A Century of Revolution 581
Meantime the struggle between Senate and people was complicated by the increasing discontent of the Italian allies. They had contributed as many troops to the army which conquered the Empire as had Rome herself, and now they were refused any voice in the control of that Empire or any share in the immense wealth which they saw the Romans drawing from it. The wise and liberal policy of the ancient Senate in freely granting citizenship to communities in newly acquired Italian territory (§.814) had been long abandoned, reminding us of the Athenians in the later years of Pericles (§ 588). Before the different communities of Italy had had time to merge into a nation (§ 828), they had been forced into a long series of foreign wars which had built up the Empire. But the possession of this Empire had corrupted and blinded the Senate and the governing community at Rome. By this sudden wealth and power Rome had been raised above all feeling of fellowship with-the other communities of Italy. The great peninsula was still filled with disunited communities (§ 829), and there now rested upon Rome the obligation to make Italy a nation.
There were, happily, some Roman leaders with the insight of statesmen, who perceived this great need and who planned that the Italian allies should receive citizenship. Among them was a wealthy, popular, and unselfish noble named Drusus, who gained election as tribune and began measures leading to the enfranchisement of the Italian allies. But so fierce and savage was the opposition aroused, that this great Roman statesman was stabbed in the street. The opposition to Drusus and his plans was by no means confined to the Senate. The common people of Rome were likewise jealous of their ancient privileges, and the wealthy men of the new equestrian order were equally unwilling to share their opportunities of plundering the provinces. The Italian allies therefore soon saw the hopelessness of an appeal to Rome for their rights. Immediately after the assassination of Drusus the leading Italian peoples of central and southern- Italy revolted and formed a new state and
940. Disunion in Italy and discontent of the Italian allies
941. Blind exclusiveness of the Romans and assassination of Drusus (91 B.C)
582
Ancient nines
942. War with allies (Social War, 90-88 b.c.) ; citizenship given to all Italy
943. Rise of Sulla ; a consul sustains the Senate and defeats the will of the people with an army
government of their own, with a capital at a central town which they impressively renamed Italica (90 B.C.).
In the war which followed, the army of Rome was at first completely defeated, and although this reverse was in a measure retrieved, the strength of the allies could not be broken. Seeing the seriousness of the situation, the Roman politicians tardily took action and granted the desired citizenship. The Italian alliance then broke up, and the Italian communities reentered the Roman State. Yet they entered it as distant wards of the city on the Tiber. The citizens residing in these distant wards could not vote or take any part in the government unless they journeyed to Rome to do so. This situation was of course an absurdity, and again illustrated the inability of an ancient city-state to furnish the machinery of government for a large nation, not to mention a world empire. Nevertheless, Italy was now on the way to become a nation unified in government and in speech.
A very threatening war was now breaking out in Asia Minor. Wealthy senators and other Romans of the moneyed class who now ruled Rome had many financial interests in this region, and this led them to dread a war there, and to stop it as soon as possible. Among the officers of Marius there had been a very successful soldier named Sulla, who was chosen consul for the year after the war with the allies. The Senate now selected him to command in Asia Minor. But the leaders of the people would not accept the Senate’s appointment, and just as in the war against Jugurtha, they passed a law electing Marius to command in the coming Asia Minor war. Now Marius had no army at the moment, but Sulla was still at the head of the army he had been leading against the Italian allies. He therefore ignored the law passed by the people, and marched on Rome with his troops. For the first time a Roman consul took possession of the city by force. The Senate was now putting through its will with an army, as the Assembly had before done. Sulla forced through a new law by which the Assembly would always be
A Century of Revolution
583
obliged to secure the consent of the Senate before it could vote on any measure. Having thus destroyed the power of the people legally to oppose the will of the Senate, Sulla marched off to his command in Asia Minor.
The Senate had triumphed, but with the departure of Sulla and his legions the people refused to submit. There was fighting in the streets, and the senatorial troops fell upon the new Italian citizens as they voted in the Forum and slew them by hundre'ds. In the midst of these deeds of violence Marius, who had escaped to Africa, returned at the head of a body of cavalry. He joined the popular leaders, and, entering Rome, he began a frightful massacre of the leading men of the senatorial party. The Senate, the first to sow seeds of violence in the murder of Tiberius Gracchus (§ 932), now reaped a fearful harvest. Marius was elected consul for the seventh time, but he died a few days after his election (86 b. c.). Meantime the people ruled in Rome until the day of reckoning which was sure to come on the return of Sulla.
The war which had called Sulla to Asia Minor was due to the genius of Mithradates, the gifted young king of Pontus (see map IV, p. 552). He had prospered by taking advantage of Roman misrule in the East. He had rapidly extended his kingdom to include a large part of Asia Minor, and such was the deep-seated discontent of the Greek cities under Roman rule that he was able to induce the Greek states of Asia Minor and some in Greece to join him in a war against Rome. Even Athens, which had suffered least, supported him. The Romans, busily occupied with civil war at home, were thus suddenly confronted by a foe in the East who seemed as dangerous as Carthage had once been. Sulla besieged Athens (see description of cut, p. 425), recovered European Greece, and drove the troops of Mithradates back into Asia. Thereupon crossing to Asia Minor he finally concluded a peace with Mithradates. He laid an enormous indemnity of twenty thousand talents on the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Then leaving them to the tender
944. Restoration of people’s control in Sulla’s absence; war and murder in the streets of Rome
945. Sulla’s campaign against Mithradates
S84
Ancient Times
946. Sulla
defeats the armies of the Roman people and is made Dictator (82 B.C.)
947. Sulla deprives the people of political power and gives the Senate supreme leadership (82-79 E-c.)
948. The people elect Pompey consul and regain political power (70 B.C.)
mercies of the Roman money-lenders and to the barbarous raids of the eastern pirates, Sulla returned to Rome.
On the way thither the Roman army of Sulla defeated the Roman armies of the people, one after another. Finally, outside the gates of the city, Sulla overthrew the last army of the people and entered Rome as master of the State, without any legal power to exercise such mastery. By means of his army, however, he forced his own appointment as Dictator, with far greater powers than any Dictator had ever before possessed (82 B.C.). His first action was to begin the systematic slaughter of the leaders of the people’s party and the confiscation of their property. Rome passed through another reign of terror like that which followed Marius’s return. The hatred.s and the many debts of revenge which Sulla’s barbarities left behind were later a frequent source of disturbance and danger to the State (§ 951).
Then Sulla forced the passage of a whole series of new laws which deprived the Assembly of the people and the tribunes of their power, and gave the supreme leadership of the State to the Senate, the body which had already so disastrously failed to guide Rome wisely since the great conquests. Some lesser reforms of value Sulla did introduce, but a policy based on the supremacy of the Senate was doomed to failure. To Sulla’s great credit he made no attempt to gain permanent control of the State, but on the completion of his legislation he retired to private life (79 B.C.).
Section 85. The Overthrow of the Republic: Pompey and Caesar
Following the death of Sulla a year after his retirement, agitation for the repeal of his hateful laws, which bound the people and the tribunes hand and foot, at once began. To. accomplish this the people had now learned that they must make use of a military leader. The Senate had been ruling
A Century of Revolution
585
nine years in accordance with Sulla’s laws when the popular leaders found the military commander whom they needed. He was a former officer of Sulla, named Pompey, who had recently won distinction in Spain, where he had been sent by the Senate to overthrow a still unsubdued supporter of Marius. He was elected consul (70 B.C.) chiefly because he agreed to repeal the obnoxious laws of Sulla, and he did not fail to carry out his promise. This service to the people now secured to Pompey a military command of supreme importance.
Such was the neglect of the Senate to protect shipping that 949. Pirates
the pirates of the East, chiefly from Cilicia, had overrun the dl"
whole Mediterranean (§ qic)- They even appeared at the and Pompey’s v y J appointment
mouth of the Tiber, robbing and burning. They kidnaped against them
Roman officials on the Appian Way, but a few miles from B’C'^
Rome, and they finally captured the grain supplies coming in to
Rome from Egypt and Africa. In 67 b.c. the Assembly ofl
the people passed a law giving Pompey supreme command in 11
the Mediterranean and 'for fifty miles back from its shores. Hep 1
was assigned two hundred ships and allowed to make his army 1
as large as he thought necessary. No Roman commander had
ever before held such far-reaching and unrepublican power.
In forty days Pompey cleared the western Mediterranean of U50. Exter-
pirates. He then sailed eastward, and in seven weeks after his &™p?rates,f
arrival in the JEgean he had exterminated the Cilician seal! Mithradates1
robbers likewise and burned their docks and strongholds, jjand conquests , . , , in the Orient
i he next year his command was enlarged, to include also the by Pompey
going on with satisfactory results under Luc commander o£ the greatest ability. Lucullus had already broken the power of Mithradates and also of the vast kingdom of Armenia, under its king, Tigranes. Pompey therefore had little difficulty in subduing Mithradates, and had only to accept the voluntary submission of Tigranes. He crushed the remnant of the kingdom of the Seleucids (§ 718) and made Syria a Roman province. He entered Jerusalem and brought the home of the
leadership in a new war against Mithradates
586
Ancient limes
951. Rise of Caesar and his support of Catiline and Antony
Jews under Roman control. Before he turned back, the legions under his leadership had marched along the Euphrates and had looked down upon the Caspian. There had been no such conquests in the Orient since the Macedonian campaigns, and to the popular imagination Pompey seemed a new Alexander
marching in triumph through the East.
Meantime a new popular hero had arisen at Rome. He was a nephew of Marius, named Julius Cassar(Fig. 244), born in the year 100 B.C., and thirty years old in Pompey’s consulate. He had supported all the legislation against the laws of Sulla and in favor ©f Pompey’s appointment to his great command. He took upJ the cause of Marius, and exalted his memory in public speeches so that he quickly gained a foremost place among the leaders of the people. The hatreds aroused by Sulla’s executions and confiscations had left a great number of revengeful and dissatisfied men, who to no small extent made up the following of Cassar. Among Caesar’s political friends was a noble named Catiline. He was the leader of a good many undesirable followers, but Caesar was supporting Catiline and another friend, named Mark Antony, for election to the consulship. ^
Popular distrust of Caesar’s purposes, and Catiline’s evil reputation, led to the defeat of Cassar’s candidates and to the election of Cicero, a comparatively new man, but the ablest orator and the most gifted literary man of the age. ■ By the formation of
Fig. 244. Bust said to be a Portrait of Julius Qesar
The ancient portraits commonly accepted as those qf Julius Caesar are really of uncertain identity
A Century of Revolution 587
a new middle-class party from the Italian communities, which should stand between the Senate and the people, Cicero dreamed of a restoration of the old republic as it had once been. Catiline, however, burdened with debts and rendered desperate by the loss of the election, gathered about him all the dissatisfied bankrupts, landless peasants, Sullan veterans, outlaws, and slaves, the debased and lawless elements of Italy seeking an opportunity to rid themselves of debt or to better their situation. Foiled by Cicero in an effort to seize violent control of the government, the reckless Catiline died fighting at the head of his motley following. Cicero’s overthrow of Catiline brought him great power and influence and made his consulship (63 B.C.) one of brilliant success. Caesar, on the other hand, was suspected of connection with the uprising of Catiline. The suspicion was without doubt unjust, but it proved to be a serious setback in his political career.
Just at this juncture Pompey returned to Italy clothed in splendor as the great conqueror of the Orient. He made no attempt to influence the political situation by means of his army, the command of which he relinquished; but he needed political influence to secure the Senate’s formal approval of his treaty of peace with Mithradates, and a grant of land for his troops. For . two years the Senate refused Pompey these concessions. Meantime Caesar stepped forward in Pompey’s support, and the two secured the adherence to their plans of a very wealthy Roman noble named Crassus. The plan was that Caesar and Crassus should run for the consulship, and then secure the two things which we have seen Pompey needed. This private alliance of these three powerful men (called a " triumvirate ”) gave them the control of the situation. As a result Caesar and Crassus were elected consuls for the year 59 b.c.
The consulship was but a step in Caesar’s plans. Having secured for Pompey the measures which he desired, Caesar fearlessly put through new land laws for the benefit of the
952. The overthrow of Catiline and the success of the great orator Cicero (63 B.C.)
953. Return
of Pompey; the triumvirate — Pompey, C assar, and Crassus; Caesar elected consul
(59 B-f ■)
588
SitlCiem 1 ime*
954. Cassar secures the government of Gaul on both sides of the Alps
955. Cassar’s military skill and general plan of operations in Gaul
956. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul (58-50 B.C.)
people, and then provided for his own future career. It was clear to him that he must have an important military command in order to gain an army. He saw a great opportunity in the West, like that which had been given Pompey in the Orient. Rome still held no more than a comparatively narrow strip of land along the coast of what is now southern France. On its north was a vast country occupied by the Gauls, and this region of Gaul was now sought by Caesar. He had no difficulty in securing the passage of a law which made him for five years governor of Illyria and of Gaul on both sides of the Alps, that is, the valley of the Po in northern Italy, which we remember had been occupied by the Gauls (§ 815), and also of further Gaul beyond the Alps, as just described.
Caesar took charge of his new province early in 58 B.C., and at once showed himself a military commander of surpassing skill. Not only did he possess the keenest insight into the tactical maneuvers which win victory on the field of battle itself; but he also understood at a glance the resources and abilities of a people and their armies. He knew that the greatest problem facing a commander was to keep his army in supplies and to guard against moving it to a point where it was impossible either to carry with it the supplies for feeding it or to find them on the spot. So efficient was his own great organization that he knew he could carry such supplies more successfully than could the barbarian Gauls. He perceived that1 no great barbarian host could be kept long together in one place, because they did not possess the organization for carrying with them, or securing later, enough food to maintain them long. When the necessity of finding provisions had forced them to separate into smaller armies, then Caesar swiftly advanced and defeated these smaller divisions.
By this general plan of operations in eight years of march and battle he subdued the Gauls and conquered their territory from the ocean and the English Channel eastward to the Rhine. He drove out a dangerous invasion of Gaul by the Germans,
A Century of Revolution 589
and astonishing them by the skill and speed with which he built a bridge over the Rhine, he invaded their country and established the frontier of the new Gallic province at the Rhine. He even crossed the Channel and carried an invasion of Britain as far as the Thames. He added a vast dominion to the Roman Empire, comprising in general the territory of modern France and Belgium. We should not forget that his conquest brought Latin into France, as the ancestor from which French speech has descended (see map IV, p. 552).
Cassar had shown himself at Rome a successful politician. In Gaul he proved his ability as a brilliant soldier. V^as he also a great statesman, or was he, like Pompey, merely to seeki a succession of military commands and to accomplish nothing-to deliver Rome from being a cat’s-paw of one military commander after another? Caesar’s understanding of the situation at Rome was perfectly clear and had been so from' the beginning. He was convinced that the foreign wars and the rule of the provinces had introduced into Roman government the ever-returning opportunity for a man of ability to gain military' power whjch could not be controlled by the State. It was of no use to bring in a new political party, as Cicero hoped to do, and to pit mere votes against the flashing swords of the legions. For the old machinery of government furnished by the republic possessed no means of preventing the rise of one ambitious general after another to fight for control of the State as Marius and Sulla had done. The republic could therefore never again restore order and stable government for Italy and, the empire. Herein Caesar showed his superiority as a statesman over both Sulla and Cicero.
The situation therefore demanded an able and patriotic commander with an army behind him who should make himself the undisputed and permanent master of the Roman government and subdue all other competitors. Consistently and steadily Caesar pursued this aim, and it is no reflection upon him to say that it satisfied his ambition to do so. One of his cleverest
357. Caesar’s view of the situation as a statesman
.
958. Caesar publishes an account of his Gallic Wars
590
Ancient limes
moves was the publication of the story of his Gallic campaigns, which he found time to write even in the midst of dangerous marches and critical battles. The tale is narrated with the most unpretentious simplicity. Although it is one of the greatest works of Latin prose, the book was really a political pamphlet, intended to convey to the Roman people an indelible impression of the vast conquests and other services which they owed to their governor in Gaul. It did not fail of its purpose. At present it is the best-known Latin reading book for beginners in that language in the whole civilized world.
959. Pompey When Cassar’s second term as governor of Gaul drew near tai«°™p the its end, his supporters in Rome, instructed by him, were arrang-Senate°f the 'n£> ^or second election to the consulship. The Senate was
dreading his return to Italy and was putting forth every effort to prevent his reelection as consul. The experience in the time of Marius had taught the Senate what to fear when a victorious commander returned to Rome to avenge their opposition to the people. They must have a military leader like Sulla again. Meantime Crassus, the wealthy member of the triumvirate (§ 953), had been slain in a disastrous war against the Par-thians, beyond the Euphrates, and the group had broken up, thus freeing Pompey. In the midst of great confusion and political conflict in Rome, the leading senators now made offers to Pompey, in spite of the fact that he had received his great command from the Assembly of the people and had been a leader of the popular party. He was no statesman and had no plans for the future of the State. He was simply looking for a command. The result was that he undertook to defend the cause of the Senate and support the enemies of the people. What should have been a lawful political contest, again became a military struggle between two commanding generals, Cassar ~''~~'-\and Pompey, like that of Marius and Sulla a generation earlier.
960. Caesar Cassar endeavored to compromise with the Senate, but on
and his army . . t .
of profes- receiving as their reply a summons to disband his army, he had sional soldiers no hesitation as to his future action. The professional soldiers
A Century of Revolution 591
who now made up a Roman army had no interest in political questions, felt no responsibility as citizens, and were conscious of very little obligation or attachment to the State. On the other hand, they were usually greatly attached to their commanding general. The veterans of Caesar’s Gallic campaigns were unswervingly devoted to him. When he gave the word, therefore, his troops followed him on the march to Rome without a moment’s hesitation, to draw their swords against their fellow Romans forming the army of the Senate under Pompey.
Caesar and his troops at once crossed the Rubicon, the little stream which formed the boundary of his province toward Rome. Beyond this boundary Cassar had no legal right to lead his forces, and in crossing it he had taken a step which became so memorable that we still proverbially speak of any great decision as a " crossing of the Rubicon.”
The swiftness of Caesar’s lightning blows was always one -961. Cassar of the greatest reasons for his success. Before the Senate’s maneuvers ’ message had been an hour in his hands, Caesar’s legions had ^^}eyy been on the march from the Po valley toward Rome (49 b. c.). is elected
... , / consul
Totally unprepared for so swift a response on Cassar s part, the (49B.C.)
Senate turned to Pompey, who informed thern that the forces
at his command could not hold Rome against Caesar. Indeed,
there was at the moment no army in the Empire capable of
meeting Caesar’s veteran legions with any hope of victory.
Pompey retreated, and as Caesar entered Rome, the majority
of the senators and a large number of nobles fled with Pompey
and his army. By skillful maneuvers Caesar forced Pompey and
his followers to forsake Italy and cross over to Greece. Being
now in possession of Rome, Caesar, after a brief dictatorship,
was elected consul, and could then assume the role of lawful
defender of Rome against the Senate and the army of Pompey.
His position, however, was not yet secure. Pompey, in the eyes of the Orient, was the greatest man in Rome. He could muster all the peoples and kingdoms of the East against Caesar. Furthermore, he now held the great fleet with which he had
592
Ancient Times
962. Pompey’s power. Cassar captures Pom-pey’s army in Spain (summer of 49 B.C.)
963. Ccesar surprises the senatorial party by crossing to’Greece (winter of 49-48 B.C.)
964. Battle of Pharsalus (48 B.C.)
suppressed the pirates, and he was thus master of the sea. With all the East at his back, he was improving every moment to gather and discipline an army with which to crush Caesar. Furthermore, Pompey’s officers still held Spain since his recovery of it from the followers of Marius. Caesar was therefore obliged to reckon with the followers of Pompey on both sides, East and West. He determined to deal with the West first. With his customary swiftness he was in Spain by June (49 B.C.). Here he met the army of Pompey’s commanders with maneuvers of such surprising cleverness that in a few weeks he cut off their supplies, surrounded them and forced them to surrender without fighting a battle.
Having heard of Caesar’s departure into Spain, Pompey and his great group of senators and nobles had been preparing at their leisure to cross over and take possession of Italy. Before they could even begin the crossing, Caesar had returned from Spain victorious, and to their amazement, in spite of the fact that they controlled the sea, he embarked at Brundisium, evaded their warships, and landed his army on the coast of Epirus. Forced by lack of supplies to divide his army, a part of his troops suffered a dangerous reverse. In the end, however, in spite of his inferior numbers, he accepted battle with Pompey at Pharsalus, in Thessaly (48 B.C.). .
Pompey’s plan for the battle was skillfully made, but it was not clever enough to outwit the greatest commander of the age. It consisted in drawing up his line so that a small stream would protect his right wing, in order that he might throw all his cavalry to the left wing. Probably twice as strong as Caesar’s right wing which it faced, it was expected to cut its way victoriously through, and then, passing around Cassar’s right end, to attack his legions in the rear. As the two armies approached each other, Caesar perceived Pompey’s plan of battle. He at once shifted six of his best cohorts, over three thousand men, to his right end, where they were screened by his cavalry from discovery by the enemy (plan, p. 593). The position of these six
A Century of Revolution
593
cohorts may be compared to that of an unobserved football player crouching on the right side lines to receive the ball. Caesar then ordered his cavalry, mostly Gauls and Germans, to retreat as Pompey’s horsemen attacked them. As they retreated, Pompey’s unsuspecting cavalry followed and pushed forward into Csesar’s cleverly devised trap. For when Csesar’s six cohorts swiftly dropped in behind them, Pompey’s horsemen were caught between the six cohorts behind and Caesar’s cavalry in front, and they were quickly cut to pieces. Caesar’s cavalry then swept swiftly around the enemy’s now undefended
left end and attacked Pompey’s legions in the rear. As Caesar threw in his reserves against the hostile center at the same moment, the whole senatorial army was driven off the field in flight. Its remnants surrendered the next morning.
This battle represented the highest development of military art, and it never passed beyond the masterful skill of the victor of Pharsalus. Pompey, crushed by the first defeat of his life, escaped into Egypt, where he was basely murdered. Caesar, following Pompey to Egypt, found ruling there the beautiful Cleopatra, the seventh of the name, and the last of the Ptolemies. The charms of this remarkable queen and the political
965. Csesar completes the conquest of the Mediterranean world (48-45 B.C.) .
S94
Ancient Times
966. Caesar’s moderation and his own position
967. C&sar’s reorganization of the State and Empire
advantages of her friendship met a ready response on the part of the great Roman. Here Caesar displayed probably the most serious weakness in his career, as he tarried in Alexandria, dallying with this beautiful and gifted woman for three-quarters of a year (from October, 48, to June, 47 B.C.). In a dangerous outbreak which found Caesar without sufficient troops, he was attacked by a mob and the great Alexandrian library (§75(5) was burned. We know little of the operations and battles by which Caesar overthrew his opponents in Asia Minor. It was from there that he sent his famous report to the Senate: " I came, I saw, I conquered ” (vent, vidi, vici). He was equally triumphant in the African province behind Carthage, and finally also in Spain. These, the only obstacles to Caesar’s complete control of the empire of the world, were all disposed of by March, 45 B.C., a little over four years after he had first taken possession of Italy with his army (map IV, p. 552).
Caesar used his power with great moderation and humanity. From the first he had taken great pains to show that his methods were not those of the bloody Sulla. He gratified no personal revenge, and he preserved the life of the gifted Cicero (§ 952), in spite of his hostility. It is clear that he intended his own position to be that of a Hellenistic sovereign like Alexander the Great. Nevertheless, he was too wise a statesman to abolish at once the outward forms of the Republic. He possessed all the real power, and.the Republic was doomed, for there was no one in Rome to gainsay this mightiest of the Romans. He had himself made Dictator for life, and assumed also the powers of the other leading offices of the- State.
Cagsar lived only five years (49-44 b.c.) after his first conquest of Italy (49 b.c.). Of this period, as we have seen, four years were almost wholly occupied by campaigns. He was therefore left but little time for the colossal task of reshaping the Roman State and organizing the vast Roman Empire,, the task in which the Roman Senate had so completely failed. Sulla had raised the membership of the Senate from three to six
A Century of Revolution 595
hundred. Caesar did not abolish the ancient body, but he greatly increased its numbers, filled it with his own friends and adherents, and even installed former slaves and foreigners among its members. He thus destroyed the public respect for it, and it was entirely ready to do his bidding. The new Senate could not obstruct him and hence the whole projected administration of the provinces centered in him and was permanently responsible to him. The election of the officials of the Republic went on as before, but he began far-reaching reforms of the corrupt Roman administration. In all this he was launching the Roman Empire. He was in fact its first emperor, and only his untimely death continued the death struggles of the Republic for fifteen years more. -
He sketched vast plans for the rebuilding of Rome, for magnificent public buildings, and for the alteration of the plan of the city, including even a change in the course of the Tiber. He laid out great roads along the important lines of communication, and he planned to cut a sea canal through the Isthmus of Corinth (Fig. 163). He completely reformed the government of cities. He put an end to centuries of inconvenience with the Greco-Roman moon-calendar (§ 564) by introducing into Europe the practical Egyptian calendar (§ 61), which we are still using, though with inconvenient Roman alterations.' The imperial sweep of his plans included far-reaching conquests into new lands, like the subjugation of the Germans. Had he carried out these plans, the language of the Germans to-day would be a descendant of Latin, like the speech of the French and the Spanish.
The eighteenth of March, 44 B.C., was set as the date for Caesar’s departure for the Orient on a great campaign against the Parthians east of the Euphrates. But there were still men in Rome who were not ready to submit to the rule of one man. On the fifteenth of March, three days before the date arranged for his departure, and only a year after he had quelled the last disturbance in Spain, these men struck down the greatest of
968. Ceesar’s vast plans and improvements
969. The assassination of Cassar (March 15, 44 B.C.) and its results
596
Ancient Times
970. Youth of Cassar’s nephew, Octavian (Augustus)
971. Early career of Octavian
the Romans. If some of the murderers of this just and kindly statesman, who was for the first time giving the unhappy peoples of the Mediterranean world a government alike just, honest, and efficient, — if some of his murderers, like Brutus and Cassius (headpiece, p. 574), fancied themselves patriots overthrowing a tyrant, they little understood how vain were all such efforts to restore the ancient Republic. World dominion and its military power had forever demolished the Roman Republic, and the murder of Caesar again plunged Italy and the Empire into civil war. The death of Alexander the Great interrupted in mid-career the conquest of a world empire stretching from the frontiers of India to the Atlantic Ocean, The bloody deed of the Ides of March, 44 B.C., stopped a similar conquest by Julius Caesar — a conquest which would have subjected Orient and Occident to the rule of a single sovereign. A like opportunity never arose again, and Caesar’s successor had no such aims.
Section 86. The Triumph of Augustus and the End of the Civil War
Over in Illyria the terrible news from Rome found the murdered statesman’s grand-nephew Octavian (Fig. 245), a youth of eighteen, quietly pursuing his studies. A letter from his mother, brought by a secret messenger, bade him flee far away eastward without delay, in order to escape all danger at the hands of his uncle’s murderers. The youth’s reply was to proceed without a moment’s hesitation to Rome. This statesmanlike decision of character reveals the quality of the young man both as he then showed it and for years to follow.
On his arrival in Italy Octavian learned that he had been legally adopted by Caesar and also made his sole heir.. His bold claim to his legal rights was met with refusal by Mark Antony, Caesar s fellow consul and one of his closest friends and supporters (§ 951), who had taken possession of Caesar’s
A Century of Revolution 597
fortune and gained another election to the consulship. By such men Octavian was treated with patronizing indulgence at first
— a fact to which he owed his life. He was too young to be regarded as dangerous. But'his young shoulders carried a very old head. He slowly gathered-the threads of the tangled situation in his clever fingers, not 'forgetting the lessons of his adoptive father’s career. The most obvious lesson was the necessity of military power.
He therefore rallied a force of Caesar’s veterans, and two legions of Antony’s troops also came over to him. Then playing the game of politics, with military power at his back and none too scrupulous a conscience, he showed himself a statesman no longer to be ignored.
By skillful improvement of the situation at Rome, Octavian forced his own election as consul when only twenty Fig. 245. Portrait of Augus-
years of age (43 B.C.). He TUS’ N0W IN ™E Boston Mu' ,, , seum of Fine Arts
was then able to form an
alliance composed of himself and the other two most powerful leaders, Antony, Caesar’s old follower, and Lepidus. This second triumvirate (three-man-alliance) was officially recognized by vote of the people. To obtain the money for carrying on their wars and establishing themselves, the three began at once a Sullan reign of terror, with confiscation of property and murder of their enemies. Among them the great orator Cicero, who had endeavored to preserve the old Republic, was slain by Antony’s brutal soldiers. He was the last of the orator-statesmen of Rome, as had been Demosthenes of Athens
598
Ancient Times
973. Octavian gains Italy and the West (42-35 B.C.)
974. Octavian overthrows Antony and gains the East (31 B.C.)
(§721). But the Republic was still supported by the two leading murderers of Csesar, Brutus, and Cassius. They were at the head' of a powerful eastern army, like that of Pompey, and were encamped at Philippi in Macedonia. As soon as they could leave Rome, Octavian and Antony moved against Brutus and Cassius, and in a great battle at Philippi the last defenders of the Republic were completely defeated (42 B.C.). _
The two victors then divided their domains: Octavian was to return to Italy and endeavor to crush the enemies of the triumvirate in the West. Antony was to .remain in the East and bring it again under full subjection to Rome. In the West a rebellious son of Pompey, who seized Sicily and held control of the sea with his fleet, was finally crushed by Octavian; and soon after Lepidus, who had been given the province of Africa behind Carthage, was also overthrown. Within ten years after Caesar’s assassination, and though only twenty-eight, Octavian had gained complete control of Italy and the West.
Antony had meantime showed that he had no ability as a serious statesman. His prestige was also greatly dimmed by a disastrous campaign against the Parthians. Dazzled by the attractions of Cleopatra, he was now living in Alexandria and Antioch, where he ruled the East as far as the Euphrates like an oriental sovereign. With Cleopatra as his queen, he maintained a court of sumptuous splendor like that of the Persian kings in the days of their empire. Cleopatra, who had once hoped to rule Rome as Caesar’s queen, was now cherishing similar hopes as the favorite of Antony. The tales of all this made their way to Rome and did not help Antony’s cause in the eyes of the Roman Senate. Octavian easily induced the Senate for this and other reasons to declare war on Cleopatra, and thus he was able to advance against Antony. As the legions of Csesar and Pompey, representing the East and the West, had once before faced each other on a battlefield in Greece (§ 964), so now Octavian and Antony, the leaders of
A Century of Revolution ’ 599
the East and the West, met at Actium on the west coast of Greece. The . battle was fought both by land and by sea. Before the end of the battle the soldiers of Antony saw their leader and his oriental queen forsaking them in flight, as Cleopatra’s gorgeous galley, followed by her splendid royal flotilla, swept out to sea carrying the cowardly Antony to Egypt. The outcome was a sweeping victory for the heir of Caesar.
The next year Octavian landed in Egypt without resistance worth mentioning and took possession of the ancient land. Antony, probably forsaken by Cleopatra, took his own life. The proud queen was unwilling to undergo the crushing humiliation of gracing Octavian’s triumph at Rome, two of whose rulers had yielded to the power of her beauty and her personality, and she too died by her own hand. She was the last of the Ptolemies (§ 716), the rulers of Egypt for nearly three hundred years, since Alexander the Great. Octavian therefore made Egypt Roman territory (30 B.C.). To the West, which he already controlled, Octavian had now added also the East. The lands under his control girdled the Mediterranean, and the entire Mediterranean world was under the power of a single ruler. Thus at last the unity of the Roman dominions was restored and an entire century of revolution and civil war, which had begun in the days of the Gracchi (133 B.C.), was ended (30 B.C.).
Octavian’s success marked the final triumph of one-man power in the entire ancient world, as it had long ago triumphed in the Orient. The century of strife which Octavian’s victory ended, was now followed by two centuries of profound peace, broken by only one serious interruption. These were the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, beginning in 30 B.C.1 We shall now take up the two centuries of peace in the two following chapters.
1 It should be noticed that these two centuries of peace did not begin with the Christian Era. They began thirty years before the first year of the Christian Era, and hence the two centuries of peace do not correspond exactly with the first two centuries of our Christian Era.
975. Octavian makes Egypt a Roman province (30 B.C.), and ends a century of revolution and civil war (13330 B.C.)
976. The
beginning of two centuries of peace
6oo ' Ancient Tithes
QUESTIONS
Section 83. What problems beset the Roman State in Italy? outside of I taly ? What can you say of the ability and the legal right of the Senate to meet these problems ? Who began the struggle for farm lands on behalf of the people? How did the Licinian laws attempt to aid the people ? What was the condition of the government lands? What did Tiberius Gracchus tell the people? Describe his efforts to aid the people, and the result. Recount the work of Gaius Gracchus, and the result.
Section 84. What was the chief reason for the failure of the Gracchus brothers ? Toward what kind of power did their leadership tend ? How did the people gain control of the army in the war with Jugurtha? Recount the victories of Marius against Jugurtha and the Northern barbarians. Give an account of his new military measures. How did Marius succeed as a statesman ? What was now the feeling of the Italian allies toward Rome? What can you say of Drusus? What happened on the death of Drusus? What was the result of the war with the allies ? Describe the rise of Sulla.- How did he defeat the will of the people? Was his action legal? What happened in Rome after Sulla went to Asia Minor ? Recount Sulla’s campaign against Mithradates. What happened' on Sulla’s return to Italy ? What was the policy of Sulla, and how did he put it through ?
Section 85. How did the -people succeed in throwing off the rule of the Senate ? What great command did they give to Pompey ? Recount his operations against the pirates and in the Orient. Tell about the rise of Julius Caesar. Recount the rise of Cicero and his defeat of Catiline. How did this prove a setback to Caesar? How did Caesar secure election as consul ? Recount his campaigns in Gaul. What was his view of the political situation of Rome ? What did the Senate do to thwart Caesar ? What was the result of Caesar’s advance on Rome? Recount his operations in Spain, and his invasion of Epirus. Describe the battle of Pharsalus. Recount briefly the achievements of Cassar after his triumph. Tell the story of his death and its results.
Section 86. Tell the story of Octavian until the battle of Philippi. How did Octavian gain the West? Who was ruler of the East? How did Octavian gain the East? What great world did he then control ? What kind of power had triumphed at the end of a century of revolution ? What was to follow ?
PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FIRST OF TWO CENTURIES OF PEACE: THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS AND THE SUCCESSORS OF HIS LINE '
Section 87. The Rule of Augustus and the Beginning of Two Centuries of Peace (30 B.c-14 a.d.)
When Octavian returned to Italy he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. A veritable hymn of thanksgiving arose among all classes at the termination of a century of revolution, civil war, and devastation. The great majority of Romans now felt that an individual-ruler was necessary for the control of the vast Roman dominions. Octavian therefore entered upon forty-four years of peaceful and devoted effort to give to the
Note. The above headpiec.e shows a restoration of a magnificent marble inclosure containing the " Altar of Augustan Peace,” erected by order of the Senate in honor of Augustus, The inclosure was open to the sky, and its surrounding walls, of which portions still exist, are covered below by a broad band of ornamental plant spirals, very sumptuous in effect. Above it is a series of reliefs, of which the one on the right of the door pictures the legendary hero iEneas bringing an offering to the temple of the Roman household gods (Penates) whom he carried from Troy to Latium (footnote, p. *484).
601
977. Octa-vian’s moderate policy
602
Ancient Times
978. Organization of the Roman State by Octavian
979. Titles of the new ruler
980. Dual character of the new State; waning power of the Senate
Roman Empire the organization and government which it had so long lacked. His most difficult task was to alter the old form of government so as to make a legal place for the power he had taken by military force. Unlike Caesar, Octavian felt a sincere respect for the institutions of the Roman Republic and did not wish to destroy them nor to gain for himself the throne of an oriental sovereign. During his struggle for the mastery heretofore, he had preserved the forms of the Republic and had been duly elected to his great position.
Accordingly, on returning to Rome, Octavian did not disturb the Senate, but did much to strengthen it and improve its membership. Indeed, he voluntarily handed over his powers to the Senate and the Roman people in January', 27 B.C. The Senate thereupon, realizing by past experience its own helplessness, and knowing that it did not possess the organization for ruling the great Roman world successfully, gave him officially the command of the army and the control of the most important frontier provinces. Besides these vast powers, he held also the important rights of a tribune (§§ .797, Bio), and on, this last office he chiefly based his legal claim to his power in the State.
At the same time the Senate conferred upon him the title of " Augustus,” that is, " the august.” The chief name of his office was " Princeps,” that is, " the first,” meaning the first of the citizens. Another title given the head of the Roman Empire was an old word for director or commander; namely, " Impera-tor,” from which, our word ''emperor” is derived. Augustus, as we may now call him, regarded his position as that of an official of the Roman Republic, appointed by the Senate. Indeed, his appointment was not permanent, but for a term of years, after which he was reappointed.
The Roman Empire, which here emerges, was thus under a dual government of the Senate and of the Princeps, whom we commonly call the emperor. The clever Augustus had done what his great foster father, Julius Caesar, had thought unnecessary : he had conciliated those Romans who still cherished- the
The First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 603
old Republic. The new arrangement was officially a restoration of the Republic. But this dual state in which Augustus endeavored to preserve the old Republic was not well balanced. The Princeps held too much power to remain a mere appointive official. His powers were more than once increased by the Senate during the life of Augustus ; not on his demand, for he always showed the Senate the most ceremonious respect, but because the Senate could not dispense with his assistance. At the same time the old powers of the Senate could not be maintained reign after reign, when the Senate controlled no army.
The Princeps was the real ruler, because the legions were behind him, and the so-called republican State created by Augustus tended to become a military monarchy, as we shall see. All the influences from the Orient were in the same direction. Egypt was in no way controlled by the Senate, but remained a private domain of the emperor. In this the oldest State on the- Mediterranean the emperor was king, in the oriental sense. He collected its huge revenues and ruled there as the Pharaohs and Ptolemies had done (§ 7.17). His position' as absolute monarch'in Egypt influenced his position as emperor and his methods of government everywhere. Indeed, the East as a whole could only understand the position of Augustus as that of a king, and this title they at once applied to him. This also had its influence in Rome.
The Empire which Rome now ruled consisted of the entire Mediterranean world, or a fringe of states extending entirely around the Mediterranean and including all its shores (map I, p. 636). But the frontier boundaries, left almost entirely unsettled by the Republic, were a pressing question. There was a natural boundary in the south, the Sahara, and also in the west, the Atlantic ; but on the north and east further conquests might be made. In the main Augustus adopted the policy of organizing and consolidating the Empire as he found it, without making further conquests. In the east his boundary thus became the Euphrates, and in the north the Danube and the
981. Tendency toward military monarchy; oriental influences in this direction
982. Peace policy of v Augustus, and the frontiers
604
Ancient Times
983. The
army
984. The sufferings of the provinces
Rhine. The angle made by the Rhine • and the Danube was' not favorable for defense of the border, and late in his reign Augustus made an effort to push forward to the Elbe (see map I, p. 636). This would have given the Empire a more nearly straight boundary, extending from the Black Sea to Denmark in a line from the southeast to the northwest. But in the attempt to conquer Germany to the Elbe, the Roman army was terribly defeated by the barbarous German tribes, and the effort was abandoned. The northern boundary of the Empire was then made a line of provinces west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, extending from the North Sea to the Black Sea.1
For the defense of these vast frontiers it was necessary to maintain a large standing army. Nevertheless the army, now carefully reorganized by Augustus, was not as large as the armies which had grown up in the civil wars. Augustus first reduced it to eighteen legions, but later raised it to twenty-five. It probably contained, on the average, about two hundred and twenty-five thousand men. The army was now -recruited chiefly from the provinces, and the foreign soldier who entered the ranks received citizenship in return for his service. Thus the fiction that the army was made up of citizens was maintained. But the tramp of the legions was heard no more in Italy. Henceforth they were posted far out on the frontiers, and the citizens at home saw nothing of the troops who defended them.
At the accession of Augustus the Roman Empire from Rome outward to the very frontiers of the provinces was sadly in need of restoration and opportunity to recuperate. The cost of the civil wars had been borne by the provinces. The eastern dominions, especially Greece, where the most important fighting of the long civil war had occurred, had suffered severely. For a century and a half before the great battles of the civil war, the provinces had been oppressed, excessively overtaxed or
1 Recent study of this question is leading some historians also to the view that Augustus never really intended or attempted to conquer to the Elbe.
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 605
tacitly plundered (§ 888). Barbarian invaders had seized the undefended cities of Greece and even established robber states for plundering purposes. Greece herself never recovered from the wounds then suffered, and, in general, the eastern Mediterranean had been greatly demoralized. The civilized world was longing for peace.
Augustus therefore now undertook to do for the Mediterranean world what five hundred years earlier Darius had done for the Persian Empire (§ 267), when it was even larger than the Roman Empire. But the task of Augustus demanded the organization of a much more highly civilized world than that of the Persian Empire, including a vast network of commerce in the Mediterranean such as no earlier age had ever seen. Great peoples and nations had to be officially taken into the Empire and given honest and efficient government. Some of them had old and successful systems of government; others had no government at all. Egypt, for example, had long before possessed the most highly organized administration in the ancient world, but regions of the West, like Gaul, had not yet been given a system of government. All this Augustus endeavored to do.
Under the Republic the governor of a province not only served for a short term but was also without experience. His unlimited power, like that of an absolute monarch, made it impossible for the consuls changing every year at home to control him. The governor of a province was now appointed by the permanent ruler at Rome, and such a governor knew that he was responsible to that ruler for wise and honest government of his province. He also knew that if he proved successful he could hold his post for years, or be promoted to a better one. There thus grew up under the permanent control of Augustus and his successors a body of provincial governors of experience and efficiency. The small group of less important provinces still under the control of the Senate, although they continued to suffer to some extent under the old system, also felt the influence of the improved methods.
985. The
great task of Augustus: the organization of the provinces
986. The improved system of governors of the provinces
6o6
Ancient Times
987. Augustus ior the first time regulates the finances of the Empire
988. Beneficial effect of the new efficient government
989. The Mediterranean world on the way to become a Mediterranean nation
In the days of the Republic no one had ever tried to settle how much money was needed to carry on the government, and how much of this sum each province ought justly to pay in the form of taxes. Augustus proceeded to put together huge census lists and property assessments, by which to determine the population and the total value of the property in each province. When this great piece of work was done he could determine just how much taxes each province should justly pay. He decreed that the inhabitants of the provinces were to pay two kinds of direct taxes, one on land and one on personal property, besides customs duties and various internal revenue taxes. Augustus had complete control -of the vast sums which he thus received in taxes, and his use of them was wise and just. Much of this money went back to the provinces to pay for necessary public works, like roads, bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings. In making all these financial arrangements Augustus learned much from Egypt.
Thus at last two centuries of Roman mismanagement of the provinces ended, and the obligation of Rome to give good government to her dependencies was finally fulfilled. The establishment of just, stable, and efficient control by the government at once produced a profound change, visible in many ways as we shall see (§§ 991-1004), but especially in business. Men of capital no longer kept their money timidly out of sight, but put it at once into business ventures. The rate of interest under the last years of the Republic had been twelve per cent. But as money now became more plentiful, the interest rate quickly sank to four per cent.
The great Mediterranean world under the control of Rome now entered upon a new age of prosperity and development, unknown before, when the nations along its shores were still fighting each other in war after war. A process of unification began which was to make the Mediterranean world a Mediterranean nation. The national threads of our historical narrative have heretofore been numerous, as we have followed the stories
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 607
of the oriental nations, of Athens, Sparta, Macedonia, Rome, Carthage, and others. For a long time we have followed these narratives separately like individual strands ; but now they are to be twisted together into a single thread of national history, that of the Roman Empire. The great exceptions are the German barbarians in the north, and the unconquered Orient east of the Euphrates.
Section 88. The Civilization of the Augustan Age
In the new Mediterranean nation thus growing up, it was the purpose of Augustus that Italy should occupy a superior position, as the imperial leader of all the peoples around the Mediterranean. Italy was not to sink to the level of these peoples nor to be merely one of them. We have seen the sturdy virtues of earlier Roman character undermined and corrupted by sudden wealth and power (§§ 906-922), before Italy had had a chance to become a nation. Augustus made a remarkable effort to undo all this damage and restore the fine old days of rustic Roman virtue, the good old Roman customs, the beliefs of the fathers. To meet increasing divorce, laws to protect the sanctity of marriage were passed. The oriental gods, so common for centuries in Greece (§ 657), and long widespread in Italy, were to be banished. The people were urged to awaken their declining interest in the religion of their fathers, and the old religious feasts were celebrated with increased splendor and impressiveness. At the same time the State temples, which had frequently fallen into decay, were repaired; new ones were built, especially in Rome, and the services and usages of Roman State religion were everywhere revived.
Tendencies like those which had changed the Roman people lie too deep in the life and the nature of men to be much altered by'the power of a government or the pressure of new laws. It was a new world in which the Romans of the Augustan Age were living. The more Augustus applied his own power
990. Augustus attempts a restoration of old Roman life, and plans preeminence of Italy
991. The
new Rome
6o8
Ancient Times
992. Rome the greatest center of art; the Palatine buildings of Augustus
to modify the situation, the more noticeable became the contrast between the Augustan Age and the old days before one-man power arose. Under Augustus, Rome for the first time received organized police, a fire department, a water department, and a fully organized office for the government sale of grain. Augustus himself boasted that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. To the visitor at Rome, therefore, the new age proclaimed itself in imposing new buildings. For republican Rome had lacked the magnificent monumental theaters and gymnasia, libraries and music halls, which had long adorned the greater Hellenistic cities. It had also, of course, possessed no royal palace, like that at Alexandria. Architecturally, Alexandria was still-the most splendid city of the ancient world.
The great architectural works which Augustus now began, made Rome the leading art center of the ancient world. His building plans were in the main those which his adoptive father, the Great Dictator, had himself either laid out or already begun. On the Palatine Hill, Augustus united several dwelling houses, already there, into a palace for his residence.
It was veiy simple, and the quiet taste of his sleeping room, which long survived the rest of the building (§ 1014), was the ,
* The Sacred Way (plan, p. 622) passed the little circular temple of Vesta (A), and reached the Forum at the Arch of Augustus (B), and the Temple of the Deified Julius Caesar (C). On the right was the old Basilica of ./Emilius (£>) (§ 890), and on the left the magnificent new Basilica of Julius Caesar (E) (§ 993). Opposite this, across the old Forum market place (E), was the new Senate House (C) planned by Julius Caasar (§ 993). At the upper end of the Forum was the new speaker’s platform (//); near it Septimius Severus later erected his crude arch (/). Beyond rises the Capitol, with the Temple of Saturn (_/) and the Temple of Concord (A") at its base ; above on its slope is the Tabularium (Z), a place of public records; and on the summit of the Capitol the Temple of Jove (J/). Julius Caesar extended the Forum northward by laying out his new Forum (JV) behind his Senate House (G). The subsequent growth of the emperors’ Forums on this side may be seen in the next figure (Fig. 247), where the same lettering is repeated and continued.
Fig. 246. The Roman Forum and its Public Buildings in the Early Empire. (After Luckenbach)*
We* look across the ancient market place (F, § 784) to the Tiber with its ships at the head of navigation. On each side of the market place, where we see the buildings (E\/, and Z>, Gt /), were once rows of little wooden booths for selling meat, fish, and other merchandise. Especially after the beginning of the Carthaginian wars, these were displaced by fine buildings, like the basilica hall D, built not long after 200 B.C. Note the square ground plans (/, M) and the arches showing Etruscan influence, the Attic roofs and colonnades and the clerestory windows {D, E) copied from the Hellenistic cities. See complete key on opposite page, footnote
Fig. 247. The Forums of the Emperors continuing the View of the Old Forum in Fig. 246. After L. Levy (Luckenbach)*
The plan (p. 622) shows how the Forums of the emperors formed a connecting link uniting the old Roman Forum (F) with the magnificent new buildings of the Campus Martius, like the Theater of Pompey, Baths of Agrippa, Pantheon, etc. In order to make this connection, Trajan cut away the ridge joining the Capitol Hill and the Quirinal Hill to a depth of 100 feet. The summit of his column (T above and Fig. 263) still marks the former height of the ridge. Little now remains of all this magnificence; see the ruined colonnades around the column of Trajan (Fig. 263). See discussion of buildings on opposite page, footnote
The First of Two Centuries of Peace
609
admiration of later Romans. From this royal dwelling on the Palatine arose our English word " palace.” A new and sumptuous temple of Apollo surrounded by colonnades, in which the emperor installed a large library (§ 1001), was erected within easy reach of his palace doors.
The palace looked down upon an imposing array of new 993. The marble buildings surrounding the ancient Forum. Nearest the "n"he'Forum palace the magnificent basilica business hall erected by Caesar, and vlclmty left unfinished and then damaged by fire, was now restored and completed by Augustus (Fig. 246, E). He also erected a new Senate building, planned but never built by Csesar, opposite the new basilica (Fig. 246, G). Facing the end of the Forum the emperor now built a temple for the worship of his deified foster father, known as the temple of the Divine Julius (Fig. 246, C), and facing it, at the opposite end of the Forum, Augustus placed a magnificent speaker’s platform of marble (Fig. 246, IT).
Behind the ground intended by him for the new Senate building, Csesar had built a new forum, called the Forum of Csesar (Figs. 246 and 247, A~); but the growing business of the city led Augustus to build a third forum, known as the Forum of Augustus (Fig. 247, O), which he placed next to that of Csesar.
* The Senate House of Julius Cassar (G) and his new Forum (A*) extended from the old Forum northward, occupying the ground where once the Assembly of the Roman People had been accustomed to meet (Comilium). This northern addition to the old Forum was still further extended in the same direction by the Forum of Augustus (O) (§ 993).
The great emperors of -the first and second centuries then extended this northern addition in two directions, first on the southeast [P, 0, and then on the northwest (P, S, T, U\ T\ JV> and plan, p. 622). In the first century Vespasian built the beautiful Forum of Peace (/*), and the aged Xerva inserted his long, narrow Forum {Q); while in the second century a. D. Trajan, going to the other side of the Forum of Augustus (0), built the most magnificent of all the forums {^), with a vast basilica (S, called Basilica Ulpia) beside it, and beyond it his two libraries {(/, V) (§ 1051), with his wonderful column (T\ and Fig. 263) between them. In Trajan’s honor Hadrian then built a temple (fF)» completing this line of the most magnificent buildings the ancient world ever saw.
6io
Ancient limes
994. First theaters and baths; Altar
of Peace
995. Influence of Greece and the Orient on Roman architecture
996. Complete lack of initiative in sculpture and painting at Rome
The first stone theater in Rome had been built by Pompey about twenty-five years before tfie accession of Augustus (plan, p. 622). The emperor, therefore, erected a large and magnificent theater, which he named the Theater of Marcellus (§ 1007), after his deceased son-in-law Marcellus. At the same time Agrippa, the ablest of the generals and ministers of Augustus, erected the first fine public baths in Rome, for which he was given space in the Field of Mars, an old drill. ground (plan, p. 622). In connection with it were other splendid public buildings added by Agrippa, and a spacious open square for the Assembly of the People. At the same time the Senate showed its appreciation of the new era of peace by erecting a large and beautiful marble Altar of Peace (headpiece, p. 601).
In this new architecture of Rome, Greek models were the controlling influence. Nevertheless, oriental influences also were very prominent. Greek architecture did not employ the arch so long used in the Orient, but the architects of Rome now gave it a place of prominence along with the colonnade, as the two leading features of their buildings. It was through these Roman buildings that the arch gained its important place in our own modern architecture. Augustus seems to have been much interested in the'monuments of the ancient oriental world, which he more than once visited. His triumphal arch was arranged with three gates like the Assyrian palace front (Fig. 248). He carried away from the Nile a number of Egyptian obelisks and set them up in Rome, and in building his own family tomb he selected a design from the Orient. One of the noble families of Rome even built a pyramid as a tomb, and it still stands on the outskirts of the city (Fig. 249).
While architecture flourished in Rome, sculpture was less cultivated. Beautiful sculpture, following old models, might still be produced ; but there were no creative sculptors in Rome like those whom we have met in Athens. Painting as an independent art had ceased to be practiced. There was not a single great painter in Rome, and the painting which was practiced
Parthian Palace Front
Roman Triumphal Arch
Fig. 248. Ti-ie Roman Triumphal Arch and its Oriental Ancestors
The imposing front of the Assyrian palace (7), with its tall arch in the middle and a lower arch on each side (see , Fig. 104), was continued by the Parthians (2), and at the same time they shifted the side arches nearer to the middle arch (2). We have seen the arch making its way slowly westward (Fig. 224), although the Greeks were very reluctant to adopt it and did not make full use of it until they were Christianized and began to employ it in their churches (headpiece, p. 688). The Romans, on the contrary, were influenced by the Etruscans, who probably brought the arch with them from Asia Minor (Fig, 224). Hence we early found it in Rome (Fig. 232), and the triumphal arch of Augustus, and other arches of this kind built by the Romans (3), were descendants of the Assyrian palace front, with a tall arch in the middle and lower arches on each side, just as widely traveled
Romans had seen it in the East
997- Lack ox science at Rome; Agrippa’s map
612 Ancient limes
was merely that of wall decoration, as we see it in the houses of Pompeii (Fig. 197), which we are yet to visit.-
If Rome was a borrower in art, she was even more so in science. Rome had no such men as Archimedes (§ 742) and Eratosthenes (§ 745). When Agrippa, Augustus’s powerful
Fig. 249. Pyramid-To.mb of a Roman Noble named Cestius
Wealthy Romans familiar with the East (§ 1046) might erect a tomb of oriental form, as the family of this noble Cestius did. His pyramid-tomb when built (in the reign of Augustus) stood outside of the city; but nearly three hundred years later it was included in the wall erected around the city by Aurelian (270-275 A. D.) for the protection of Rome against the barbarian invasions (§ 1096). Here we see a portion of the wall of Aurelian on each side of the pyramid
minister, drew up a great map of the world, all he had in view '\ was the practical use of the map by Roman governors going out to their provinces or by merchants traveling with goods. Hence the roads were elaborately laid out, not on a fixed scale but so that there would be space enough along each road for the names of all the towns situated along it, and for all the
The First of Two Centuries of Peace
613
distances in miles between towns, which were inserted in figures on the map. Such a map was without doubt convenient, but it entirely lacked the network of latitude and longitude so carefully worked out by Eratosthenes (§ 748), and for this reason the shapes of the countries and seas were so distorted that none of the readers of this book would be able to find anything or recognize familiar countries.
The leading geography of the time was written by a Greek living in Rome, named Strabo. It was a delightful narrative of wide travels mingled with histoiy, and although it sadly lacked in scientific method, it was for many centuries the world’s standard geography and may still be read with great pleasure and profit as an ancient, book of travel. The work of Strabo, however, is a landmark disclosing the decline of ancient science and the end of that great line of scientists whose achievements made the Hellenistic Age the greatest ^age of science in the early world.
Indifference to science at Rome was in marked contrast v^^.oman interest in literature. The greatest of the leading ^Romans displayed in some cases an almost pathetic devotion to literary studies, even while weighed down with the heaviest responsibilities. Caesar put together a treatise on Latin speech while crossing the Alps in a palanquin, when his mind must have been filled with the problems of his great wars in Gaul. He dedicated the essay to Cicero, the greatest master of Latin prose. Such men as these had studied in Athens or Rhodes, and were deeply versed in the finest works of Greek learning and literature. Caesar and Cicero and the men of their class spoke Greek every day among themselves, perhaps more than they did Latin. In these men Hellenistic civilization and Roman character had mingled to produce the most cultivated minds of the ancient world. Among the educated men in the declining Greek communities of the East, none could rival these finest of the Romans in cultivation or in power of mind. Indeed, Greece never produced men of just this type, who exhibited
998. Strabo and geography; decline of science
999. Enthusiastic interest in literature; Romans of Greco Roman culture the leading cultivated men of the ancient world
614
Ancient limes
iooo. Cicero the type of the highly educated man of the late Republic; his writings and their enduring influence
i ooi. Augustan Age and literature: Livy
such a combination of gifts — the highest ability both in public leadership and in literary achievement.
Of literary studies Cicero said: " Such studies profit'youth and rejoice old age; while they increase happiness in good fortune, they are.in affliction a consolation and a refuge; they give us joy at home and they do not hamper us abroad; they tarry with us at night time and they go forth with us to the countryside.” Thus spoke the most cultivated man Rome ever produced, and the ideals of the educated man which he himself personified have never ceased to exert a powerful influence upon educated men in all lands. When he failed as a statesman, a career for which he did not possess the necessary firmness and practical insight (§ 957), he devoted himself to his literary pursuits. As the greatest orator in Roman history, he had already done much to perfect and beautify Latin prose in the orations which he delivered in the course of his career as a lawyer and a statesman. But after his retirement he produced a group of remarkable essays on oratory, a series of treatises on conduct — such matters as friendship, old age, .grid the like; and he left behind also several hundred letters which ‘ were preserved by his friends. As one of the last sacrifices of the civil wars, Cicero had fallen by the hands of Antony’s brutal soldiery (§ 972) ; but his writings were to exert an undying influence. They made Latin speech one of the most beautiful instruments of human expression, and as an example of the finest literary style they have influenced the best writing in all the languages of civilization ever since.
Augustus and a number of the leading men about him had known Cicero. For them that commingling of Greek and Roman civilization, which might well be called Ciceronian, became the leading cultivated influence in their lives. The Ciceronian culture of the last days of the dying Republic thus became the ideal of the early Empire and the Augustan Age. Augustus had early established two libraries in Rome, and one of them contained the greatest collection of both Greek and
The First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 615
\
• Latin books in the ancient world. Men steeped in this Greco-Roman culture now began to feel the influence of the great events which had built up the vast Roman Empire. As at Athens in the days of the greatest Athenian power, so the vision of the greatness of the State stirred the imagination of thinking men. Livy wrote an enormous history of Rome from the earliest times, that is to say, from the Trojan War to the reign of Augustus, in one hundred and forty-two rolls (§ 751)
— a work which cost him forty years of labor. While it was beautiful literature, and the fragments which survive still form fascinating reading, it was very inaccurate history. The careful historical method that had made Thucydides (§ 667) the greatest of ancient historians had disappeared.
In the last days of the Republic, in spite of turbulence and civil war, Cicero and the men of his time had perfected Latin prose. On the other hand, the greatest of Latin poetry arose , under the inspiration of the early Empire and the universal peace established by Augustus. Horace, the leading poet of the time, had been a friend of the assassins of Caesar, and he had faced the future Augustus on the battlefield of Philippi. After a dangerous struggle he had saved himself and at last found security in the era of peace. Having lived through many dangers, to rejoice in the general peace, he gained the forgiveness and friendship of Augustus. In his youth, although only the son of a freedman of unknown race, he had studied in * Greece, and he knew the old Greek lyric poets (§ 482) who had suffered danger and disaster as he himself had done. With the haunting echoes of old Greek poetry in his soul, he now found his own voice. Then he began to write of the men and 1 the life of his own time in a body of verse which forms for us an undying picture of the Romans in the days of Augustus. The poems of Horace will always remain one of the greatest legacies from the ancient world — a treasury of Roman life as pictured by a ripe and cultivated mind, unsurpassed even in the highly developed literature of the Greeks.
1002. Rise of poetry in the Augustan Age; Horace
6i6
/± nciem i imes
1003. Virgil and the iEneid
1004. Character of the /Eneid
Virgil, the other great poet of the Augustan Age, had from the beginning been a warm admirer of the great Caesar and the young Octavian. When the civil war had deprived Virgil of his ancestral farm under the shadow of the Alps in the North, it was restored to him by Augustus. Here, as he looked out upon his own fields, the poet- began to write verses like those of Theocritus (§ 754), reflecting to us in all its poetic beauty the rustic life of his time on the green hillsides of Italy.
But these imitations of Greek models would never have given Virgil his place as one of the greatest poets of the world. As time passed he gained an exalted vision of the mission of Rome, and especially of Augustus, as the restorer of world peace. More than one Latin epic was already in circulation (§ 904), but in order to give voice to his vision, Virgil now undertook the creation of another epic, in which he pictured the wanderings of the Trojan hero tineas from Asia Minor to Italy, where in the course of many heroic adventures he founded the royal . line of Latium (headpiece, p. 484). From him, according to the story, were descended the Julian family, the Caesars, whose latest leader Augustus had saved Rome and established a world peace. _
Unlike the Homeric epics, Virgil’s iEneid, as it is called, was not the outgrowth of an heroic age. It was a tribute -to Augustus, whom the poem artistically placed against a glorious background of heroic achievement in the Trojan Age, just as Alexander the Great contrived to do the same for himself ‘ (§ 689). The yEneid was therefore the product of a selfconscious, literary age — the highly finished work of a literary artist who now took his place with Horace as one of the great interpreters of his age. Hardly so penetrating a mind as his friend Horace, Virgil was perhaps an even greater master of Latin verse. Deeply admired by the age that produced it, the yEneid has ever since been one of the leading schoolbooks of the civilized world, and has had an abiding influence on the best literature of later times.
The First of Tzvo Centuries of Peace 617
Augustus himself also left an account of his deeds. When he was over seventy-five years old, as he felt his end approaching, he put together a narrative of his career, which was engraved on bronze tablets and set up before his tomb. In the simple dignity of this impressive story we see the career of Augustus unfolding before us in one grand achievement after another, rising like a panorama of successive mountain peaks, in a vision of such grandeur as to make the document probably the most impressive brief record of a great man’s life which has survived to us from the ancient world. Almost with his last breath Augustus penned the closing lines of this remarkable document, and on the nineteenth of August, the month which bears his name, in the year 14 a. d., the first of the Roman emperors died.
Section 89. The Line of Augustus and the End of
the First Century of Peace (14 a.d.-68 a.d.)
Augustus had been in supreme control of the great Roman world for forty-four years ; that is, nearly half a century. Four descendants of his family, either by blood or adoption, were to rule for more than another half century, and thus to fill out the first century of peace. The prejudice against one-man power was still so strong that the writers .of this age and their successors have transmitted to us very unfair accounts of these four rulers. Two of them were indeed deserving of the contempt in which they are still held; but the other two -were in many respects able rulers, who did much to improve the developing government of the Empire.
Augustus had never put forward a law providing for the appointment of his successor or for later successors to his position. Any prominent Roman citizen might have aspired to the office. Augustus left no son, and one after another his male heirs had died, among them his grandsons, the sons of his daughter Julia. He had finally been obliged to ask the
1005. Account of his deeds left by Augustus in the Ancyra monument
1006. The
four successors of the line of Augustus (14-68 A.D.)
1007. Question of the succession; Tiberius
6i8
Ancient Times
1008. The
efficient reign of Tiberius
(14-37 A.D.)
1009. Caligula (37-41 A.D.)
Senate to associate with him his stepson Tiberius, his wife's son by an earlier marriage. Before the death of Augustus, Tiberius had therefore been given joint command of the army and also the tribune’s power. The Senate, therefore, at once appointed him to all his stepfather’s powers, and without any limit as to time.
Tiberius was an able soldier and an experienced man of affairs. He gave the provinces wise and efficient governors, and showed himself a skilled and successful ruler. He did not, however, possess his stepfather’s tact and respect for the old institutions. He found it very vexatious to carry on joint rule with a Senate whose power was in reality little more than a fiction. He felt only contempt for the Roman nobles who publicly did him homage and secretly slandered him or plotted his downfall. He likewise despised the Roman populace. Under Augustus they had continued to go through the form of electing magistrates and passing laws, as in the days of the Republic, but of course both the magistrates they elected and the laws they passed had been those proposed to the assemblies by Augustus. Tiberius, however, no longer allowed the Roman rabble to go through the farce of voting on what the emperor had already decided, and even the appearance of a government by the Roman people thus finally disappeared forever. To complete his unpopularity in Rome, Tiberius also practiced strict economy-in government and much reduced the funds devoted to public shows for the amusement of the people. Universally hated in Rome, greatly afflicted also by bereavements and disappointments in his private life, Tiberius left the city and spent his last years in a group of magnificent villas on the lofty island of Capri, overlooking the Bay of Naples, where he died a disappointed man (37 a.d.).
As Tiberius had lost his son, the choice for his successor fell upon Gaius Caesar, a great-grandson of Augustus, nicknamed Caligula (" little boot ”) by the soldiers among whom he was brought up. A young man of only twenty-five years, and at
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 619
first very popular in Rome, Caligula was so transformed by his sense of vast power and by long-continued dissipation that his mind was craved. He made his horse a consul, and the enormous wealth saved for the State by Tiberius he squandered in reckless debauchery and absurd building enterprises. In the midst of confiscation and murder, this mockery of a reign was brought to a sudden close by Caligula’s own officers, who put an end to his life in his palace on the Palatine after he had reigned only four years.
The imperial guards, ransacking the palace after the death of Caligula, found in hiding the trembling figure of a nephew of Tiberius and uncle of the dead Caligula, named Claudius. He had always been merely tolerated by his family as a man both physically and mentally inferior. He was now fifty years old, and there is no doubt that he was weak-kneed both in body and in character. But the guards hailed him as emperor, and the Senate was obliged to consent. Claudius was a great improvement upon Caligula, although he was easily influenced by the women of his family and the freedmen officials whom he had around him. The palace therefore soon became a nest of plots and intrigues, in which slander, banishment, and poison played their evil parts.
Nevertheless Claudius accomplished much for the Empire and devoted himself to its affairs. He conducted in person a successful campaign in Britain, and for the first time made its southern portion a province of the Empire. It was this conquest which helped to bring so much of Latin speech into the English language, for Britain remained a Roman province for three and a half centuries. At Rome Claudius was greatly interested in buildings and practical improvements. He built two vast new aqueducts, together nearly a hundred miles in length, furnishing Rome with a plentiful supply of fresh water from the mountains (Fig. 250). At the same time his own officials, chiefly able Greek freedmen who were aiding him in his duties, were beginning to form a kind of cabinet destined finally to
1010. The accession of Claudius (41 A.D.)
1011. Achievements of Claudius; conquest of Britain; public works; creation of ministers of state {41-54 A.D.)
620
Ancient Times
1012. Probable assassination of Claudius and accession of Nero (54
A.D.)
give the Empire for the first time a group of efficient ministers, whom we would call the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, and others like them.
The inability of Claudius to select wisely and to control those who formed his circle was the probable cause of his death. It
Fig. 250. The Aqueduct of the Emperor Claudius
This wonderful aqueduct, built by the Emperor Claudius about the middle of the first century A. p., 'is over 40 miles long. About three fourths of it is subterranean, but the last 10 miles consists of tall arches of massive masonry, as seen here, supporting the channel in which the water flowed, till it reached the palace of the emperor on the Palatine (plan, p. 622}. Such ancient Roman aqueducts were se well built that four of them are still in use at Rome, and they convey to the city a more plentiful supply of water than any great modern city elsewhere receives
was also the reason why Agrippina, the last of his wives, was able to push aside the son of Claudius and gain the throne for her own son Nero, as the successor of Claudius. Not only on his mother’s side, but also on his father’s, Nero was descended from the family of Augustus. His mother had intrusted his education to the philosopher Seneca, and for the first five years of his reign, while Seneca was his chief minister, th$ rule of
The First of Two Centimes of Peace
621
Nero was wise and successful. When palace plots and intrigues, in which Seneca was not without blame, had removed this able minister from the court and had also banished Nero’s strong-minded mother, Agrippina, he cast aside all restraint and followed his own evil nature in a career of such vice and cruelty that the name of Nero has ever since been regarded as one of the blackest in all history.
Nero was devoted to art and wished personally to practice it. While the favorites of the palace carried on the government, he toured the principal cities of Greece as a musical composer, competing for prizes in dancing, singing, and chariot races. As the companion of actors, sportsmen, and prize fighters, he even took part in gladiatorial exhibitions. Becoming more and more entangled in the meshes of court plots, his cowardly and suspicious nature led him to condemn his old teacher, Seneca, to death, to cause the assassination of the son of Claudius and of many other innocent and deserving men. In the same way he was persuaded to take the life of his wife, and to crown his infamy even had his own mother assassinated. At the same time his wild extravagance, his excessive taxation in some of the provinces, and his murders among the rich and noble were stirring up dangerous dissatisfaction, which was to result in his fall."
A great disaster, meantime, took place in Rome. A fire broke out among the cheap wooden buildings around the circus (see plan, p. 622). It swept over the Palatine Hill, destroying the palace of Augustus, leaving only his sleeping room (§ 992), and then passed on through the city. It burned for a week, wiping out a large portion of the city, and then breaking out again, increased the damage. Dark rumors ran through the streets that Nero himself had set fire to the city that he might rebuild it more splendidly, and gossip told how he sat watching the conflagration while giving a musical performance of his own on the destruction of Troy. There is no evidence to support these rumors. Under the circumstances, Nero himself welcomed
1013. The
infamy of Nero’s reign
1014. The
great fire at Rome (64 a.d.), and Nero’s palace
622
Ancient Times
another version, which accused the Christians of having started the fire, and he executed a large number of them with horrible tortures. At vast expense, to which much of his excessive taxation was due, he undertook the rebuilding of the city, and he erected an enormous palace for himself called the " Golden
Map of Rome under the Emperors
House,” extending across the ground where the Colosseum now stands, from the east end of the Forum eastward and northeastward across the Esquiline Hill and over a large section of the city. At the entrance was a colossal bronze statue of himself over a hundred feet high (Fig. 262). There can be no doubt that Nero’s interest in art was sincere and that he really desired to make Rome a beautiful city.
The First of Two Centuries of Peace 623
The dissatisfaction at Rome and Nero's treatment of the only able men around him deprived him of support there. Then the provinces began to chafe under heavy taxation. When (he discontent in the provinces finally broke out in open revolt, led especially by (Ialba, a Roman governor in Spain, Nero showed no ability to meet the revolt. The rebellious troops marched on Rome. Nero went into hiding, and on hearing that the Senate hail voted his death, he theatrically stabbed himself, and, attitudinizing to the last, he passed away uttering the words, "What an artist dies in me 1 ’’ Thus died in 68 A.n. the last ruler of the line of Augustus, and with him ended the lirst century of peace (31 n.i.\-6S A.n.); for several Roman commanders now struggled for die throne and threatened to involve the Empire in another long civil war.
In spite of the misrule which had attended the reigns of (wo of the line of Augustus, ihe good accomplished in the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius could not be wholly undone. Both at Rome and in the provinces, the government had been much improved. But, as we have seen, the Roman State was fast becoming a monarchy in which the crown was bequeathed from father to son. This process had been hastened by the fact that the Civsars, as the emperors were now called, had gained a position of unique reverence. Beginning w ith Julius Civsar, the emperors,1 like Alexander the Great, were deified, and their worship was widely practiced throughout die Empire. It was indeed an obligation of citizenship to pay di\ ine homage to the emperor. The supreme place which he now occupied was not to be endangered by the brief struggles which followed the death of Nero, and the wide rule of the Roman emperor, even after the fall of Julius ('.-vsar's line, was to maintain another century of prosperity and peace. To this second century of peace in the Roman Empire we must devote another chapter.
.1 Ucsides Julius Civsar and Augustus, Claudius was the only emperor of the Julian line who was deified, Tiberius failed of it because of his unpopularity, and Caligula and Nero, of course, because of their infamous characters,
1015. The
death of Nero, the last of the Julian line ; the end of the first t en tury of peace (tuS' A.n.)
1016, Lasting progress during the rule of the Julian line; deification of the emperors
624
Ancient Times
QUESTIONS
Section 87. What kind of a period did the rule of Augustus begin? What was his attitude toward the Republic? What chief offices and powers did he receive? From what body? What were his titles ? Had the Republic survived ? What body was continuing the power of the Republic ? Was this power likely to survive ? Who was the real ruler ? What influences tended to make him a sovereign? ' What was the policy of Augustus on the frontiers ? What did he do with the army? How had the provinces, especially Greece, suffered? What did Augustus attempt to do about it? How did Augustus improve the rule of the provinces ? Describe his financial improvements. What beneficial effects in business were observable? Was the Mediterranean world about to become a nation ?
Section 88. What kind of life did Augustus desire for Italy? What did he want the position of Italy to be ? How had Rome become a new world ? What improvements did Augustus introduce in the city? on the Palatine? in the Forum? What other buildings were erected ? What architectural influences prevailed ? Were there any creative artists in sculpture and painting? What can you say of science in Rome? What work did Strabo produce? Tell about the attitude of educated Romans toward literature. What was Cicero’s feeling about literature, and what did he write ? What has been the influence of his writing? What was his influence in the Augustan Age? What was Rome’s position in literature? What can you say of Livy? of Horace? of Virgil? Discuss the leading work of Virgil. What remarkable narrative did Augustus himself write ?
Section 89. How long were Augustus and the four following rulers of his line in power ? Who succeeded Augustus ? Describe his rule. What became of the old power of the people under Tiberius ? Who succeeded Tiberius, and what can you say of his reign? Describe the accession of Claudius. What did he accomplish? Who succeeded Claudius? How had Nero been educated? Describe his reign and character. What catastrophe overtook Rome? Describe his end and its causes. What period dosed with his death ? Give its date. What can you sa/ of the results of the rule of the Julian line? What exalted station was given to the Roman emperors? What period followed the disappearance of the' Julian line?
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SECOND CENTURY OF PEACE AND THE CIVILIZATION OF THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Section 90. The Emperors of the Second Century of Peace (beginning 69 a.d.)
{ For about a year after the death of Nero the struggle among the leading military commanders for the throne of the Cassars threatened to involve the Empire in another long civil war. Fortunately the troops of Vespasian, a very able commander in the East, were so strong that he was easily victorious, and in 69 a. d. he was declared emperor by the Senate. With him,
Note. The above headpiece shows us the body of a citizen of Pompeii who perished when the city was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 a.d. (§ I034)« The fine volcanic ashes settled around the man’s body, and these rain-soaked ashes made a cast of his figure before it had perished. After the body had perished it left in the hardened mass of ashes a hollow mold, which the modern excavators poured full of plaster, and thus secured a cast of the figure of the unfortunate man just as he lay smothered by the deadly ashes which overwhelmed him over eighteen hundred years ago.
625
1017. Advent of the second century of peace with the triumph of Vespasian (69 A.D.)
626
Ancient imies
xoi8. Rebellion of the Jews and destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.)
X019. Two great tasks of the emperors : frontier defenses and efficient government organization
1020. The Roman Empire, the bulwark of Mediterranean civilization against northern barbarism
therefore, began a second century of peace under a line of able emperors who brought the Empire to the highest level of prosperity and happiness. We shall first sketch the political. and military activities of these emperors and then turn to the life and civilization of the Empire as a whole during the second century of peace.
Even though remote wars broke out on the frontiers or in distant provinces, they did not disturb the peace of the Empire as a whole. Before his election as emperor, Vespasian had been engaged in crushing a revolt of the fanatical Jews in Palestine, and the next year his able son Titus captured and destroyed Jerusalem amid frightful massacres which exterminated large numbers of the rebellious Jews (70 a. d.). It was later found necessary to forbid all Jews from entering their beloved city, consecrated by so many sacred memories; and it was made a Roman colony under a different name. Judea at the same time became a Roman province.
Two great tasks were accomplished by the emperors of the age we are discussing: first, that of perfecting the system of defenses on the frontiers, and second, that of more fully developing the government and administration of the Empire. Let us look first at the frontiers. On the south the Empire was protected by the Sahara and on the west by the Atlantic; but on the north and east it was open to attack. The shifting German tribes constantly threatened the northern frontiers; while in the east the frontier on the Euphrates was made chronically unsafe by the Parthians, the only civilized power still unconquered by Rome (see map I, p. 636).
The pressure of the barbarians on the northern frontiers, which we recall in the time of Marius (§ 936), was the continu- ' ance of the vast movement with which we are already acquainted — the tide of migration which long before had swept the Indo-European peoples to the Mediterranean (see diagram, Fig. 112) and had carried the Greeks and the Romans into their two Mediterranean peninsulas. Mediterranean civilization
The Second Century of Peace 627
was thus in constant danger of being overwhelmed from the North, just as the splendid ^gean civilization Was once submerged by the incoming of the Greeks (Chap. IX). The great problem for future humanity was whether the Roman emperors would be able to hold off the barbarians long enough so that in course of time these rude Northerners might gain enough of Mediterranean civilization to respect it, and to preserve at least some of it for mankind in the future.
The Flavian family, as we call Vespasian and his two sons, did much to make the northern frontiers safe. After the mild and kindly rule of Vespasian’s son, Titus (§ 1018), the latter’s brother, Vespasian’s second son Domitian, adopted the frontier lines laid down ’ by Augustus and planned their fortification with walls wherever necessary. He began the protection of the exposed border between the upper Rhine and the upper Danube. In Britain, Domitian even pushed the frontier further northward and then erected a line of defenses. But on the lower Danube he failed to meet the dajigerous power of the growing kingdom of Dacia. He even sent gifts to the Dacian king, intended to keep him quiet and satisfied. By this unwise policy Domitian created a difficult problem in this region, to be solved by his successors (se'e map I, p. 636).
The brief and quiet reign of the seriator Nerva, who was selected by the Senate to succeed Domitian (96 a.d.), left the whole dangerous situation on the lower Danube to be met by the brilliant soldier Trajan, who followed Nerva in 98'a.d. He quickly discerned that there would be no safety for the Empire along the Danube frontier, except by crossing the river and crushing the Dacian kingdom. Bridging the Danube with boats and hewing his way through wild forests, Trajan led his army through obstacles never before overcome by Roman troops. He captured one stronghold of the Dacians after another, and in two wars finally destroyed their capital. Thereupon the Dacian king and his leading men took their own lives. Trajan built a massive stone bridge (Fig. 251), across the
1021. The strengthening of the northern frontiers by the Flavian emperors (69-96 A.D.)
1022. Trajan crushes the barbarians on the lower DanuBe and conquers Dacia (101106 A.D.)
628
Ancient Times
1023. Trajan’s war with the Parthians (1x5-117 A.D.)
Danube, made Dacia a Roman province, and sprinkled plentiful Roman colonies on the north side of the great river. The descendants of these colonists in the same region still call themselves Roumanians and their land Roumania, a form of the
Fig. 251. The Emperor Trajan sacrificing at his New Bridge across the Danube
In the background we see the heavy stone piers of the bridge, supporting the wooden upper structure, built with strong railings. In the foreground is the altar, toward which the emperor advances from the right, with a flat dish in "his right hand, from which he is pouring a libation upon the alt?ir. At the left of the altar stands a priest, naked to the waist and leading an ox to be slain for the sacrifice. A group of the emperor’s officers approach from the left, bearing army standards. The-scene is sculptured with many others on the column of Trajan at Rome (Fig. 263), and is one of the best examples of Roman relief sculpture of the second century (§ 1053)
word " Roman.-' Trajan’s vigorous policy quieted all trouble along the lower Danube for a long time.
The military glory of Rome, which had declined since the days of Caesar, revived in splendor under this great- soldier emperor. Trajan then turned his attention to the eastern frontier, extending from the east end of the Black Sea southward to the Peninsula of Sinai. In the northern section of this
The Second Century of Peace 629
frontier a large portion of the boundary was formed by the upper Euphrates River. Rome thus held the western half of the Fertile Crescent, but it had never conquered the eastern half, with Assyria and Babylonia (see map I, p. 636). Here the powerful kingdom of the Parthians, kindred of the Persians, had maintained itself with ups and downs -since the days of the early Seleucids, for three hundred and fifty years. Twice
Fig. 252. Restoration of the Roman Fortified Wall on the German Frontier
This masonry wall, some three hundred miles long, protected the northern boundary of the Roman Empire between the upper Rhine and the upper Danube, where it was most exposed to German attack. At short intervals there were blockhouses along the wall, and at points of great danger'strongholds and barracks (Fig. 254) for the shelter of garrisons
before they had defeated Roman expeditions against them. Trajan, however, dreamed of a great oriental empire like that of Alexander. He led an army against the Parthians and defeated them. ' He added Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria to the Empire as new provinces. He visited the ruins of Babylon to behold the spot where, four hundred and forty years before,
- Alexander had died; but he said he " saw nothing worthy of such fame, but only heaps of rubbish, stones, and ruins ” (Fig. in). .Then a sudden rebellion in his rear forced him
1024- Hadrian (117138 A.D.) completes the frontier defenses
630
Ancient Times
to a dangerous retreat. WeakeTied by sickness and bitterly
realizing that his great expedition was a failure, he died
in Asia Minor while returning to Rome (117- a.d.).
Trajan’s succes-
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'X’Tlfe’N . -n-XTfl^ ,
sor, Hadrian, was another able soldier, but he had also the judgment of a statesman. He made no effort to continue Trajan’s conquests in the East. On the contrary, he wisely gave them all up except the Peninsula of Sinai (see map I, p. 636) and brought the frontier back to the Euphrates." But he retained Dacia and strengthened the whole northern frontier, especially the long barrier reaching from the Rhine to the Dan-
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Fig. 253. Letter of Apion, a young Soldier in the Roman Army, to his Father, Epimachos, in Egypt*
ube, where the completion of the continuous wall (Fig. 252) was largely due to him. He built a similar wall along the northern boundary across Britain. The line of both these walls is still visible. As a result of these wise measures and the impressive victories -of Trajan, the frontiers were safe and quiet for a long time. Nor was there any serious disturbance until a great overflow
The Second Century of Peace
631
of the northern barbarians (167 a.d.) in the reign of Marcus Aurelius brought to an end the second century of peace.
Under Trajan and Hadrian the army which defended these frontiers was the greatest and most skillfully managed organization of the kind which the ancient world had ever seen. Drawn from all parts of the Empire, the army -now consisted of all
* This Egyptian youth, Apion, having enlisted in the Roman army in company with, other boys from his'little village in Egypt, bade his family good-by and embarked on a great government ship from Alexandria for Italy. After a dangerous voyage he arrived safely at Mise-num, the Roman war harbor, near Naples, and hastened ashore in his new uniform to have a small portrait of himself painted (§ 1054 and Plate VIII, p. 654) and to send his father the letter on the opposite page. It was written for him in Greek, on papyrus, in a beautiful hand by a hired public letter writer, and reads as follows (with the present authors explanations in brackets): " Apion to Epimachos his father and lord, many good wishes! First of all I hope that yon are in good health, and that all goes well with you and with my sister and her daughter and my brother always. I thank the lord Serapis [a great Egyptian god] that he saved me at once when I was in danger in the sea. When I arrived at Misenum, I received from the emperor three gold pieces [about fifteen dollars] as road money, and I am getting on fine. I beg of you, my lord father, write me a line, first about your own well-being, second about that of my brother and sister, and third in order that I may devotedly greet your hand, because you brought me up well and I may therefore hope for rapid promotion, the gods willing. Give my regards to Capiton [some friend], and my brother and sister, and Serenilla and my friends. I send you by Euktemon my little portrait. My [new Roman] name is Antonius Maximus. I hope that it may go well with you.” On the left margin, where we see two vertical lines inserted, just as we are accustomed to insert them, Apion’s chums (the other village boys who enlisted with him) sent home their regards. Folded and sealed as in Fig. 210, the letter went by the great Roman military post, arrived safely, and was read by the young soldier’s waiting father and family in the little village on the Nile over seventeen hundred years ago (§ 1025). Then years later, after the old father had died, it was lost in the household rubbish, and there the modern excavators found it among the crumbling walls of the house (cf. Fig. 211). The ancient letter had some holes in it, but with it was another letter written by our soldier to his sister years later, after he had long been stationed somewhere on the Roman frontier (§ 1025) and had a wife and children of his own. And that is all that the rubbish heaps of the village on the Nile have preserved of this lad who entered the army of the great Roman Empire in the second century A.D.
1025. The
army under Trajan and Hadrian
632 Ancient Times
possible nationalities, like the British army in the Great European War. A legion of Spaniards might be stationed on the Euphrates, or a group of youths from the Nile might spend many years in sentry duty on the wall that barred out the Germans. Although far from home, such young men were enabled to communicate easily with their friends at home by a very efficient military
|
US |
Fig. 254. Glimpses of a Roman Frontier Stronghold (Restored after Waltze-Schulze)
Above, at the left, the main gate of the fort; the otljer three views show , the barracks (cf. Fig. 251)
postal system covering the whole Empire like a vast network. We are still able to hold in our hands the actual letters written from a northern post by a young Egyptian recruit in the Roman army to his father and sister'in a distant little village on the Nile (Fig. 253). When not on sentry duty somewhere along the frontier line, such a young soldier lived with his comrades in one of the large garrisons maintained at the most important frontier points, with fine barracks and living quarters for officers
The Second Century of Peace 633
and men (Fig. 254). The discipline necessary to keep the troops
always ready to meet the barbarians outside the walls was never
relaxed. Besides regular drill, the troops were also employed in
making roads, building bridges, aqueducts, and public buildings
or in repairing the frontier walls.
Meantime the Empire had been undergoing important changes 10215. Organi-
within. The emperors developed a system of government de- effidenf
partments already foreshadowed in the time of Claudius (§ 1011). government m . departments
To manage them, they appointed Roman knights. There thus
grew up a body of experienced administrators as heads of departments and their helpers, who carried on the government of the Empire. It was the wise and efficient Hadrian who accomplished the most in perfecting this organization of the government business. Thus after Rome had been for more than three centuries in control of the Mediterranean world, it finally possessed a well-developed government organization such as had been in operation in the Orient since the days of the pyramid builders (§§ 74-75).
.Among many changes, one of the most important was the 1027. Change abolition of the system of " farming ” taxes, to be collected by texJamersto
private individuals — a system which had caused both the government
tax collectors
Greeks (§ 623), and the Romans (§ 889) much trouble. Government tax collectors now gathered in the taxes of the great Mediterranean world. It is interesting to recall that such a system had been fully organized on the Nile over three thousand years before the Romans possessed it (§ 74 and Fig. 40).
With the complete control of these departments entirely in 1028. In-his own hands, the power of the emperor had much increased. of the
From being the first citizen of the State like Augustus, ruling emperor and . . decline of
jointly with tlje Senate, the emperor had thus become a sover- the Senate
eign, whose power was so little limited by the Senate that he
was not far from being an absolute monarch. Furthermore, the
emperors of the second century of peace secured laws and
regulations which made the rule of the emperor legal, although
they unfortunately passed no laws providing for a successor
634
A ncient Times
1029. Italy loses its leadership and drops to the level of the provinces
1030. Rise of a system of law for the whole Empire
on the death of an emperor, and dangerous conflict might ensue whenever an emperor died.
At the same time an important change in the position of Italy was taking place. The condition of the farmers was now so bad that there was danger of the complete disappearance of free population in the country districts of Italy. Two of the emperors, Nerva and Trajan, even set aside large sums as capital to be loaned at a low rate of interest to farmers needing money. This interest was to be used to support poor free children in the towns of Italy in the hope that a new body of free country population might be thus built up. This remarkable effort, one of the earliest known State charities, was, however, not successful. As Italy was furthermore not a manufacturing country, its citizenship declined. Meantime a larger 'idea of the Empire had displaced the conception of Augustus, who had desired to see the Empire a group of states led and dominated by Italy. Whole provinces, especially in the West, had been granted citizenship, or a modified form of it, by the emperors. Influential citizens in the provinces were often given high rank and office at Rome. As a result there had now grown up a Mediterranean nation, as we have seen it foreshadowed even in the time of Augustus, and Italy dropped to a level with the provinces.
Not only did the subjects of this vast State pay their taxes into the same treasury, but they were now controlled by the same laws. The lawyers of Rome under the emperors we are now discussing were the most gifted legal minds the world had ever seen. They expanded the narrow rt/y-law of Rome that it might meet the needs of the whole Mediterranean world. They laid the foundations for a vast imperial code of laws, the greatest work of Roman genius. In spirit, these laws of the Empire were most fair, just, and humane. Antoninus Pius, the kindly emperor who followed Hadriag, maintained that an accused person must be held innocent until proved guilty by the evidence, & principle of law which has descended to us and is
The Second Century of Peace
635
still part of our own law. In the same spirit was the protection of wives and children from the arbitrary cruelty of the father of the house, who in earlier centuries held the legal right to treat the members of his family like slaves. Even slaves now enjoyed the protection of the law, and the slave could not be put to death by the,master as formerly, although we should notice that in some important matters the Roman law treated a citizen according to his social rank, showing partiality to the noble in preference to the common citizen. These laws did much to unify the peoples of the Mediterranean world into a single nation; for they were now regarded by the law not as different nations but as subjects of the same great State, which extended to them all, the same protection of justice, law, and order. At the same time the earlier laws long developed by the older city-states were not interfered with by Rome, where they did not conflict with the interests of the Empire.
The Empire as a whole was still organized in provinces, which steadily increased in number. Within each^ province by far the large majority of the people lived in towns and cities. Such a city and its outlying communities formed a city-state like that which we found in early Greece. Each city had the right Jo elect its own governing officials and to carry on its own local affairs. The people still took an interest in local affairs, and there was a good deal of rivalry for-election to the public offices. On the walls at Pompeii (Fig. 255) we still find the appeals of rival candidates for votes. At the same time each city was under the sovereignty of the Roman Empire and the control of the Roman governor of the province.
Able and conscientious governors were now controlling affairs all over the Empire. The letters written to Trajan by the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, regarding the interests of his province reveal to us both his own faithfulness and the enormous amount of provincial business which 'received the emperor’s personal attention. Fig. 253 shows us how such a letter looked. Such attention by emperors like
1031. Government of the provinces ; survival of the people’s interest in public affairs
1032. Close attention to the provinces by the emperors, and decline of the people’s interest
YJ
1033. The
peoples of the Roman Empire
1034. Pompeii, a provincial city of the early Roman Empire
636 Ancient limes
Trajan and Hadrian relieved the communities of much responsibility for their own affairs. Hadrian traveled for years among the provinces and became very familiar with their needs. Hence the local communities inclined more and more to depend upon the emperor, and interest in public affairs declined. Along with growing imperial control of the provinces, there thus began a decline in the sense of responsibility for public welfare. This was eventually a serious cause of general decay, as we shall see.
Section 91. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire : the Provinces
Here was a world of sixty-five to a hundred million souls girdling the entire Mediterranean. Had human vision been able to penetrate so far, we might have stood at the Strait of Gibraltar and followed these peoples as our eyes swept along the Mediterranean coasts through Africa, Asia, and Europe, and thus back to. the Strait again. On our right in Africa would have been Moors, North Africans, and Egyptians; in the eastern background, Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, Armenians, and Hittites; and as our eyes returned through Europe, Greeks, Italians, Gauls, and Iberians (Spaniards); while north of these were the Britons and some Germans within the frontier lines. All these people were of, course very different from one another in native manners, clothing, and customs, but they all enjoyed Roman.protection and rejoiced in the far-reaching Roman peace. For the most part, as we have seen, they lived in cities, and the life of the age was prevailingly a city life, even though many of the cities were small.
Fortunately one of the provincial cities has been' preserved to us with much that we might have seen there if we could have visited it nearly two thousand years ago. The little city of Pompeii, covered with volcanic ashes in the brief reign of Titus (79 a.d.), still shows us the very streets and houses, the forum and the public buildings, the shops and the markets,
' Expansion of the Roman Empire from the Death of Caesar to the End of the Two Centuries of Peace (44 B.C.-167 A.D.)
Roman Territory at the Death of Caesar 4 4 B.C. I | Added before the Death of Augustus(11 A.D.) Addodaftor the Death of AuKustus(14 A.O.)
Sequence Map showing Territorial Gains and Losses of the Rom ax Empire from the Death of C.esar (44 B.C.) to the Death of Diocletian (305 a.d.)
1 he Second Century of Peace 637
and a host of other things very much as we might have found them if we had been able to visit the place before the disaster (Fig. 255). We can look down long streets, where the chariot wheels have worn deep ruts in the pavement; we can enter dining rooms with charming paintings still on the walls
Fig. 255. A Street in Ancient Pompeii as it appears To-day
The pavement and sidewalk are in perfect condition, as when they were first covered by the falling ashes (§ 1034). At the left is a public fountain, and in the foreground is a street crossing. Of the buildings on this street only half a story still stands, except at the left, where we see the entrances of two shops, with the tops of the doors in position and the walls preserved to the level of the second floor above
(Fig. 197) ; we can look into the bakers’ shops with the charred bread still in the ovens and the flour mills standing silent and deserted (Fig. 256); or we can peep into kitchens with the cooking utensils still scattered about (Fig. 243) and the cooking hearth in perfect order for building another fire. The veiy life of the people in the early Roman. Empire seems, to
638
/inciem\ jwm*
1035. Improved means of intercourse: Roman roads and bridges
1036. Traffic on a Roman highway
rise before us as we tread the now silent streets (Fig- 2 5 5) this wonderfully preserved place.
Pompeii was close beside the Greek cities of southern Italy, and we at once discover that the place was essentially Hellenistic in its life and art. Indeed, from southern Italy eastward we should have found the life of the world controlled by Rome to be simply the natural outgrowth of Hellenistic life and civilization. In some matters there had been great progress. This was especially true of intercourse and rapid communication. Everywhere the magnificent Roman roads, massively paved with smooth stone, like a town street (Fig. 255), led straight! over the hills and across the rivers by imposing bridges. Som<? of these bridges still stand and are in use to-day (Fig. 260). Near the cities there was much traffic on such a highway.
One met the ponderous coach of the Roman governor, perhaps returning from his province to Rome. The curtains are drawn and the great man is comfortably reading or dictating to his stenographer. Behind him trots a peddler on a donkey/ which he quickly draws to one side to make room for a cohort of Roman legionaries marching with swinging stride, their weapons gleaming through a cloud of dust. Following them rides an officer accompanied by a shackled prisoner going up to Rome for trial. He is a Christian teacher named Paul (§ 1068). A young dandy exhibiting the paces of his fine horse to two ladies riding in a palanquin, grudgingly vacates the road before a rider of the imperial post who comes clattering down the next hill at high speed. Often the road is cumbered with long lines of donkeys laden with bales of goods or caravans of heavy wagons creaking and groaning under their heavy loads of merchandise — the freight trains of the Roman Empire. As for passenger trains, the traveler must resort to the horse coach or small special carriage or ride his own horse. The speed of travel and communication was fully as high as that maintained in Europe and America a century ago, before the introduction of the steam railway, and the roads were better.
The Second Century of Peace 639
Indeed, the good Roman roads were a great advance over the Hellenistic Age. By sea, however, the chief difference was the freedom from the old-time pirates (§ 949). From the splendid harbor laid out at the mouth of the Tiber by Claudius,
Fig. 256. Bakery with Millstones still in Position at
Pompeii
In a court beside the bakery we see the mills for grinding the baker’s flour. ^ Each mill is an hourglass-shaped stone, which is hollow, the upper part forming a funnel-shaped hopper into which the grain is poured. The lower part of the stone is an inverted funnel placed over a cone-shaped stone inside it. The grain drops between the inner stone and the outer, and when the outer stone is turned by a long timber inserted in its side, the grain is ground between the two
the traveler could take a large and comfortable ship for Spain and land there in a week. The Roman whose son was studying in Athens dispatched a tank draft for the youth’s university •.expenses, and a. week later the boy could be spending the fnoney. A Roman merchant could send a letter to his agent
1037. Navigation and shipping
640
Ancient Times
1038. Commerce from the Atlantic to India and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean
in Alexandria in ten days. The huge government corn ships that plied regularly between the Roman harbors and Alexandria were stately vessels carrying several thousand tons. They could accommodate an Egyptian obelisk weighing from three to four hundred tons which the emperor desired to erect in Rome (§ 995), besides a large cargo of grain and several hundred passengers. Good harbors had everywhere been equipped with docks, and lighthouses modeled on that at Alexandria guided' the mariners into every harbor. In winter, however, sea traffic stopped.
Under these circumstances business flourished as never before. The good roads led merchants to trade beyond the frontiers and to find new markets. Goods found their way from Italy even to the northern shores of Europe and Britain, whence great quantities of tin passed up the Seine and down the Rhone to Marseilles. At the other end of the Empire the discovery of the seasonal winds in the Indian Ocean led to a great increase of trade with India, and there was a fleet of a hundred and twenty ships plying regularly across the Indian Ocean between the Red Sea and the harbors of India. The wares which they brought crossed the desert by caravan from the Red Sea to the Nile and were then shipped west from the docks of Alexandria, which still remained the greatest commercial city on the Mediterranean, the Liverpool of the Roman Empire. It shipped besides East Indian luxuries (§ 733) Egyptian paper (papyrus), linen, rich embroideries, the finest of glassware (§ 83), great quantities of grain for Rome, and a host of other things. There was a proverb that you could get everything at Alexandria except snow. Along the northern roads of the Eastern world was the caravan connection with China which continued to bring silk goods to the Mediterranean. It will be seen then that a vast network of commerce covered the ancient world from the frontiers of China and the coast of India on the east to Britain and the harbors of the Atlantic on the west.
The Second Century of Peace 641
Both business and pleasure now made travel very common, and a wide acquaintance with the world was not unusual. The Roman citizen of means and education made his tour of the Mediterranean much &s the modern sight-seer does. Having arrived in the provincial town, however, he found no good hotels, and if he did not sleep in his own roomy coach or a tent carried by his servants, he was obliged to pass the night in untidy rooms over some shop, the keeper of which entertained travelers. More often, however, the traveler of birth and means brought with him letters of introduction, which procured him entertainment at some wealthy private house.
For even in the provincial town the traveler found a group of successful men of business and public affairs who had gained wealth and had been given the rank of Roman knights. Among them now and again was one of especial prominence who had been given senatorial rank by the emperor. Below the Senators and knights there was a free population of merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and craftsmen. Following a custom as old as the end of the Athenian Empire, these men were organized into numerous guilds, societies, and clubs, each trade or calling by itself. These societies were in some ways much like our labor unions. They were chiefly intended for mutual benefit of the members in their occupations; some of them also aided in social life, in the celebration of popular holidays, and the society treasury paid the funeral expenses when a member died, just as some societies among us do. As likely as not the richest and most influential man of the place was a freedman. There was in every large town a great number of freedmen, and they carried on an important share of the business of the Empire.
As the traveler walked about such a town he found everywhere impressive evidences of the generous interest of the citizens. There were fountains, theaters, music halls, baths, gymnasiums, and schools, erected by wealthy men and given to the community. The most famous among such men was
1039. Frequency of travel but lack of hotels
1040. Society in the provinces
1041. Public benefactions and schools in the provinces
642
Ancient Times
Fig. 257. Scribblings of Sicilian Schoolboys on a Brick in the Days of the Roman Empire
In passing a brickyard, these schoolboys of seventeen hundred years ago amused themselves in scribbling school exercises in Greek on the soft clay bricks before they were baked. At the top a little boy who was still making capitals carefully wrote the capital letter S (Greek 2) ten times, and under it the similar letter A", also ten times. These he followed by the words "turtle” (XEAftNA), "mill” (MTAA), and "pail” (KAA02), all in capitals. Then an older boy, who could do more than write capitals, has pushed the little chap aside and proudly demonstrated his superiority by writing in two lines an exercise in tongue gymnastics (like "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” etc.) which in our letters is as follows:
Nai neai nea naia neoi temon, hos neoi ha naus This means: " Boys cut new planks for a new ship, that the ship might float.” A third boy then added two lines at the bottom. The brick illustrates the spread of Greek (§727) as well as provincial education under the Roman Empire (§ 1041)
Herodes Atticus, who built a magnificent concert hall (Fig. 183,7) for Athens. He has been called the " Andrew Carnegie " of his time. In the market place were statues of such donors, with inscriptions expressing the gratitude of the people. The boys and girls of these towns found open to them schools with teachers paid by the government, where all those ordinary branches of study which we have found in the Hellenistic Age were taught (Fig. 257). The boy who turned to business could engage a stenographer to teach him shorthand, and the young man who wished higher instruction could still find university teachers at Alexandria and Athens, and also at a number of younger universities in both East and West, especially the new university established by Hadrian
The Second Century of Peace 643
at Rome and called the Athenaeum. Thus the cultivated traveler found men of education and literary culture 'wherever he went.
To such a traveler wandering in Greece and looking back some six hundred years to the Age of Pericles or the Persian Wars of Athens, Greece seemed to belong to a distant and ancient world, of which he had read in the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus (§§ 567, 667). Dreaming of those ancient days when Rome was a little market town on the Tiber, he might wander along the foot of the Acropolis and catch a vision of vanished greatness as it was in the days of Themis' tocles and Pericles. He could stroll through the porch of the Stoics (§ 761) and renew pleasant memories of his own student days when as a youth his father had permitted him to study there; or he might take a walk out to the Academy, where he had once listened to the teachings of Plato’s successors.
At Delphi too he found a vivid story of the victories of Hellas in the days of her greatness — a story told in marble ‘ treasuries and votive monuments, the thanksgiving gifts of the Greeks to Apollo (§ 490 and Fig. 172). As the Roman visitor stood there among the thickly clustered monuments, he noticed many an empty pedestal, and he recalled how the villas of his friends at home were now adorned with the statues which had once occupied those empty pedestals. The Greek cities which had brought forth such things were now poor and helpless, commercially and politically, in spite of the rich heritage of civilization which they had bequeathed to the Romans.
As the traveler passed eastward through the flourishing cities of Asia Minor and Syria, he might feel justifiable pride in what Roman rule was accomplishing. In the western half of the Fertile Cfescent, especially on the east of the Jordan, where there had formerly been only a nomad wilderness (§ 135), there were now prosperous towns, with long aqueducts, with baths, theaters, basilicas, and imposing public buildings, of which the ruins even at 'the present day are astonishing. All
1042. The
Roman traveler in the East: Greece and Athens
1043. The Roman traveler in the East: Delphi
1044. The
Roman traveler in the East: Asia Minor and Syria
1045* T^e Roman traveler in the East: Par-thia, Assyria, and Babylonia
644 Ancient Times
these towns were not only linked together by the fine roads we have mentioned, but they were likewise connected with Rome by other fine roads leading entirely across Asia Minor and the
Balkan Peninsula.
Beyond the desert behind these towns lay the troublesome Parthian Empire. The educated Roman had read how over five hundred years earlier Xenophon, and later Alexander the Great,
Fig. 258. Roman Amphitheater seen across the Huts of a Modern North African Village
The town which once supported a public place of amusement like this has given way to a squalid village, and the whole region west of Carthage has to a large extent relapsed into barbarism
had passed by the heaps of ruins which were once Nineveh out yonder on the Tigris (Fig. 203), and he knew from several Greek histories and the report of Trajan (§ 1023) that the ruinous buildings of Babylon lay still farther down toward the sea on the Euphrates. Trajan’s effort to conquer all that country extend h^*e<^ ^ 1023)> the Roman traveler made no effort to But he couldbey°nd ^ front'er out 'nt0 these foreign lands, cross over to * great Roman galley at Antioch and
ria, where a still more ancient world
The Second Century of Peace 645
awaited him. In the vast lighthouse (§ 733), over four hundred years old and visible for hours before he reached the harbor, he recognized the model of. the Roman lighthouses he had seen. Here our traveler found himself among a group of wealthy Greek and Roman tourists on the Nile. As they left the magnificent buildings, of Hellenistic Alexandria, their voyage up the river carried them at once into
Fig. 259. Ruins of Roman Baths at Bath, England
There are hot springs at Bath, England, and here the Roman colonists in Britain developed a fashionable watering place. In recent years the soil and rubbish which, through the centuries, had collected over the old Roman buildings have been removed, and we can get some idea of how they were arranged. The picture represents a model of a part of the ruins. To the right is a large quadrangular pool, 83 by 40 feet in size, and to the left a circular bath. Over the whole a fine hall was built, with recesses on either side of the big pool where one might sit and talk with his friends
the midst of an earlier world — the earliest world of which they knew. All about them were buildings which were thousands of years old before Rome was founded. Like our modern fellow citizens touring the same land, many of them were merely curious idlers of the fashionable world. They berated the slow mails, languidly discussed the latest news from Rome, while with indolent curiosity they visited the Pyramids of Gizeh, lounged along the temple lakes and fed the sacred crocodiles, or spent a lazy afternoon carving
1046. The
Roman traveler in the East: Egypt
1047- Ancient civilization in the East; later Roman in the West
646 Ancient Times
, * their names on the colossal statues which overshadowed the plain of Egyptian Thebes (Fig. 69), where Hadrian himself listened to the divine voice which issued from one of the statues every morning when the sun smote upon it. And here we still find their scribblings at the present day. But the thoughtful Roman, while he found not a little pleasure in the sights, took
Fig. 260. Roman Bridge and Aqueduct at NtMES, France
This structure _ was built by the Romans about the year 20 A.D. to supply the Roman colony of Nemausus (now called Nimes) in south-crh France with water from two excellent springs 25 miles distant. It is nearly goo feet long and 160 feet high, and carried the water over the valley of the river Gard. The channel for the water is at the very top, and one can still walk through it. The miles of aqueduct on either side of this bridge and leading to it have almost disappeared
note also that this land of ancient wonders was filled as of old with flocks and herds and vast stretches of luxuriant grainfields, which made it the granary of Rome and an inexhaustible source of wealth for the emperor’s private purse.
1 he eastern Mediterranean then was regarded by the Romans as their ancient world, long possessed of its own ancient civilization, Greek and oriental. There the Roman traveler found Greek everywhere, and spoke it as he traveled. But when he
The Second Century of Peace 647
turned away from the East and entered the western Mediterranean, he found a much more modern world, with vast regions where civilization was a recent matter, just as it is in America. Thus throughout North Africa, west of Carthage, throughout Spain, Gaul, and Britain, the Romans had at first found only rough settlements, but no cities and no real architecture. Indeed, these Western lands, the America of the ancients, when first conquered by Rome had not much advanced beyond the stage of the Late Stone Age settlements of several thousand years earlier (§ 325), except here and there, where they had come into contact with the Greeks or Carthaginians.
Seneca, one of the wisest of the Romans, said, " Wherever a Roman has conquered, there he also lives.” This was espe-cially.true of the West. Roman merchants and Roman officials were everywhere, and many of the cities were Roman colonies. The language of civilized intercourse in all the West was Latin, the language of Rome, whereas east of Sicily the traveler heard only Greek. In this age western Europe had for the first time been building cities; but it was under the guidance of Roman architects, and their buildings looked like those at Rome. In North Africa between the desert and the sea, west of Carthage, the ruins of whole cities with magnificent public buildings still survive (Fig. 258) to show us how Roman civilization reclaimed regions little better than barbarous before the Roman conquest. Similar imposing remains survive in western Europe, especially southern France. We can still visit and study massive bridges, spacious theaters, imposing public monuments, sumptuous villas, and luxurious public baths — a line of ruins stretching from Britain through southern Frajice and Germany to the northern Balkans (Figs. 259-261).
Just as the communities of Roman subjects once girdled the Mediterranean, so the surviving monuments and buildings which they used, still envelop the great sea from Britain eastward to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem westward to Morocco. They reveal to us the fact that as a result of all the ages of
1048. The
Roman cities of the West and their sun/iving buildings
1049. The whole Mediterranean world at last highly civilized
64B
Ancient Times
Fig. 261. Restoration of Roman Triumphal Arch at Orange, France
Having once adopted this form of monument (Fig. 248), the Romans built many such handsome arches to commemorate important victories. There were a number at Rome, naturally (see Fig. 246, B and /); of those built in the chief cities of the Empire, several still remain. The one pictured above was built at the Roman colony of Arausio (now called Orange), on the river Rhone, to celebrate a victory over the Gauls in 21 a.d. Modern cities have erected similar arches; for example, Paris, Berlin, Loncfon, and New York
human development which we have studied, the whole Mediterranean world, West as well as East, had now gained a high civilization. Such was the picture which the Roman traveler gained of that great world which his countrymen ruled : in the center the vast midland sea, and around it a fringe of civilized
The Second Century of Peace 649
countries surrounded and protected by the encircling line of legions. They too stretched from Britain to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Morocco, like a dike restraining the stormy sea of, barbarians outside, which would otherwise have poured in and overwhelmed the results of centuries of civilized development. Meantime we must return from the provinces to the great controlling center of this Mediterranean world, to Rome itself, and endeavor to learn what had been the course of civilization there since the Augustan Age — that is, for the last three quarters of the two centuries of peace.
Section 92. The Civilization of the Early Roman Empire : Rome
The visitor in Rome at the close of the reign of Hadrian found it the most magnificent monumental city in the world of that day. It had by that time quite surpassed Alexandria in size and in the number and splendor of its public buildings. At the eastern end of the Forum, on ground once occupied by Nero’s Golden House (§ 1014), Vespasian erected a vast amphi theater for gladiatorial combats, now known as the" Colosseum (Fig. 262). It was completed and dedicated by his son Titus, who arranged for the forty-five thousand spectators which it held, a series of bloody spectacles lasting a hundred days. Although now much damaged, it still stands as one of the greatest buildings in the world. At the same time Vespasian completed the rebuilding of the city, after the great fire of Nero’s reign (§ 1014).
It was especially in and alongside the old Forum that the grandest buildings of the Empire thus far had grown up. The business of the great world capital led Vespasian and Nerva to erect two more magnificent forums (Fig. 247, P, Q). These two, with the two of Csesar and Augustus (Fig. 247, Nr O'), formed a group of four new forums along the north side of the old Forum. At the northwest end of this group of four Trajan built another,
1050. Public buildings of Rome: the Colosseum
1051. The new forums of the emperors
Ancient Times
1052. Roman coucrete: Pantheon and Hadrian’s tomb
that is, a fifth new forum (Fig. 247, R), which surpassed in magnificence anything which the Mediterranean world" had ever seen before. On one side was a vast new business basilica, and beyond this rose a mighty column (Fig. 263) richly carved with scenes picturing Trajan’s brilliant campaigns (Fig. 251). On each side of the column was a library building, one for
Fig. 262. The Vast Flavian Amphitheater at Rome now
CALLED THE CQLQSSEUM. (RESTORED AFTER LUCKENBACH)
This enormous building, one of the greatest in the world, was an oval arena surrounded by the rising tiers of seats, accommodating nearly fifty thousand people. We see here only the outside wall, as restored. It was built by the emperors Vespasian and Titus, and was completed in 80 a.d. (§ 1050). At the left is the colossal bronze statue of Nero, about 100 feet high, which originally stood in this vicinity, near the entrance of his famous " Golden House,” just east of the Forum (§ 1014)
Greek and one for Latin literature. The column still stands beside one of the busy streets of modern Rome, but little of the other magnificent buildings has survived.
In the buildings of Trajan and Hadrian the architecture of Rome reached its highest level both of splendor and beaaty, and also of workmanship. Sometime in the Hellenistic Age architects had begun to employ increasing quantities of cement
The Second Century of Peace 651
concrete, though it is still uncertain where or by whom the hardening properties of cement were discovered. Under Hadrian and his successors the Roman builders completely mastered the art of making colossal casts'of concrete.
The domed roof of Hadrian’s Pantheon (Fig. 264) is a single enormous concrete cast, over a hundred and forty feet across.
The Romans, therefore, eighteen hundred years ago were ertiploying concrete on a scale which we have only recently learned to imitate, and after all this lapse of time the roof of the Pantheon seems to be as safe and stanch as it was when Hadrian’s architects first knocked away the posts which supported the wooden form for the great cast. The mausoleum erected by Hadrian is the greatest of all Roman tombs
Fig. 263. The Column of Trajan
This remarkable monument was erected beyond Trajan’s Forum in the court between his two libraries (Fig. 247, T). It is of Parian marble and stands 100 feet high. Around it winds a spiral band of one hundred and fifty-four relief scenes, passing twenty-two times around the shaft. This band contains twenty-five hundred human figures, and if it could be unrolled it would be over 650 feet long. An examination of one of these reliefs (Fig. 251) shows us that they are very interesting works of art, wrought with much skill. They record Trajan’s great campaigns (§ 1022). The broken columns belonged to the magnificent Basilica Ulpia (Fig. 247, S), next to Trajan’s Forum (Fig. 247, J?)
1053- Roman sculpture
652 Ancient Mimes
and for several generations was the burial place of the emperors. It survives as one of the great buildings of Rome.
The relief sculpture adorning all these monuments (Fig. 251) is the greatest of Roman art. The reliefs covering Trajan’s
Fig. 264. Interior View of the Dome of the Pantheon built at Rome by Agrippa and Hadrian
The first building on this spot was erected by Agrippa, Augustus’s great minister. But it was completely rebuilt, as we see it here, by Hadrian. The circular hole in the ceiling is 30 feet across; it is 142 feet above the pavement, and the diameter of the huge dome is also 142 feet. This is the only ancient building in Rome which is still standing with walls and roof in a perfectly preserved state. It is thus a remarkable example of Roman skill in the use of concrete (§ 1052). At the same time it is one of the most beautiful and impressive domed interiors ever designed. Compare the church of St. Sophia, p. 688
column are a wonderful picture book of his campaigns, displaying greater power of invention than Roman art ever showed elsewhere. Of statue sculpture, however, the vast majority of the works now produced were copies of the masterpieces of the great Greek sculptors. Many such famous Greek works, which
1 he Second Century of Peace 653
i
perished long ago, are now known to us only in the form of surviving copies made by the Roman sculptors of this ags and discovered in modern excavations in Italy (Fig. 218). The portrait sculptors followed the tendencies which they had inherited from the Hellenistic Age. Their portraits of the leading Romans are among the finest works of the kind ever wrought (Fig. 265).
In painting, the wall decorators were almost the only surviving practicers of the art. They merely copied the works of the great Greek masters of the Hellenistic Age over and over again on the walls of Roman houses (Fig. 197). Portrait painting, however, flourished, and the hack portrait painter at the street comer, who did your portrait quickly for you on a tablet of wood, was almost as common as our own portrait photographer. A young soldier in the Roman army, proud of his new upiform, would for a few cents have his portrait painted to send home in a letter to his parents in Egypt (Fig. 253, descriptive matter), and perfectly preserved examples of such work have’ been excavated in the Nile valley (Plate VIII, p. 654).
There was now a larger educated public at Rome than ever before, and the splendid libraries maintained by the State were open to all. Authors and literary men were also liberally
Fig. 265. Portrait of an Unknown Roman
This terra-cotta head is one of the finest portraits ever made. It represents one of the masterful Roman lords of the world, and shows clearly in the features those qualities of power and leadership which so long maintained the supremacy of the Roman Empire
1054. Roman
painting
654
J171LWM X
1055. Leadership in literature passes from Rome back to Athens
1056. Latin prose writers: Seneca, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny
supported by the emperors. Nevertheless, even under these favorable circumstances not a single genius of great creative imagination arose. Just as in sculpture and painting, so now in literature, the leaders were content to imitate or copy the great works of the past. Real progress in literature therefore ceased. The leadership in such matters, held for a brief time by Rome in the Augustan Age, had now returned to Athens, where the emperors had endowed the four schools of philosophy (§ 762) as a government university. Nevertheless, Rome was still a great influence in literature; the leading literary men of the Empire desired to play a part there, and when a philosopher or teacher of rhetoric published his lectures in book form, he was proud to place under the title the words, " delivered at Rome.’'
While poetiy had declined, prose writers were still productive. Nero’s able minister Seneca (§ 1012) wrote very attractive essays and letters on personal charaqter and conduct They show- so fine an appreciation of the noblest human traits that many have thought he had secretly adopted Christianity. His style became so influential that it displaced that of Cicero for a long time. The new freedom of speech which arose under the liberal emperors after the death of Domitian permitted Tacitus to write a frank history of the Empire from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian (from 14 a.d. down to 96 a.d.). Although he allowed his personal prejudices to sway him, so that he has given us a veiy dark picture of the Julian emperors, his tremendous power as a writer resulted in the greatest history ever put together by a Roman. Among his other writings was
* Quite a number of such portraits have been preserved in Egypt attached to mummies of the second century a.d. The portrait was painted on a thin board, laid over the face of the mummy, and bound down with the wrappings. The method of painting is interesting. No oil colors were known in the ancient world. The painter mixed his colors in melted wax, which he then applied while hot to the board. While this method was old Egyptian, the artist’s skill in painting light was Greek (§ 650; cf. Fig. 197). It was common in Italy, and even poor people had their portraits painted in this way. The portrait of Apion, the young Roman soldier (§ 1054), must have looked like this.
Plate VIII. One of the Oldest Surviving Portrait Paintings*
656
Jincieni j. *ww
1059. End
of investigative science at Alexandria; Ptolemy
facts then known in science, to be found in books, chiefly Greek. He put them all together in a huge work which he called "Natural History”—really an encyclopedia. He was so deeply interested in science that he lost his life in the great eruption of Vesuvius, as he was trying both to study the tremendous event at short range, and (as admiral of the fleet) to save the fleeing people of Pompeii (§ 1034). But Pliny’s "Natural History" did not contain any new facts of importance discovered by the author himself, and it was marred by many errors in matters which Pliny misunderstood. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years, until the revival of science in modem times Pliny’s work was, next to Aristotle, the standard authority referred to by all educated Europeans. Thus men fell into an indolent attitude of mind and were satisfied merely to learn what earlier discoverers had found out This attitude never would have led to the discovery of the size of the earth as determined by Eratosthenes (§ 745), or in modem times to X-ray photographs or wireless telegraphy.
A great astronomer and geographer of Alexandria, who flourished under Hadrian and the Antonines, was the last of the famous scientists of the ancient world. He wrote among other works a handbook on astronomy, for the most part a compilation from the works of earlier astronomers. In it he unfortunately adopted the conclusion that the sun revolved around the earth as a center. His book became a standard work, and hence this mistaken view of the solar system, called the Ptolemaic system, was everywhere accepted by the later world. It was not until four hundred years ago that the real truth, already long before discovered by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (§ 744), was rediscovered by the Polish astronomer Copernicus. It was a further sign of the decline of science that Ptolemy even wrote a book on Babylonian astrology (§ 192). Knowledge of the spherical form of the earth as shown by Ptolemy and earlier Greek astronomers reached the travelers and navigators of. later Europe, and finally led Columbus to
The Second Century of Peace 657
undertake the voyage to India and the East westward—the voyage which resulted in the discovery of America.
The position of educated Greeks at Rome was very different from what it had been under the Republic, when such men were slaves or teachers in private households. Now they were holding important positions in the government or as teachers and professors paid by* the government. The city was no longer Roman or Italian; it had become Mediterranean, and
Map of the World by the Astronomer and Geographer Ptolemy (Second Century a.d.)
many worthy families from the provinces, settling in Rome, had greatly bettered the decadent society of the city. Leading men whose homes in youth had looked out from the hills of Spain upon the Atlantic mingled at Rome with influential citizens who had been born within a stone’s throw of the Euphrates. Men of all the world elbowed each other and talked business in the banks and countinghouses of the magnificent new forums; they filled the public offices and administrative departments of the government, and discussed the hand-copied daily paper
1060. Cosmopolitan life of Rome
658
Ancient limes
published by the State ; they sat in the libraries and lecture halls of the university and they crowded the lounging places of the public baths and the vast amphitheater. They largely made up the brilliant social life which ebbed and flowed through the streets, as the wealthy and the wise gathered at sumptuous dinners and convivial winter evenings in. the city itself, or indolently killed time loafing about the statue-filled gardens and magnificent country villas overlooking the Bay of Naples, where the wealthy Romans spent their summer leisure. We call such all-inclusive, widely representative life "cosmopolitan” — a word of Greek origin meaning " world-cityish.”
1061. incom- This converging of all the world at Rome was evident in. luxuries”6"131 the luxuries now enjoyed by the rich. The outward life, houses,
. and costumes of the wealthy were on the whole not much changed from that which we found toward the close of the Republic (§§ 889-898). Luxury and display had somewhat increased, and in this direction oriental rarities now played a noticeable part (§ 1038). Roman ladies were decked with diamonds, pearls, and rubies from India, and they robed themselves in shining silks from China. The tables of the rich were bright with peaches and apricots, now appearing for the first time in the Roman world. Roman cooks learned to prepare rice, formerly a delicacy required only by the sick. Horace had amusingly pictured the distress of a miserly Roman when he learned the price of a dish of rice prescribed by his physician. Instead of sweetening their dishes with- honey as formerly, Roman households began to find a new product in the market place known as " sakari ”; for so the report of a venturesome oriental sailor of the first century a. d. calls the sirup of sugar cane, which he brought by water from India into the Mediterranean for the first time. This is the earliest mention of sugar in history. These new things from the Orient were beginning to appear in Roman life just as the potatoes, tobacco, and Indian corn of America found their way into Europe after the voyages of Columbus had disclosed a new Western world.
The Second Century of Peace 659
Section 93. Popularity of Oriental Religions and the Spread of Early Christianity
The life of the Orient was at the same time continuing to bring into the Mediterranean other things less easily traced than rice or sugar, but much more important in their influence on the Roman world. The intellectual life of the Empire was steadily declining, as we have seen indicated by literature and science. 'Philosophy was no longer occupied with new thoughts and the discovery of new truths. Such philosophy had given way to the semireligious systems of living and ideas of right conduct taught by the Stoics and Epicureans (§ 761). Thoughtful Romans read Greek philosophy of this kind in the charming treatises of Cicero (§ 1000) or the discussions of Seneca (§ 1056). Such readers had given up the old Roman gods and accepted these philosophical precepts of daily 'conduct as their religion. But such teaching was only for the highly educated and the intellectual class.
Nevertheless, such men sometimes followed the multitude and yielded to the fascination of the mysterious religions coming in from the East. Even in Augustus’s time the Roman poet Tibullus, absent on a military campaign which sickness had interrupted, wrote to his fiancee Delia in Rome: " What does your Isis for me now, Delia ? What avail me those brazen sistra1 of hers, so often shaken by your hand ? . . . Now, now, goddess, help me; for it is proved by many a picture in thy temples that man may be healed by thee.” Tibullus and his fiancee belonged to the most cultivated class, but they had taken refuge in the faith of the Egyptian Isis. When Hadrian’s handsome young Greek friend Antinoiis was drowned in the Nile, the emperor erected an obelisk at Rome in his memory, with a hieroglyphic inscription announcing the beautiful youth’s divinity and his union with Osiris. Attached to
1062. Decline of intellectual life and Roman religion
1063. Egyptian religion in Europe
1 Egyptian musical instruments played by shaking in the hand.
66o
Ancient Times
1064. The
Great Mother goddess of Asia Minor; Persian Mithras; popularity of the oriental ” mysteries ”
Hadrian’s magnificent villa near Rome was an Egyptian garden, chiefly sacred to Isis and Osiris and filled with their monuments. Plutarch wrote an essay on Isis and Osiris which he dedicated to a priestess of Isis at Delphi. Since the days of the early Empire, multitudes had taken up this Egyptian faith, and temples of Isis were to be found in all the larger
Fig. 266. The Temple of Isis at Pompeii
Even the little town of Pompeii had its temple of Isis (§ 1063), as did also the little Hellenistic city of Priene (Fig. 212). It has here been restored after Man
cities (Fig. 266). To-day tiny statuettes and other symbols of the Egyptian goddess are found even along the Seine, the Rhine, and the Danube.
The Great Mother goddess of Asia Minor (§ 337), with her consort Attis, gained the devotion of many Romans, also. In the army the Persian Mithras, a god of light (§ 287), was a gteat favorite, and many a legion had its underground chapel where its members celebrated his triumph. All these faiths had their " mysteries,” consisting chiefly of dramatic presentations
The Second Century of Peace 661
of the career of the god, especially his submission to death, his triumph over it, and ascent to everlasting life (§ 117). It was believed that to witness these things and to undergo certain holy ceremonies of initiation would bring to those initiated deliverance from evil, the power to share in the endless life of the god and to dwell with him forever.
The old Roman faith had little to do with conduct and held out to the worshiper no such hopes of future blessedness. Throughout the great Roman world men were longing for some assurance regarding the life beyond the grave, and in the. midst of the trials and burdens of this life they wistfully sought the support and strength of a divine protector. Little wonder that the multitudes were irresistibly attracted by the comforting assurances of these oriental faiths and the blessed future insured By their "mysteries." At the same time it was believed possible to learn the future of every individual by the use of Babylonian. astrology (§192). Even the astronomer Ptolemy wrote a book on it (§ 1059). The Orientals who practiced it were called Chaldeans (§ 238), or Magi, whence our words "magic” and " magician,” and everyone consulted them.
The Jews too, now that their temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans (§ 1018), were to be found in increasing numbers in all the larger cities. Strabo, the geographer, said of them, " This people has already made its way into every city, and it would be hard to find a place in the habitable world which has not admitted this race and been dominated by it.” The Roman world was becoming accustomed to their synagogues ; but the Jews refused to acknowledge any god besides their own, and their exclusiveness brought them disfavor and trouble with the government (cf. Fig. 267).
Among all these faiths of the East, the common people were more and more inclining toward one, whose teachers told how their Master, Jesus, a Hebrew, was born in Palestine, the land of the Jews, in the days of Augustus. Everywhere they told the people of his vision of human brotherhood and of divine
1065. Decline of Roman religion and the old gods
io6d. Judaism
1067. Rise of Christianity
662
Ancient limes
1068. Paul and the foundation of the earliest churches; the New Testament
fatherhood, surpassing even that which the Hebrew prophets had once discerned (§ 304). This faith he had preached for a few years in the Aramaic language of his countrymen (§207) —till he incurred their hatred, and in the reign of Tiberius, they had put him to death.
A Jewish tentmaker of Tarsus named Paul, a man of passionate eloquence and unquenchable love for his Master, passed far and wide through the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and even to Rome (§ 1036), proclaiming his Master’s teaching. He left behind him d line of devoted communities stretching from Palestine to Rome. Certain letters (cf. Fig. 253) which he wrote in Greek to his followers were circulating widely among them and were read with eagerness. At the same time a narrative of the Master’s life had also been written in Aramaic (Fig. 126), the language in which he had preached. This perished, but Greek accounts drawing upon the Aramaic narrative also appeared, and were now widely read by the common people. There were finally four leading biographies of Jesus in Greek, which came to be regarded as authoritative, and these we call the Four Gospels. Along with the letters of Paul and some other writings they were later put together in a Greek book now known in the English translation as the New Testament.
mmmm
S V' £ ’ 1 ./
Fig. 267. Certificate
SHOWING THAT A
Roman Citizen had
SACRIFICED TO THE
Emperor as a God*
The Second Century of Peace 663
The other oriental faiths, in spite of their attractiveness, could not offer to their followers the consolation and fellowship of a life so exalted and beautiful, so full of brotherly appeal and human sympathy as that of the new Hebrew Teacher. In the hearts of the toiling millions of the Roman Empire his simple summons, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” proved a mightier power than all the edicts of the Roman emperors. The slave and the freedman, the artisan and craftsman, the humble and the despised in the huge barracks which sheltered the poor in Rome, listened to this new " mystery ” from the East, as they thought it to be, and as time passed, multitudes responded and found joy in the hopes which it awakened. In the second century of peace it was rapidly outstripping the other religions of the Roman Empire.
The officers of government often found these early converts not only refusing to sacrifice to the emperor as a god (§ 1016) but also openly prophesying the downfall of the Roman State. The early Christians were therefore more than once called upon^to endure cruel persecution (Fig. 267). Their religion seemed incompatible with good citizenship, since it forbade them to show the usual respect for the emperor and the government.
* Excavators in the ruins of Egyptian villages like Fig. 211 have discovered over a score of such certificates, each written on a strip of papyrus. This specimen states that a citizen named Aurelius Horion, living in the village of Theadelphia in Egypt, appeared before a government commission, and not only affirmed that he had always been faithful in the worship of the gods but that he also in the presence of the commission and of witnesses offered sacrifice (a slaughtered animal), presented a drink offering, and “likewise consumed a portion of these offerings. In the middle we see the heavy black signature of the presiding official, and at the bottom in four lines the date, corresponding to our 250 a. D. Every Roman citizen at this time, no matter what his religion might be, was obliged to possess such a certificate and to show it on demand. It was called a libettus, and the owner of it was called a libettaticiis. A Christian who would resort to such a means of escaping persecution by the government was greatly despised by the faithful, who refused to comply. Compare our word " libel.”
1069. Superiority of Christianity over the other oriental religions
1070. Rome persecutes the earl)' Christians
L
s
664
Ancient limes
1071. Organization of churches and revival of popular leadership
1072. Beginning of decline: Antoninus Pius (138-161 a.d.) and Marcus Aurelius (r6i-i8o a.d)
1073. Marcus Aurelius stops the barbarian invasion (167180 A.D.)
Nevertheless, their numbers steadily grew, and each riew Christian group or community organized itself into an assembly of members called an " ecclesia,” or as we say, a church. " Ecclesia ” was the old Greek word for Assembly of the People, and in these new assemblies, or churches, men of ability were now beginning to find those opportunities for leadership and power which the decline of citizenship in the old city republics no longer offered. The leaders of the churches were soon to be the strong men of the people, and to play a political as well as a religious role.
Section 94. The End of the Second Century of Peace
In spite of outward prosperity, especially suggested by the magnificent buildings of the Empire, Mediterranean civilization was declining in the second century of peace. The decline became noticeable in the reign of Hadrian. The just and kindly Antoninus, who followed Hadrian in 138 a.d., was called by the Romans " the Pius,” but he hardly showed energy enough to maintain the foreign prestige of the Empire, even though he strengthened the northern frontier walls. His successor, the noble Marcus Aurelius, therefore had to face'' a very serious situation (161 a.d.). The Parthians, encouraged by the easygoing reign of Antoninus Pius, made trouble on the eastern frontier, and Marcus Aurelius was obliged to fight them in a four years’ war before the frontier was safe again.
When the Roman troops returned from this war, they brought back with them a terrible plague which destroyed multitudes of men at the very moment when the Empire most needed them. For at this juncture the barbarian hordes in the German North broke through the frontier defenses (Fig. 252), and for the first time in two centuries they poured down into Italy (167 a.d.). The two centuries of peace were ended. At the same time the finances of the Empire were so low that
ifie Second Lentury of Peace 665
the emperor was obliged to sell the crown jewels to raise the money necessary for equipping and supporting the army.
With little intermission, until his death in 180 a.d., Marcus Aurelius maintained the struggle against the Germans in the region later forming Bohemia. Indeed,' death overtook him while still engaged in the war. But in spite of victory over the barbarians, Marcus Aurelius was unable to sweep them entirely out of the northern regions of the Empire. He finally took the very dangerous step of allowing some of them to remain as farmer colonists on lands assigned to them inside of the frontier. This policy later resulted in very serious consequences to the Empire. »
Nevertheless, the ability and enlightened statesmanship of 1074. Char-Marcus Aurelius are undoubted. Indeed, they were only Ma^us equaled by the purity and beauty of his personal life. He Aurellus regarded his exalted office as a sacred trust to which he must be true, in spite of the fact that he would have greatly preferred to devote himself to reading, study, and philosophy, which he deeply loved. Amid the growing anxieties of his position, even as he sat in his t.ent and guided the operations of the legions among the forests of Bohemia in the heart of the , barbarous North, he found time to record his thoughts and leave to the world a little volume of meditations written in Greek. As the aspirations of a gentle and chivalrous heart toward pure and noble living, these meditations are among the most precious legacies of the past. Marcus Aurelius was the last of a noble succession, the finest spirit among all the Roman emperors, and there was never another like him on the imperial throne. But no ruler, however spure and unselfish his purposes, could stop the processes of decline going on in the midst of the great Roman world. Following the two centuries of peace, therefore, was to come a fearful century of revolution, civil war, and anarchy, from which a very different Roman world was to -emerge.
666
Ancient Times
QUESTIONS
Section 90. Did the struggle at the death of Nero long endanger the peace of the Empire ? Who triumphed ? What were the two great tasks awaiting the emperors? Describe the dangers on the frontiers. What did Domitian do for the frontiers ? Recount the achievements of Trajan on the lower Danube; in the Orient. How did Hadrian treat the conquests of Trajan? What can you say of the Roman army under Trajan and Hadrian? How was the management of the government improved ? How did this affect tax collecting? What can you say of agricultural conditions in Italy? How were the laws improved? Tell about the people’s interest in public affairs in the provinces.
Section 91. Give an imaginary birci’s-eye view of the Roman Empire from Gibraltar. Describe Pompeii. Describe Roman roads and their traffic. Tell something of sea travel; of commerce; of hotels; of society in the provinces. What did a Roman traveler find in Athens and Delphi ? in Asia Minor and Syria ? in Egypt ? Where did the Roman’s ancient world lie? Where was his modem world? What can you say of Roman buildings surviving in the West?
Section 92. How had Rome now improved? Describe the Colosseum; the forums of the emperors. What can you say of Roman use of cement in architecture? of Roman sculpture? of Roman painting? What had happened to literature in Rome since Augustus? Tell about the Latin prose writers; the Greek prose writers. What can you say of science at Rome? at Alexandria? Tell about the cosmopolitan life of Rome. What can you say of incoming luxuries of the Orient ?
Section 93. What can you say of intellectual life at Rome? of religions life ? of incoming oriental religions ? What was the feeling of the common people toward the oriental religions ? What can you say of the Jews at this time? Describe the rise of Christianity and the work of Paul. What can you say of the superiority of Christianity? What practical difficulty did the Christians meet in their relations with the Roman government? What certificate did a citizen have to possess ?
Section 94. What people first caused Marcus Aurelius trouble ? What event ended the second century of peace ? What did Marcus Aurelius do to subdue the barbarians? What can you say of the mind and character of Marcus Aurelius?
CHAPTER XXIX
A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION AND THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE
Section 95. Internal Decline of the Roman Empire
We have seen good government, fine buildings, education, and other evidences of civilization more widespread in the second century of peace than ever before. Nevertheless, the great
Note. The above headpiece shows us the surviving ruins of the royal palace at Ctesiphon on the Euphrates (see map, p. 709), once the capital of New Persia. The tiny human figure in one doorway will indicate to us the vast size of the building. - The huge vault on the right was built over the enormous hall below, without any supporting timbers during the course of construction. It is 84 feet across and is the largest masonry vault of its age still standing in Asia. Here the magnificent kings of New Persia held their splendid court, imitated by the weak Roman emperors at Constantinople (§ 1099). Note the situation of Babylon as a river station on the great highway between Asia Minor and the East (map, p. 436). Ctesiphon, situated almost within sight of Babylon, was but one in a succession of powerful capitals, occupying this great river crossing: Akkad (§ 166), Babylon (§ 175), Ctesiphon (§ 1094), and, finally, Bagdad (§1153). As the author writes (May, 1916), a British expedition, after fighting a battle under the shadow of these ruins of Ctesiphon, has been captured by the Turks.
667
1075. Signs of inner decay : former decline of farming continues
668
Z171CWM' -L i>rrt>oo
1076. Spread of the oriental domain system of landowner-ship; villas
1077. Rise
of coloni
Empire which we have been studying, although in a condition seemingly so favorable, was suffering from an inner decay, whose symptoms at first hidden were fast becoming more and more evident In the first place, the decline of farming, so noticeable before the fall of the Republic (§§ 918 f.), had gone steadily on.
In spite of the heavy taxes imposed upon it, land had continued to pass over into the hands of the rich and powerful. The oriental system of confining landownership to large domains held by the State and a few individuals had also a strong influence. From Asia Minor, where it was widespread under the Persians, this system had passed to Greece (§ 626). The Romans had found it also in Africa, the province behind Carthage. Already in Nero’s time half of this province was made up of six domains, held by only six great landlords. Such a great estate was called a villa, and the system of villa estates, having destroyed the small farmers of Italy (§§ 918-920), was likewise now destroying them in the provinces also. Villas now covered not only Italy but also Gaul, Britain, Spain, and other leading provinces.
Unable to compete with the great villas, and finding the burden of taxes unbearable, most of the small farmers gave up the struggle. Such a man would often enter upon an arrangement which made him the colonus of some wealthy villa owner. By this arrangement the farmer and his descendants were forever bound by law to the land which they worked, and they passed with it from owner to owner when it changed hands. While not actually slaves, they were not free to leave or go where they pleased; and without any prospect of bettering themselves, or any opportunity for their children ever to possess their own lands, these men -lost all energy and independence and were very different from the hardy farmers of early Rome. As we shall see, many Northern barbarians also became coloni within the frontiers of the Empire.
The great villas once worked by slaves were now cultivated chiefly by these coloni. With the end of the long wars the
A Century of Revolution 669
captives who had been sold as slaves were no longer obtain- 1078. De-able, and slaves had steadily diminished in numbers. Their con- slavery and dition had also much improved, and the law now protected improvement
r in the con-
them from the worst forms of cruelty once inflicted upon dition of
them (§ 915). We have already noticed the growing practice slaves of freeing slaves, which made freedmen so common, throughout the Empire that they were playing an important part in manufactures and business (§ 1040).
Multitudes of the country people, unwilling to become coloni, 1079. De-forsook their fields and turned to the city for relief. Many extent of did this because neglect of fertilization and long-continued culti- cultivated
° 0 lands and
vation had exhausted their land and it would no longer produce diminishing
crops. Great stretches of unworked and weed-grown fields f°°d supply were no uncommon sight'. As a result the amount of land under cultivation continually decreased, and the ancient world was no longer raising Enough food to feed itself properly. The scarcity was felt most severely in the great centers of population like Rome, where prices had rapidly gone up. Our own generation, afflicted in the same way, is not the first to complain of ttie " high cost of living.”
Offers by the emperor to give land to anyone who would 1080. Dis-undertake to cultivate it failed to increase the amount of land thefeum-under the plow. Even under the wisest emperors the govern- ica
ment was therefore entirely unable to restore to the country bility to re- '
. 1 , , , , 1 r store them
districts the hardy yeomen, the brave and independent iarmers,
who had once formed the basis of Italian prosperity — the
men who, in the ranks of the legion, had laid the foundation
of Roman power. The destruction of the small farmers and
the inability of Rome to restore them formed the leading cause
among a whole group of causes which brought about the
decline and fall of this great Empire. •
The country people who moved to Rome were only bring- 1081. De-
ing about their owft extermination as a class. The large families fluerices'of
which country life favors were no longer reared, the number clty*lfe
of marriages decreased, and the population of the Empire shrank.
67 o
Ancient limes
1082. Decline of citizenship in the cities
1083. De'
cline of business
Debased by the life of the city, the former sturdy yeoman lost his independence in an eager scramble for a place in the waiting line of city poor, to whom the government distributed free grain, wine, and meat. The time which should have been spent in breadwinning was worse than wasted among the cheering multitudes at the chariot races, bloody games, and barbarous spectacles. Notwithstanding the fine families who moved to Rome from the provinces under the liberal emperofs of the second century a.d., the city became a great hive of shiftless population supported by the State, with money which the struggling agriculturist was taxed to provide. The same situation was in the main to be found in all the leading cities.
In spite of outward splendor, therefore, these cities too were declining. They had now learned to depend upon Rome to care for them even in their own local affairs, and their citizens had rapidly lost all sense of public responsibility. The helpful rivalry between neighboring city-states too had long ago ceased. Everywhere the leading men of the cities were indifferently turning away from public life. Moreover, Rome was beginning to lay financial obligations upon the leading men of such cities, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find men willing to assume these burdens. Responsible citizenship, which does so much to develop the best among the citizens in any community and which had earlier so sadly declined in Greece (§ 767), was passing away, never to reappear in the ancient world.
At the same time the financial and business life of the cities was also declining. The country communities no longer possessed a numerous purchasing population. Hence the country market for the goods manufactured in the cities was so seriously ^reduced that city, industries could no longer dispose of their products. They rapidly declined. The industrial classes were thrown out of work and went to increase the multitudes of the city poor. City business was also much hurt by a serious lack of precious metals for coining money.
A Cenhiry of Revolution 671
Many of the old silver and gold mines around the Mediterranean now seem to have tieen worked out. Wear in circulation, loss by shipwreck, private hoards, and considerable sums which went to pay for goods in India and China, or as gifts to the German barbarians, — all these causes aided in diminishing the supply of the precious metals.. The government was therefore unable to secure enough to coin the money necessary for the transaction of business. The emperors were obliged to begin mixing in an increasing amount of less valuable metals and coining this cheaper alloy. The Roman coin collections in the European museums show us that the coins of Augustus were pure, while those of Marcus Aurelius contain twenty-five per cent of alloy. Two generations after Marcus Aurelius there was only five per cent of silver in a government coin. A denarius, the common small coin worth nearly twenty cents under Augustus, a century after the death of Marcus Aurelius was worth only half a cent.
Even Marcus Aurelius had trouble in finding, enough money to pay his army. As soon as this difficulty became serious it paralyzed the government and demoralized the army. It was impossible to maintain a paid army without money. As it became quite impossible to collect taxes in money, the government was obliged to accept grain and produce as payment of taxes, arid great granaries and storehouses began to take the place of the treasury as in ancient Egypt (§ 75). Here and there the army was paid in grain. On the frontiers, for lack of other pay the troops were assigned lands, which of course did 1 them no good unless they could cultivate them. Then they were allowed to marry and to live with their families in little huts on their lands near the frontier. Called out only'occasionally for drill or to repel a barbarian raid, they soon lost all discipline, became merely feeble militia^ called by the Roman government " frontiersmen ” (limitanei).
Even under Marcus Aurelius, a governor of a province had started a serious rebellion. Hence the emperor was now
1084. Lack of precious metals for coinage and debasement of coins
1085. Decline of the army; the frontier legions become militia' r
672
Ancient, limes
1086. Standing army in Italy, arid its decline
1087. Demoralization of army and State caused by lack of1' a law of succession
1088. Rise of the provinces to a level with Italy and resulting competition
obliged to keep a standing army in Italy. These legions had become much smaller, and they were made up increasingly of barbarians, especially Germans and the uncivilized natives of the northern Balkan, among whom the Illyrians took the lead. The Roman citizen was now a rarity in the ranks, and it soon became necessary to allow the barbarians to fight in their own massed formations, to which they were accustomed (§ 1120). The discipline of the legion, and the legion itself, disappeared, and with it the superior military power of Rome was gone. The native ferocity and reckless bravery of uncivilized 'hordes, before which the unmilitary Roman townsmen trembled, were now the power upon which the Empire relied for its protection.
This degeneration of the army was much hastened by a serious imperfection in the organization of the Roman State, left there by Augustus. This was the lack of a legal and long-practiced method of choosing a new emperor .and transferring the power from one emperor to the next and thus maintaining from reign to reign without a break the supreme authority in the Roman State. The troops found that they could make a new emperor whenever the old emperor’s death gave theln an opportunity. For an emperor so made they had very little respect, and if he attempted to enforce discipline among them, they put him out of the way and appointed another. .Rude and barbarous mercenary soldiery thus became the highest authority in the State.
Finally, the spread of civilization to the provinces had made them feel that they were the equals of Rome and Italy itself. Even under the Republic there was much foreign blood in the peninsula. Horace himself had been the son of a freedman, of nobody-knows-what race. Italy was now largely foreign in population. Trajan and Hadrian had been Spaniards, and more than one province furnished the Empire with its ruler. When, in 212 a.d., citizenship was granted to all free men within the Empire, in whatever province they lived, the leveling of distinctions gave the provinces tnore and more opportunity to compete for leadership.
A Century of Revolution
67 3
, Section 96. A Century of Revolution
These forces of decline were bringing swiftly on a century 1089. Begin-
of revolution which was to shipwreck the civilization of the "emu^of
early world. This fatal century began with the death of revolution;
a v • rt rn1 decline under
Marcus Aurelius m ^80 a.d. The assassination of his un- Septimius
worthy son Commodus, who reminds us of Nero, was the fflTijj193" opportunity for a struggle among a group of military usurpers.
From this struggle a rough but successful soldier named Septimius Severus emerged triumphant. It was he who found himself obliged to settle the frontier troops on their own lands, with resulting demoralization of the army (§ 1085). He systematically filled the highest posts in the government with military leaders of low origin. Thus, both in the army (§ 1086) and in the government, the ignorant and often foreign masses were gaining control. Nevertheless, the energy of Severus was such that he led his forces with success against the Parthians in the East, and even recovered Mesopotamia. But the arch which he erected to commemorate his victories, and which still stands in the Forum at Rome (Fig. 246,1), reveals in its barbarous sculptures the fearful decline of culture in Italy. The Roman artists who wrought these rude reliefs were the grandsons of the men who had so skillfully sculptured the column of Trajan (Fig. 251). ,
The family of Septimius Severus maintained itself for a time, 1090. End
and it was his son Caracalla who conferred citizenship on all of Severus
freemen in the Empire in 212 a.d. (•§ 1088). But when the line
of Severus ended (23c a.d.), the storm broke. The barbaric suing civil
. wars among
troops in one province after another set up their puppet provincial
emperors to fight among themselves for the throne of the emPerors Mediterranean world. The proclamation of a new emperor would be followed again and again by news of his assassination. From the leaders of the barbaric soldier class, after the death of Commodus, the Roman Empire received eighty rulers in ninety years. One of these rulers of a day, in 248 a.d., went
674
Ancient Times
1091. Fifty years of anarchy and the collapse of higher civilization
1092. Barbarian raids
1093. Temporary independence of Gaul and evidences of rebuilding of its cities
through the mockery of celebrating the thousand years’ jubilee of the traditional founding of Rome.
Most of these so-called emperors were not unlike the revolutionary bandits who proclaim themselves presidents of Mexico. For fifty years there was no public order, as the plundering troops tossed the scepter of Rome from one soldier emperor to another. Life and property were nowhere safe ; turbulence, robbery, and murder were everywhere. The tumult and fighting between rival emperors hastened the ruin of all business, and as the affairs of the nation passed from bad to worse, national bankruptcy ensued. In this tempest of anarchy during the third century a. d. the civilization of the ancient world suffered final collapse. The supremacy of mind and of scientific knowledge won by the Greeks in the third century B.C.
(§ 743) yielded to the reign of ignorance and superstition in these social disasters of the third century a. d.
As the Roman army weakened, the Northern barbarians were quick to perceive the helplessness of the Empire (§ 1086). In the East the Goths, one of the strongest German tribes, took to the water, and their fleet passed out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. While they devastated the coast cities far and wide, other bands pushed down through the Balkan Peninsula and laid waste Greece as far as the Peloponnese. Even Athens was plundered. The barbarians penetrated far into Italy; in the West they overran Gaul and Spain, and some of them even crossed to Africa. In Gaul they burned city after city, and their leaders stood by and laughed in exultation as they saw the flames devouring the beautiful buildings of the Roman cities (Figs. 258-261).
Under Ijhese circumstances, when the people of the plundered •, lands saw that the Empire could no longer defend them, they organized for their own defense. In this way Gaul, for example, became an independent nation under its own rulers for years in this terrible century. Its people repulsed the barbarians and slowly rebuilt their burned cities. They dared not spread
A Centtiry of Revolution 675
.out the city, as before, but grouping all the buildings close together, the town was built compactly and surrounded by a massive wall, made largely of blackened blocks of stone taken from the ruined buildings burned by the barbarians. In no less than sixty cities of France to-day sections of these heavy walls, when taken down to make room for .modern improvements, are found to contain these smoke-blackened blocks. Far outside the city walls containing these blocks, excavation has revealed to us the foundations of the splendid Roman structures from which the blocks came and which formed the once larger city destroyed by the barbarians. -
At the same time a new danger had arisen in the East. A revival of patriotism among the old Persian population had resulted in a vigorous restoration of their national life. Their leaders, a family called Sassanians (or Sassanids), overthrew the Parthians (226 a.d.) and furnished a new line of enlightened Persian kings. As they took possession of the Fertile Crescent and established their capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, not far north of Babylon, a new Orient arose on the ruins of seemingly dead and forgotten ages. Fine buildings of Persian architecture (headpiece, p. 667), though influenced by Greek art, again looked down upon the Tigris and Euphrates, beautiful works of the Persian artist and craftsman again began to appear, and the revered religion of Zoroaster took on new life. We have in this movement a last revival of that old Iranian race which ; produced the religion of Zoroaster and built up the vast Persian Empire. The Sassanian kings organized a much more powerful State than that of the Parthians which they overthrew, and they regarded themselves as the rivals of the Romans for the Empire of the world. The old rivalry between the Orient and the , West, as in the days of Greece and Persia, was now continued, with Rome as the champion of the West, and this New a Persia as the leader of the East (see map II, p. 636).
Just as the family of Severus was declining, this empire of
■ , New Persia rose into power as a dangerous foe of the Roman
IO94. R*36 New Persia* {226 A.D.) under her Sassanian kings
676
Anctem nmes
1095. Palmyra a buffer state against New Persia; Zenobia
1096. Aure-lian (270275 A.D.) recovers the East and Gaul; Diocletian restores order (284 A.D.)
Empire on the eastern frontier. From this time on the Empire-was seriously threatened on two fronts, on north and east. As in Gaul, so in the East, the rise of a usurper within the.Roman Empire for a time saved the region from absorption by the outside enemy. One of the eastern governors, using Palmyra as a center, gained his independence and defended the eastern frontier on his own account. After his death his widow, the beautiful Zenobia, ruled at Palmyra as queen of the East, over a realm which included Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Her kingdom served for a time as a buffer state, protecting the Roman Empire from attack by New Persia. _
With a powerful oriental state under Zenobia holding the eastern Mediterranean lands, and an able senator named Tetricus, master of Gaul, Britain, and northern Spain, ruling the West as an independent emperor (§ 1093), it looked as if the Roman Empire were about to fall to pieces. The anarchy which we have already noticed within the Empire was at its worst, when one of the soldier emperors, named Aurelian (270 to 275 a.d.), advanced against Zenobia, defeated her army, Captured Palmyra and took the queen prisoner. Similar success in Gaul enabled him to celebrate a gorgeous triumph in Rome, with Zenobia and Tetricus led through the streets of the city along with the other captives who adorned his triumph. Aurelian restored some measure of order and safety. But, in order to protect Rome from tjie future raids of the barbarians, he built entirely around the great city the massive wall (Fig. 249, and plan, p. 622) which still stands, — a confession of the dangerous situation of Rome in the third century a. d. It was a little over a century after the de&th of Marcus Aurelius, when the emperor Diocletian restored what looked like a lasting peace (284 a.d.).
If at this point we look back some four hundred years over the history of Rome since she became mistress of the world, we discern three great periods.1 With the foundation of the
1 Periods of history do not end or begin abruptly. There is always a gradual transition from one to the next, and the dates in this paragraph merely suggest the points at which the transition was very evident.
Lo&eltudo 15'
.DENM-’
(Cologne?
£v Chalons* /Trevejs ^
* Stras^h/urg,
Parish . o % < / . „*■’
" E&is e! P^F/^nSalzteg
.quilete'
Vgfona,
G A ,Uj
/--rLyons)
.avenfiiW
Ml. Gems'!-.
Marseilles
A\
Capua,
Sardinia i
Zam^icfifrtliage *V. C t
ROMAN EMPIRE AS ORGANIZED BY DIOCLETIAN and CONSTANTINE /
Z Boundary Line of the Empire
_ Line of Division between the Eastern and Western Empires
~1 Prefecture of the Orient (
IJ Prefecture of IUyricum I
~j prefecture of Italy
_] Prefectui'e of Gaul
Scale of Statute Miles 0_100 200 300 400 500 600
A Century of Revolution ' 677
Empire by Augustus there began hvo centuries of peace, and this period of peaee was bodi preceded and followed by a century of revolution. We have thus had a century of revolution, two centuries of peace, and then a second century of revolution. The first century of revolution led from die Gracchus brothers to the triumph of one-man power and the foundation of the Empire by Augustus (that is, about 133 to 30 B.C.). The two centuries of peace beginning with the foundation of the Empire bv Augustus continued into the reign of Marcus Aurelius (that is, about 30 n.c. to nearly 170 a.d.). The second century of revolution led from the enlightened reign of Marcus Aurelius to oriental despotism under Diocletian (that is, about 180 to about 284 a.d.). Thus four centuries of Roman imperialism, after bringing forth such masterful men as Sulla and Julius Ca'sar, had passed through various stages of one-man power, to end in despotism. We are now first to examine that despotism and then to see how it was overwhelmed by two centuries of barbarian invasions from the North, while at the same time it was also crushed by die reviving power of the Orient, whose assaults were to last many centuries more (study map, p. 676),
Section 97. Thk Roman Empire an Okikntai.
Dl'SrOTKSM
The world which issued from the disasters of this second revolution toward die end of the third century a.d. under Diocletian was a totally different one from that which Augustus and the Roman Senate had ruled three centuries before. Diocletian deprived the shadowy Senate of all power, except for the municipal government of the city of Rome. The Roman Senate, now reduced to a mere City Council, a Board of Aldermen, disappeared from the stage of history. The emperor dius became for the whole Roman world what he had always been in Egypt, — an absolute monarch widi none to limit his power.
1097. Summary of four centuries of Roman imperialism culminating in Diocletian (2S4 A.D.)
1098. Diode-ti;in (2S4-305 a.d.) ; the Roman Empire an oriental despotism
678 * Ancient limes
1099. New
Persian influence ; triumph of oriental influences
1100. Emperor an oriental Sun-god ; triumph of despotism, end of democracy
The State -had been completely militarized and orientalized. With the unlimited power of the oriental despot the emperor now assumed also its outward symbols — the diadem, the gorgeous robe embroidered with pearls and precious stones, the throne and footstool, before which all who came into his presence must bow down to the dust.
Recent discovery has shown that the gorgeous costume in which the Roman emperor now decked himself was copied from that of the Sassanian kings of New Persia. The Roman leaders had seen much of this new empire of the East for two generations, and from its brilliant oriental court these outward matters of royal costume, court symbols, and customs were adopted. Oriental influence on Roman beliefs, such as we have seen in the spread of the worship of the Persian god Mithras (§ 1064), was now also affecting the notion of the divinity of the emperor (§1016). In these things we recognize a further stage in that commingling of the East_ and West, begun by Alexander the Great over six hundred years before (§ 703). Indeed, the Roman Empire had now become like a vast sponge absorbing the life and civilization of the Orient.
As a divinity, the emperor had now become an oriental Sun-god and he was officially called the " Invincible Sun.” His birthday was on the twenty-fifth of December; that is, about the date when the sun each year begins to turn northward after he has reached his southernmost limit. The inhabitants of each province might revere their particular gods, undisturbed by the government, but all were obliged as good citizens to join in the official sacrifices to the head of the State (as a god. With the incoming of this oriental attitude toward the emperor, the long struggle for democracy, which we have followed through so many centuries of the history of early man, ended in the triumph of oriental despotism.
The necessity of leading the army against New Persia, the new oriental enemy, carried the emperor much to the East. The result was that Diocletian resided most of the time at
A Century of Revolution 679
Nicomedia in Asia Minor (see map, p. 676). As a natural consequence the emperor was unable to give close attention to the West. Following some earlier examples, and perhaps remembering the two consuls of the old Republic, Diocletian therefore appointed another emperor to rule jointly with himseli, to give his attention to the West. The second emperor was to live at Milan in the Po valley, really the most important region of Italy. All government edicts, whether issued in the East or the West, were signed by both emperors, and it was not Diocletian’s intention to divide the Roman Empire, any more than it had been the purpose to divide the Republic in electing two consuls. The final result was nevertheless the division of the Roman Empire into East and West, just as it had once been divided by the war between Caesar iri the West and Pompey in the East, or the similar conflict between Octavian in the West and Antony in the East.
In order to avoid the recurrence of civil war at the death of an emperor, Diocletian endeavored to arrange the transfer of power from one emperor to the next. He and his fellow emperor each bore, the title of Augustus. The two Augustuses-appointed two subordinates, to be called Caesars. There were thus two emperors, or Augustuses, and two subordinate emperors, or. Caesars, intended to be something like vice presidents. For it was provided that at the death or resignation of either Augustus one of the Caesars should at once take his place as Augustus,- and another Caesar was then to be appointed. These arrangements display little statesmanship, and there was po possibility of their permanence.
In accordance with this" organization, involving four rulers, the provinces of the Empire, over a hundred in number, were divided into four great groups, or prefectures (see map, p. 676), with a prefect over each. Still smaller groups of provinces, twelve in number, were called dioceses, mostly ruled by vicars, the subordinates of the prefects; while under the vicaffe were •the governors of the separate provinces. The business of each
iioi. Diocletian resides in the East and appoints an emperor of the West
1102. Diocletian’s arrangements for the succession
1103. Diocletian’s administrative organization
1104. Oppressive taxation
1105. Bad
methods of tax collection
1106. Loss of both farmers and middle-class business men; obligatory practice of occupations
680 Ancient Times
province was organized in the hands of a great number of local officials graded into many successive ranks and classes from high to low. There was an unbroken chain of connection from the lowest of these up through various ranks to the governor, theovicar, and the prefect, and finally to the emperor himself.
The financial burden of this vast organization, begun under Diocletian and completed under his successors, was enormous. For this multitude of government officials and the clamorous army had all to be paid and supported. It was a great expense also to maintain the luxurious oriental court of the emperor, surrounded by his innumerable palace officials and servants. But now there were four such imperial courts, instead of one. At the same time it was still necessary to supply " bread and circuses” for the populace of the towns (§ 1081). In regard to taxation, the situation had grown steadily worse since the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The amount of a citizen’s taxes therefore continued to increase, and finally little that he possessed was free from taxation.
When the scarcity of coin forced the government to accept grain and produce from the delinquent taxpayer, taxes had become a mere share in the yield of the lands. The Roman Empire thus sank to a primitive system of taxation already thousands of years old in the Orient. It was now customary to oblige a group of wealthy men in each city to become responsible for the payment of the entire taxes of the district each year, and if there was a deficit, these men were forced to make up the lacking balance out of their own wealth. The penalty of wealth seemed to be ruin, and there was no motive for success in business when such prosperity meant ruinous overtaxation.
Many a worthy man secretly fled from his lands to become a wandering beggar, or even to take up a life of robbery and violence. The Roman Empire had already lost, and had never been able to restore, its prosperous farming class. It now lost likewise the enterprising and successful business men of the middle class. Diocletian therefore endeavored to force these
A Century of Revolution
classes to continue their occupations. He enacted laws forbidding any man to forsake his lands or occupation. The societies, guilds, and unions in which the men of various occupations had long been organized (§ 1040) were now gradually made obligatory, so that no one could follow any calling or occupation without belonging to such a society. Once a member he must always remain in the occupation it implied.
Thus under this oriental despotism the liberty, for which men' had striven so long, disappeared in Europe, and the once free Roman citizen had no independent life of his own. For the will of the emperor had now become law, and as such his decrees were dispatched throughout the length and breadth of' the Roman dominions. Even the citizen’s wages and the prices of the goods he bought or sold were as far as possible fixed for him by the State. The emperor’s innumerable officials kept an eye upon even the humblest citizen. They watched the grain dealers, butchers,-and bakers, and saw to it that they properly supplied the public and never deserted their occupation. In some cases the State even forced the son to follow the profession of his father. In a word, the Roman government now attempted' to regulate almost every interest in life, and where-ever the citizen turned he felt the control and oppression of the State.
Staggering under his- crushing burden of taxes, in a State which was practically bankrupt, the citizen of every class had now become a mere cog in the vast machinery of the government. He had no other function than to toil for the State, which exacted so much of the fruit of his labor that he was fortunate if it proved barely possible for him to survive on what was left. As a mere toiler for the State, he was finally where the peasant on the Nile had been for thousands of years. The
■ emperor had become a Pharaoh, and the Roman Empire a colossal Egypt of ancient days.
The century of revolution which ended in the despotic reorganization by Diocletian completely destroyed the creative ability
1107. Disappearance of liberty and free citizenship
1108. The
citizen a toiler for the State
682
/inctem itmes
1109. End of
the progress of higher civilization in the ancient world; future mission, of Rome.
mo. Shift of the center of power from Italy to the Balkan Peninsula
of ancient men in art and literature, as it likewise crushed all progress in business and affairs. In so far as the ancient world was one of progress in civilization, its history was ended with the accession of Diocletian. Nevertheless, the Roman Empire had still a great mission before it, in the preservation of at least something of the heritage of civilization, which it was to hand down the centuries to us of to-day. Moreover, it was out of the fragments of the Roman Empire that the nations of modern Europe grew up. We are now to watch it then as it falls to pieces, still mechanically maintaining its hold upon its mighty heritage from the past, and furnishing the materials, as it were, out of which our world of to-day has been built up.
Section 98. The Division of the Empire and the Triumph of Christianity
Under Diocletian Italy had been reduced to the position of a taxed province, and had thus lost the last festige of superiority over the other provinces of the Empire. The dangerous flood of German barbarians along the lower Danube and the threatening rise of New Persia had drawn the emperor into the northeast corner of the Empire. During the century of revolution just past, the Illyrian soldiers of the Balkan Peninsula had filled the army with the best troops and furnished more than one emperor. An emperor who had risen from the ranks of provincial troops in the Balkans felt little attachment to Rome. Rome had not only ceased to be the residence of an emperor, but the center of power had clearly shifted from Italy to the Balkan Peninsula. The movement was the outcome of a reviving respect for the East and a long growing interest in the Balkan Peninsula, observable even as early as Hadrian, who spent vast sums in the beautification of Athens. After' the struggles following Diocletian’s death, — struggles which his arrangements for the succession (§ 1102) failed to prevent,— the emperor Constantine the Great emerged victorious (324 a.d.).
A Century of Revolution 683
He did not hesitate to turn to the eastern edge of the Balkan Peninsula and establish there a New Rome as his residence.
The spot which he selected showed him to be a far-seeing mi. Con-statesman. He chose the ancient Greek town of Byzantium,
stantine (324 -337 a.d.) makes Constantinople ' his residence and seat of government (330 A.D.)
Fig. 268, View across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia
This view places us on the European shore of the Bosporus, and we look eastward to the Asiatic shore, with the mountains behind, rising to the table-land of central Asia Minor (§ 351). Just south of Us (at the right) on the same shore is Constantinople; a little to the north (the left) is the place where Darius the Great probably built his bridge when he first invaded Europe to conquer the Scythians (§ 500). The towers and walls before us are part of a fortress built by the Turkish conquerors when they crossed from Asia for the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 a.d. (§ 1158). For ages this intercontinental crossing has been the commercial and military link between" Europe and Asia, and as the author writes (May, 1916) the greatest nations of the world are fighting for its possession
on the European side of the Bosporus (Fig. 268), — a magnificent situation overlooking-both Europe and Asia, and fitted to be a center of power in both. In placing his new capital here, Constantine established a city, the importance of which was only equaled by the foundation of Alexandria in Egypt. The
684
Ancient Times
emperor stripped many an ancient city of its great monuments in order to secure materials for the beautification of his splendid residence (Fig. 269). By 330 a.d. the new capital on the
Fig. 269. Ancient Monuments in Constantinople
The obelisk in the foreground (nearly 100 feet high) was first set up in Thebes, Egypt, by the conqueror Thutmose III (§ in); it was erected here by the Roman emperor TJieodosius (§ 1125). The Small spiral column at the right is the base of a bronze tripod set up by the Greeks at Delphi (Fig. 172) in commemoration of their victory over the Persians at Platasa (§ 517)- The names of thirty-one Greek cities which took part in the battle are still to be read, engraved on this base. These monuments of ancient oriental and Greek supremacy stand in what was the Roman horse-race course when the earlier Greek city of Byzantiuifi became the Eastern capital of Rome (§ 1111). Finally, the great mosque behind the obelisk, with its slender minarets, represents the triumph of Islam under the Turks, who took the city in 1453 a.d.
Bosporus was a magnificent monumental city, worthy to be the successor of Rome as the seat of the Mediterranean Empire. It was named Constantinople (" Constantine’s city ”) after its founder.
A Cerittiry of Revolution
68$
’ The transfer of the capital of the Roman Empire to the east side of the Balkan Peninsula was a decided triumph for the older civilization of the eastern Mediterranean. But it meant the separation of east and west — the cutting of the Roman Empire in two. Although the separation did not take place abruptly, yet within a generation after Constantinople was founded, the Roman Empire had in fact if not in name become two states, and they were never more than temporarily united again. Thus the founding of Constantinople sealed the doom -of Rome and the western Mediterranean lands of the Empire. For a time the eastern half of the Empire, ruled by Constantinople, was greatly strengthened by Diocletian’s reorganization. Nevertheless, it too was doomed to steady decline. We have seen that citizenship in the Roman Empire no longer meant a share in the control of public affairs. Able men of affairs were no longer arising among such citizens, except as the army raised one of its commanders to the position of emperor. Peaceful civil life was no longer producing statesmen to control government affairs as in the days of the'Roman and Greek republics.
In this situation, as the Christian churches steadily increased in numbers, and their influence grew, they more and more needed the guidance of able men. The management of the great Christian communities and their churches called for increasing ability and experience. Public discussion and disputes in the Church assemblies enabled gifted men to stand forth, and their ability brought them position and influence. The Christian Church thus became a new arena for the development of statesmanship, and Church statesmen were soon to be the leading influential men of the age, when civil democracy had long since ceased to produce such men.
These officers , of the .Church gradually devoted themselves more and more to Church duties until they had no time for anything else. They thus came to be distinguished from the other members and were called the clergy, while the people who made up the membership were called the laymen, or the laity. The
1112. Constantinople and the separation of East and West; continuance of decline
1113. The
churches a new arena for the rise of able men
1114. The L
Church a powerful organization: priests, bishops, and archbishops
6 86
/incieni ■l tmes
1115. Christianity placed on a legal basis with other religions
(311 A.D.)
1116. Julian " the Apostate” (361363 A.D.)
old men who cared for the smaller country congregations were finally called merely presbyters, a Greek word meaning " old men,” and our word " priest ” is derived from this Greek term. Over the group of churches in each city, a leading priest gained authority as bishop. In the larger cities these bishops had such influence that they became archbishops, or head bishops, having authority over the bishops in the surrounding cities of the province. These church arrangements were modeled to a large extent on those of the Roman government, from which such terms as " diocese ”(§ 1103) were borrowed. Thus Christianity, once the faith of the weak and the despised, became a powerful organization, strong enough to cope with the government.
The Roman government therefore began to see the uselessness of persecuting the Christians. The struggle to suppress them was one which decidedly weakened the Roman State, at a time when the long disorders of the century of revolution made the emperors feel their weakness. In the time of Diocletian, his " Caesar ” Galerius, feeling the dangers threatening -Rome from without^and the uselessness of the struggle against the Christians within. issued a decree, in 311 A.D., by which Christianity was legally recognized. Its followers received the ’ same legal position granted to the worshipers of the old gods. This decree was also maintained by Constantine, and under his direction the first great assembly, or council, of all the churches of the Roman world was held at Nicaea, in northeastern Asia Minor.
The victory of Christianity was not yet final however. After Constantine’s sons and nephews had spent years in fighting for the crown, which one of the sons held for a time, the survivor among the group was Constantine’s nephew Julian, the ablest emperor since the second centuiy of peace. Like Marcus Aurelius, he was a philosopher on the throne; for he was devoted to the old literature and philosophy of the Greeks. He therefore renounced Christianity and did all that he could to retard its progress and to restore Hellenistic religion and
A Century of Revolution
687
civilization. He was an able general also. He defeated the German barbarians in the West, but while leading his army in the East against the New Persians he died. The Church called him Julian "the Apostate”; he was the last of the Roman emperors to oppose Christianity.
QUESTIONS
Section 95. In spite of seeming prosperity, what was now the real condition of the Roman Empire ? What can you say of the decline of farming? Describe the system of coloni. What was now the condition of slavery? What can you say of the extent of cultivated lands and the food supply ? What was happening to the farming class ? Discuss city life; the decline of business. Discuss the supply of precious metals and money. How did this difficulty affect the army? What was the effect of the lack of a law of succession on the army ? What was now Italy’s situation in the Empire ?
Section 96. Tell what happened after the death of Marcus Aurelius. Describe the conditions following the time of the family of Septimius Severus. What did the Northern barbarians do ? What happened in Gaul? Describe the rise of New Persia. Tell about Palmyra and Zenobia. How were Gaul and Palmyra subdued ? How did Aurelian protect Rome? Who ended the century of revolution, and when? How can we summarize the four centuries of Roman imperialism which ended with the advent of Diocletian (284 B.C.)?
Section 97. How did Diocletian treat the Roman Senate? What did the Roman emperor become? What influences triumphed? What became of democracy ? What can you say about the emperor’s place of residence ? What arrangements for the succession did Diocletian make ? Tell about his administrative organization. What can you say of taxation under Diocletian ? How did this affect men of means ? What two classes of men had the Empire now lost ? What can you say of liberty and free citizenship ? What was the result ?
Section 98. Where had the center of power shifted? Who triumphed in the struggles following Diocletian’s death? Where did he establish the new eastern Rome ? What was the effect upon old Rome? upon the Empire? What can you say of the opportunities offered by the Church to able men? Tell about its organization. How did Christianity gain legal recognition? When? Tell about Julian the Apostate.
IXI7- The
barbarian
danger
CHAPTER XXX
THE TRIUMPH OF THE BARBARIANS AND THE END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Section 99. The Barbarian Invasions and the Fall of the Western Empire1
We have often met the Indo-European barbarians who occupied northern Europe, behind the civilized belt on the north of the Mediterranean. Since the days of the Stone Age men this
1 This account of the absorption of the western part of the ancient world by the barbarians is here necessarily very brief. A fuller presentation of this period will be found in Robinson's Medieval and Modem Times (chaps, ii-v), a book which continues this Ancicnt Times.
Note. The above headpiece shows us the interior of the famous church of St Sophia, built at Constantinople by Justinian from 532 to 537 A.D. (§ 1149)* The first church on this spot was of the usual basilica form (Fig, 271,5)-, but Justinian*s architects preferred an oriental dome. They therefore roofed the great church with a gigantic dome 183 feet high at the center, sweeping clear across the audience room and producing the most imposing vaulted interior now surviving from
688
The Triumph of the Barbarians
689
northern region had never advanced to a high civilization. Its barbarian peoples had been a frequent danger to the fringe of civilized nations along the Mediterranean. We recall how the Gauls overwhelmed northern Italy, even capturing Rome, and how they then overflowed into the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor (§§ 722,813,815). We remember the terror at Rome when the Germans first came down, and how they were only defeated by a supreme effort under the skillful soldier Marius (§ 955).
By superior organization the Romans had been able to feed and to keep together at a given point for a long time a larger number of troops than the barbarians. This was the secret of Caesar’s success against them (§ 955). During the century of revolution after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Roman army organization had gone to pieces and the barbarians raided the lands of the Empire without hindrance. After such raids the barbarians commonly withdrew. By the time of Diocletian, however, the barbarians were beginning to form permanent settlements within the limits of the Empire, and there followed two centuries of barbarian migration, in the course of which they took possession of the entire western Mediterranean world.
The Germans were a fair-haired, blue-eyed race of men of towering stature and terrible strength. In their native forests of the North each German people or nation occupied a very limited area, probably not over forty miles across, and in numbers such a people had not usually more than twenty-five or thirty thousand souls. They lived in villages, each of about a hundred families, and there was a head man over each village. Their homes were but slight huts, easily moved. They had little interest in farming the fringe of fields around the village, much preferring their herds, and they shifted their homes often.
the ancient world. Justinian is said to have expended 18 tons of gold and the labor of ten thousand men in the erection of the building. Since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453 a.d.), the vast church has served as a Mohammedan mosque. The Turks have whitewashed the gorgeous mosaics with which the magnificent interior is adorned, and large circular shields bearing the ipono-gram of the Sultan have been hung against the walls.
II18. Former Roman superiority, and later inferiority to barbarian armies
1119. The German peoples at home
1120. The
German peoples in migration and war
1121. Admission of whole German peoples to settle in the Empire and serve in the army
690 ' Ancient Times
They possessed no writing and very little in the way of industries, manufactures, or commerce. A group of noble families furnished the leaders (dukes) or sometimes kings, governing the whole people.
Hardened to wind and weather in their raw Northern climate, their native fearlessness and love of war and plunder often led them to wander, followed by their wives and families in heavy ■wagons. An entire people might comprise some fifty villages, but each village group remained together, protected by its body of about a hundred warriors, the heads of the village families. When combined, these hundreds made up an army of five to six thousand men. Each hundred held together in battle, as a fighting unit. They all knew each other; the village head man, the leader of the group, had always lived with them ; the warrior in the tumult of battle saw all about him his friends and relatives, the sons of his brothers, the husbands of his daughters. In spite of ldck of discipline, these fighting groups of a hundred men, united by such ties of blood and daily association, formed battle units as terrible as any ever seen in the ancient world. Their eager joy in battle and the untamed fierceness of their onset made them irresistible.
The highly organized and carefully disciplined Roman legions, which had gained for Rome the leadership of the world, were now no more. Legions made up of the peace-softened townsmen of Diocletian’s time, even if they had existed, would have given way before the German fighting groups, as chaff is driven before the wind. Hopeless of being able to drive the Germans back, the emperors had allowed them to settle within the fron-. tiers (§ 1073). Even Augustus had permitted this. Indeed, the lack of men for the army had long since led the emperors to hire the Germans as soldiers, and Julius Caesar’s cavalry had been largely barbarian. A more serious step was the admission of entire German peoples to live in the Empire in their accustomed manner. The men were then received into the Roman army, but they remained under their own German leaders
The Triumph of the Barbarians 691
and they fought in their old village units. For it was only as the Roman army was made up of the German fighting units that it had any effectiveness. Barbarian life, customs, and manners were thus introduced into the Empire, and the Roman army as a whole was barbarian. At the same time the German leaders of such troops were recognized as Roman officers.
Along the lower Rhine there lived under a king a powerful group of German peoples, called the Franks. The Vandals, also in the North, had long borne an evil reputation for their destructive raids. South of them, the Alemanni had frequently moved over the frontiers, and on the lower Danube the Goths were a constant danger. Constantine’s nephew Julian (§ 1116) had gained a fierce battle against the Germans at Strassburg (357 a.d.), and had thus stopped the Franks and Alemanni at the Rhine. He established his headquarters at Paris, where he still continued to read his beloved books in the midst of the campaign. The philosopher emperor’s stay at Paris fifteen and a half ce.nturies ago, for the first time brought clearly into history that important city of future Europe.
This constant commingling of the German peoples with the civilized communities of the Empire was gradually softening their Northern wildness and giving them not only familiarity with civilization bpt also a respect for it. Their leaders, who held office under the Roman government, came to have friends among highborn Romans. Such leaders sometimes married educated Roman women of rank, even close relations of the emperors. Some of them too were converted to Christianity. An educated German of the Goths, a man named Ulfilas, translated the New Testament into Gothic, a dialect akin to German. As the Germanic peoples possessed no writing, he was obliged to devise an alphabet from Greek and Latin for writing Gothic. He thus produced the earliest surviving example of a written Germanic tongue and aided in converting the Northern peoples to Christianity.
1122. The chief German peoples ; Julian’s defeat of Franks and Alemanni at Strassburg (357 a.d.)
1123. German peoples gain some civilization, including writing and Christianity
692
Ancient limes
1124. West Goths pushed across the Danube by the Huns; battle of Adrianople (378 A.D.) the beginning of a century of continuous barbaric migration
1125. Theodosius (379395 A.D.) restores the Empire
1126. Division of the Empire at death Of Theodosius (395 a.d.)
At this juncture barbarians of another race, having no Indo-European blood in their veins, had been penetrating Europe from Asia. These people were the Huns. They were the most destructive of all the barbarian invaders. They pushed down upon the lower Danube, and the West Goths (often called Visigoths), fleeing before them, begged the Romans for permission to cross the Danube and settle in the Empire. Valens, who had followed Julian as emperor of the East, gave them permission to do so. Thereupon friction between them and the Roman officials caused them to revolt. In the battle which ensued at Adrianople (378 a.d.), although the Goths could not have had an army of over fifteen thousand men, the Romans, or rather the Germans fighting for them, were defeated, and the emperor Valens himself was killed. Henceforth the helplessness of the Roman Empire was evident to all the world. This movement of the West Goths and the battle of Adrianople were the beginning of a century of continuous migration in which the Western Empire was slowly absorbed by the barbarians and broken up into German kingdoms under German military leaders.
Theodosius, who succeeded Valens at Constantinople, was , the last of the great emperors to unite and rule the whole Roman Empire. He came to an understanding with the West Goths, allowing them to settle where they were, taking them into his army, and giving their leaders important posts in the government. But it was only by using the able and energetic Germans themselves as his ministers and commanders that he was able to maintain his empire. He even gave his niece in marriage to his leading military commander, a Vandal named Stilicho, and at his death, in 395 a.d., Theodosius intrusted to this able German the care of his two young sons Honorius and Arcadius.
Theodosius divided the Empire between these two youths, giving to Arcadius the East and to Honorius the West. The Empire was never to be united again. Indeed, after the appearance of these two young emperors, the dismemberment
The Tmimph of the Barbarians 693
of the Western Empire went rapidly forward, and in two generations resulted in the disappearance of both the Western emperor and his empire (see map, p. 676).
From both the Danube and the Rhine the movement of the barbarians southward and westward went on. Led by their king Alaric, the West Goths first pushed down from the Danube into the Balkan Peninsula and advanced plundering into Greece, where they even took Athens. Here the German Stilicho, leading German troops, confronted the German invasion and forced it back. Driving their wagons piled high with the plunder of Greece, Alaric led his West Goths into Illyricum, where Arcadius made him official commander. When the faithful Stilicho had been executed on a charge of treason by Hono-rius, there was no one to oppose Alaric in his invasion of Italy. In 410 a.d. the emperor of the West was thus obliged to look on helplessly while the Gothic host captured and plundered Rome itself.1 Indeed, when the West Goths, after the death of Alaric, retired from Italy into southwestern Gaul, and later into Spain, Honorius was obliged to recognize the West Gothic kingdom which they set up there (see map, p. 692).
While these movements of the West Goths were going on after 400 a.d., the Vandals and two other German peoples had crossed the Rhine, and, advancing through Gaul, they had penetrated into Spain, where these three peoples set up three German kingdoms. These kingdoms, like that of the West Goths in Gaul, acknowledged that they were vassals of Honorius as emperor of the West. Not long after their settlement in Spain, the Vandals sailed across the Strait of Gibraltar and seized the Roman province of Africa (429 a.d.). The African kingdom of the Vandals was likewise recognized by the Western emperor. A little later the German Burgundians had pushed in 'beside the West Goths and set up a kingdom in southeastern Gaul.
1 Not long after 400 B. c. Rome was captured by the Gauls (§ 815), and a few years after 400 A. D, it was captured by the Goths.
II2'7. West Goths invade Greece and Italy (400 a.d.), t&ke Rome (410 A.D.), and establish a kingdom in Gaul
1128. Establishment of Vandal kingdoms in Spain and Africa; Burgundians in Gaul (400450 A.D.)
694
Ancient Times
1129. Western Empire loses Britain and dwindles to Italy
1130. Italy and the West invaded by the Huns
(45^453
a.d.) ; Rome taken by the Vandals (455 A.D.)
Meantime German peoples located along the North Sea had taken to the water and were landing in the Island of Britain. While Alaric was sacking Rome, the last Roman soldiers were being withdrawn from the island, and within a generation afterward the German tribes of the Angles and Saxons were setting up kingdoms there, which did not acknowledge the sovereignty of Rome. A rival emperor in Gaul was obliged to let the island go, nor could the feeble emperor of the West, in Italy, ever recover it. He was equally helpless as far as any real power over the western German kingdoms was concerned. Within, a generation after 400 a.d. the Western Empire had therefore dwindled to Italy itself, and even there the emperor of the West was entirely in the hands of his German officials and commanders.
In this condition of weakness Italy was subjected to two more serious invasions. The Eastern Empire had not been able to control the Huns who had forced the West Goths across the Danube (§ 1124). For two generations since then the kingdom of the Huns had steadily grown in power, until their king Attila governed an empire extending from southern Russia to the Rhine. He laid the Eastern Empire under tribute, and by 450 a.d. he and his terrible barbarian host were sweeping down upon Italy in the most destructive invasion which the South ever suffered. The West Goths, with other western Germans, however, rallied to the assistance of the Western emperor against the common enemy, and in a terrible battle at Chalons, in France, Attila was defeated in 451 a.d. He retreated eastward, and two years later, as he was invading Italy, he died. The Hunnish empire fell to pieces, never to trouble Europe again. Hardly had Rome thus escaped when the Vandals crossed over from Carthage to Sicily and Italy, and in 455 a.d. they captured Rome. Although they carried off great quantities of spoil, they spared the magnificent buildings of the city, as Alaric and his West Goths had also done forty-five years earlier (see map, p. 692).
The Triumph of the Barbarians 695
In Italy, all that was left of the Western Empire, the German military leaders possessed all the power and made and unmade emperors as they pleased. But these seeming emperors of the West were now to disappear. By a rema'rkable coincidence the last to bear the title was called Romulus Augustulus; that is, Romulus, " the little Augustus.” He thus bore the names both of the legendary founder of Rome itself and of the founder of the Roman Empire. He was quietly set aside by the German soldiery, who put Odoacer, one of their number, in his place. Thus in 476 a.d., two generations after Theodosius, -the last of the Western emperors disappeared. The line of emperors at Rome thus ended a little over five hundred years after it had been established by Augustus. The German leaders in Italy sent word to the Eastern emperor at Constantinople that they acknowledged the sovereignty of the Eastern emperor, who then authorized Odoacer to rule with the title of " patrician."
Meantime another great migration of the barbarians again altered the situation in the West. An eastern branch of the Goths, whom we call, therefore, the East Goths (Ostro-Goths),' had remained along the Danube for two generations after their kindred, the West Goths, had departed (§ 1124). Then they also shifted westward and southward into Italy, where, in 493 a.d., their king Theodoric the Great displaced Odoacer and made himself king of a strong East Gothic kingdom in Italy. Although he was unable even to read, Theodoric was a wise and highly civilized ruler, and under him Italy began to recover from her misfortunes. His power finally included, besides Italy and Sicily, part of Gaul and Spain, and- it at one time seemed that the Western Empire was about to be restored under a German emperor. This restoration of the West was prevented, however, by the rise of Justinian, the last great emperor of the East at Constantinople.
After the death of Theodosius (395 a.d.) the Eastern Empire had been ruled by weaklings. Justinian, however, who was crowned at Constantinople in 527 a.d., only a generation after
1131. Last of
the emperors at Rome, Romulus Augustulus, displaced by a German leader, Odoacer (476 A.D.)
1132. Establishment of an East Gothic kingdom in Italy by Theodoric
(493 A-°-)
1133. Justinian’s partial reconquest of the West
696
Ancient limes
the rise of Theodoric, was a gifted and energetic ruler. His dream was the restoration of the united Empire. Under his able
general Belisarius, he therefore endeavored to reconquer the West. Belisarius overthrew the Vandal kingdom in the province of Africa and then passed over into Italy, where he finally crushed the kingdom of the East Goths. Although disturbed by a serious revolt in Italy, the Eastern emperor’s authority was restored in Italy, Sicily, Africa, and southern Spain. But Justinian showed very poor judgment in supposing that the Eastern Empire
Fig. 270. Hall of an Egyptian Temple
ALTERED INTO A CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Over fifteen hundred years ago, in the reign of Theodosius (379-395 a.d.), not many years before 400 A. D., the temples of the old gods all around the Mediterranean were closed by edict of the emperor. They were then gradually forsaken, as we find them now, or the huts and
sun-dried-brick hovels of the poor crowded into them. In some cases a temple hall, once devoted to the worship of the gods, was then converted into a Christian church. In such a hall of the Luxor Temple at Thebes in Egypt, the arched niche we see here was cut into the wall for the pulpit of the preacher, and Greek columns were set up to support a canopy over his head. The pagan relief scenes on the walls were covered with plaster on which Christian saints were painted. This Christian plaster, visible just at the left of the left-hand column, has now largely fallen off and revealed the old pagan pictures, as we see them here still further to the left, where the pictures of the old Egyptian gods have emerged again, to find their former worshipers all vanished
The Triumph of the Barbarians
69 7
possessed the power again to rule the whole Mediterranean world. His destruction of the East Gothic kingdom in Italy left the peninsula helpless before the next wave of barbaric migration, nor were his successors able to maintain his conquests.
But if political unity failed, the emperor’s large plans did succeed in establishing a great judicial or legal unity. He employed a veiy able lawyer named Tribonian to gather together all the numerous laws which had grown up in the career of Rome since the age of the Twelve Tablets (§ 802) a thousand years before. Justinian was the Hammurapi of the Roman Empire, and the vast body of laws which he collected represented the administrative experience of the most successful rulers of the ancient world. Almost every situation and every difficulty arising in social life, in business transactions, or in legal proceedings had been met and settled by Roman judges. The collection of their decisions arranged by Justinian in brief form was called a digest. Justinian’s Digest became the foundation of law for later ages, and still remains so to a large extent in the government of the civilized peoples of to-day.
Under Justinian Constantinople enjoyed wide recognition and the emperor gave lavishly for its beautification. But it was no longer for building the old temples of the gods or basilicas and amphitheaters that the ruler gave his wealth. The old world of Greek civilization had received its last support from Julian, two centuries earlier (§ rn6). Theodosius, the last emperor to rule the entire Empire, had forbidden the worship of the old gods and issued a decree closing all their temples. Since 400 a. d. the splendid temples of the gods, which fringed the Mediterranean (Fig. 219) and extended far up the Nile (Fig. 64), were left more and more forsaken by their worshipers, till finally they were deserted and desolate as they are to-day, or they were altered for use as Christian churches (Fig. 270). The last blow to what the Church regarded as Greek paganism was now struck by Justinian, who closed the schools of philosophy forming the university at Athens. The buildings to which the
1134. Justinian’s code compiled
1135. End
of the old temples
698
Ancient Times
1136. Division of the Church into East and West
J ^ wealth were churches. The vast which he built at Constantinople still stands to-day, the most magnificent of the early churches of
the East (headpiece, p. 688).
Just as this building shows its oriental origin m its architecture so did the teachings of the Church in the Eastern Empire. The efforts of Justinian to unite East and West failed to a large extent because of the jealousy of the oriental churches and the power of the Western Church. A division was therefore steadily developing between the Eastern (Greek) Church and the Western (Latin) Church. For while the dismemberment of the Western Empire, which we have followed, was still going on, there was arising at Rome an emperor of the Church, who was in no small degree the heir to the lost power of the Western emperor. As there had been an Empire of the East and an Empire of the West, so there were to be also a Church of the East and a Church of the West. To the Western Church we must now turn.
\ Section 100. The Triumph of the Roman Church I___ and its Power over the Western Nations
1137. Unique position of Rome, and the bishop of Rome '
The venerable city of Rome, with its long centuries as mistress of the world behind it, had gained a position of unique respect and veneration, even among the barbarians. The Goths and the Vandals had stood in awe and reverence under the shadow of its magnificent public buildings. They had left them uninjured, and in all its monumental splendor, Rome was still the greatest city of the world, rivaled only by Constantinople and Alexandria, the two other imperial cities. It was natural that the bishop of Rome should occupy a position of unusual power and respect. When the West Goths were threatening the city, and also in other important crises caused by the incoming of the barbarians, the bishop of Rome had more than once showed an ability which made him the leading statesman '
The Triumph of the Barbarians 699
of Italy, if not of the West. There is no doubt that his influence had much to do with the respect which the West Goths and the Vandals had shown toward the city in sparing its buildings.
At the same time the Church throughout the West had early produced able men. This was especially true in Africa, the province behind Carthage, where the leading early Christian writers had appeared. The bishop of Carthage was soon a serious rival of the bishop of Rome, and their rivalry in Christian times curiously reminds us of the long past struggle between the two cities. Here in Africa in the days of Theodosius, Augustine, the greatest of the thinkers of the early Church, had arisen. Not at first a Christian, the young Augustine had been devoted to Greek philosophy and learning. At the same time he gave way to evil habits and uncontrolled self-indulgence. As he gained a vision of spiritual self-denial, his faithful Christian mother, Monica, followed him through all the tremendous struggle and distress of mind, from which he emerged at last into a triumphant conquest of his lower nature, and the devotion of his whole soul to Christianity. In a volume of " Confessions ” he told the story, which soon became the never-failing guide of the tempted in the Christian Church. Along with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it belongs among the most precious revelations of the inner life of a great man which we have inherited.
In the days after Alaric had plundered Rome, and earthly government seemed to totter, Augustine also wrote a great treatise which he called " The City of God,” meaning the government of God. Opposed to the governments of this world and superior to them, he pictured an invisible kingdom of God, to which all Christian believers belonged. But this invisible kingdom was after all hardly distinguished by Augustine from the visible organized Church with its bishops and priests. To the authority of this eternal kingdom—that is, to the authority .of the Church—all believers were urged by Augustine to submit without reservation. In the teaching of Augustine, therefore, the
1138. Early rise of influential men in the African Church: . Augustine
(354-
43O A.D.)
1139. Augustine’s "City of God,” and the power of Church and State over the beliefs of men
700
Ancient i imes
1140. Growing power of Church of Rome
1141. Rise of missionary monks and spread of regard for the Roman Church in the North
Church gained complete control over the beliefs of men. This was at the very, same time when the Edict of Theodosius was closing the temples of the old gods. The State was thus assuming the power to suppress all other beliefs, and henceforth it maintained its power over both the bodies and the minds of its subjects. In accordance with this idea Justinian had closed the university at Athens in order to stop freedom of thought and the teaching of the old philosophy (§ 1135). To the authority of the State over the beliefs of its people, Augustine added the authority of the Church. Thus ended all intellectual liberty in the ancient world.
Augustine, moreover, recognized the leadership of the Church at Rome, and thus added his influence to a tendency already long felt by all (§ 113 7). For it was widely believed that Christ had conferred great power in the Church upon the Apostle Peter. Although it was known that Paul had also worked in Rome, early tradition told how Peter had founded the Church at Rome and become bishop there. It was also widely held that Peter had transferred his authority to his successors as bishops at Rome. Tradition thus aided in establishing the supremacy of the bishop of Rome.
As increasing numbers of men withdrew from worldly occupations and gathered in communities, called monasteries, to lead holy lives or to help carry the Christian faith to the Northern barbarians, these beliefs regarding the Church of Rome went with them. Such monks, as they were called, taught the bar-, barians that the Church also had power over the life hereafter. Dreading frightful punishmeflts beyond the grave, the superstitious peoples of the North submitted readily to'such influences, and the Church gained enormous power over the barbarians. It was a power wielded more and more exclusively by the bishop of Rome.
When the power of the Roman Empire was no longer able to restrain the barbarians, the influence of the Church held them in check. The Church gradually softened and modified the fierce
The Triumph of the Barbarians 701
instincts of barbarian kings ruling over barbarian peoples. The barrier of Roman organization and of Roman legions which had protected Mediterranean, civilization had given way, but the Church, taking its place, made possible the transference of power from the Roman Empire to the barbarians in the West, without the complete destruction of our heritage of civilization bequeathed us by Greece and Rome.
Less than a generation after the death of Justinian, a gifted bishop of Rome named Gregory, commonly called Gregory the Great, showed himself a statesman of such wisdom and ability that he firmly established the leadership of the Roman Church. Italy, left defenseless by Justinian’s destruction of the East Gothic kingdom (§ 1133), was thereupon invaded by the Lombards (" Longbeards ”), the least civilized of all the German barbarians, who easily took possession of the Po valley. The Lombards were divided into small and rather weak communities. Thus the fallen Western Empire was not followed by a powerful and enduring nation in Italy, and this gave to the bishops of Reme the opportunity so well used by Gregory, to make themselves the leaders of Italy. It was this great Church ruler who also sent missionary monks to Britain, and thus established Christianity in England two centuries after the Roman legions had left it.
The influence of the Roman Church was likewise extended among the powerful Franks (§ 112 2), a group of German tribes on the lower Rhine. Their king, Clovis, accepted Christianity not long before 500 a.d. He succeeded in welding together the Frankish tribes, and the kingdom he left had been steadily growing for over a century before Gregory’s time. After Gregory’s death this Frankish kingdom included a large part o£ western Europe, embracing, besides western Germany, the countries which we now call Holland, Belgium, and France. By the middle of the sixth century the Frankis,h kings had fallen under the influence of a family of their own powerful household stewards called " Mayors of the Palace,” who at last
1142. Value of the influence of the Church over the barbarians
1143. Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome (590604 A.D.)
1144. Rise of the Franks and the “ Mayors of the Palace ”
702
Ancient Times
1145. Alliance of Charlemagne and the Pope; Charlemagne’s coronation by the Pope (800 A.D.)
1146. Church gains literary culture; preservation of Latin literature by the Church
1147. The
basilica church and its oriental ancestor
really held the ruling power, though in the name of the king. After 700 a.d. the Mayor of the Palace, who actually governed the great Frankish kingdom, was Charles Martel. He saved Europe from being overrun by the Moslems (732 a.d.) (see § 1154), and his descendants became the greatest kings of the Franks.
By combining with the bishop of Rome, whom we may now call the Pope, the new Frankish kings gained the dominion of western Europe. They assisted the Pope by subduing the unruly Lombards in Italy and conquered a large part of modern Germany, besides northern Spain. Charlemagne, the grandson of Charles Martel, ruled an empire consisting of* western Germany, France, Italy, and northern Spain. He was the most powerful European sovereign of his time, and in •800 a.d. he was crowned by the Pope at Rome as Roman emperor, theoretically supposed to succeed the line of emperors headed by Augustus. The emperor Charlemagne was an enlightened ruler who desired to do all that he could for the education and well-being of his people. The civilization which he tried to spread, although it was very limited, was what was left of old Roman life and organization, which had been preserved largely through the influence of the Church.
The Church had been founded in the beginning chiefly among the lowly and the ignorant (§ 1069). It had originally been without higher Greek civilization, learning, and art. Gradually it gained also these things, as men like Augustine arose. It is chiefly to the libraries of the monks in the monasteries, and to their practice of copying ancient literary works, that we owe the preservation of such Latin literature as has survived. To-day our oldest and most important copies of such things as Virgil s ^Eneid (§ 1004) are manuscripts written on parchment, preserved in the libraries of the Christian monks. .'
Art was slow to rise among early Christians, and for a thousand years or more there were no Christian painters or sculptors to be compared with those of Greece. On the other hand, the need for places of assembly led to the rise of great
Earliest clerestory Clerestory hall at Kar- Basilica hall on the island of Basilica of Julius Christian basilica hall, at Gizeh, Egypt nak, Egypt (1300 B.C.) Delos, built by the Greeks Csesar at Rome (first church (fourth cen-(twenty-ninth century (third century B.C..) century B.C.) tury a.d.)
B.C.)
Fig. 271. The Basilica Church and its Oriental Ancestors
i- r -
A central aisle'with roof windows (A) in the side walls, forming a clerestory and occupying the difference in level between the higher roof over the central aisle (nave) and the lower roof over the side aisles, with a resulting division of the building into three aisles — this arrangement is the chief characteristic of the basilica cathedral. We found the earliest hint of such an arrangement at the Pyramids of Gizeh (Fig. 55), shown in cross section above (7). Its clerestory windows {AA), built in the twenty-ninth century B.C., were mere light chutes. In the course of fifteen hundred years these light chutes were developed by the Egyptian architects into-tall stately clerestory windows, at Karnak {2, A A). In the Hellenistic Age the Greeks adopted the form and combined it with their sloping roofs, as shown here in a business hall excavated by the French on the island of Delos (j, A A). It was the Gre&ks who'gave this form of hall its name "basilica” (§ 732). In Rome it was in use in the second century B.C. in the Forum (Fig. 246, Z>), and we have put in the above series (4) the great Basilica of Julius Caesar (Fig. 246, £). Finally, these business basilica halls of the Greeks and Romans influenced the early Christian architects to adopt a similar form for their churches (5). We thus have an architectural development of some thirty-four hundred years leading from the early Orient, nearly 3000 B.C., to the Christian churches of the fourth century a.d.
1 2 3 4
Fig. 272. The Christian Church Spire and its Oriental Ancestry
5
The tower as an architectural form first appeared alongside the early Babylonian temples (probably not long after 3000 B.C.) (§ 152). It was adopted by the Assyrians (tailpiece, p. 170), and its earliest form in Assyria has been reconstructed by the German expedition at Assur, as shown above" (1). A very noticeable example of the continuation of the form still standing is the minaret of one of the old mosques of Cairo (2), built by Ibn Tulun in the ninth century a.d. Here it still retained the outside ascent winding about the square tower. Above the tower the top of the building was formed of round sections. This addition was in imitation of the ancient Pharos lighthouse tower of Alexandria (Fig. 213), in which the square tower was surmounted by a six-sided section, upon which was built a round section as the final top of the tower (3). This arrangement of three sections (square below, six-sided in the middle, and round at the top) was continued in many of the Moslem mosque towers (minarets), like the one above, iij the Nile Delta (4). The Moslem minarets themselves were greatly influenced by the early church towers in the East, especially in Syria. Many a church spire of Europe, with its six-sided section in the middle, the square section below, and the round above, show clearly their oriental origin, as in the example above (5), the spire of the church of St. John at Parma, Italy. Here again, as in the clerestory (Fig. 271), we have an architectural development from the Orient to the West, beginning nearly 3000 B.C. and covering from three to four thousand years
The Triumph of the Barbarians 705
architects among the early Christians. Influenced chiefly by the old business basilica, they devised noble and impressive assembly rooms for the early congregations in the days of Constantine. We still call such a church a basilica, to indicate its form. In the basilica churches we find the outcome of that long architectural development of thirty-five hundred years, from the earliest known clerestoiy at the Pyramids of Gizeh to the Christian cathedral (Fig. 271).
The church tower also, at first not a part of the church building, was a descendant of the old Babylonian temple tower (Fig. 272). Thus the faith of Jesus, an oriental teacher, was sheltered in beautiful buildings which likewise showed their oriental ancestiy. These Christian buildings, the church and its tower, like the faith they sheltered, are a striking example of how the world of later Europe reached back into that early Orient with which we began the story of civilization, when Europe was still in the Stone Age. And that ancient Orient, whose civilization thus survived in the life of Europe, was yet to rise once more, to dominate the Mediterranean as it had so often done before. To this final revival of the Orient we must now turn.
Section ioi. The Final Revival of the Orient and the Forerunners of the Nations of Modern Europe
Justinian, whose reign covered the middle years of the sixth century a.d., was, as we have already said, the last great ruler of the. Eastern Empire. His endeavors to reunite the Empire and to. adorn his capital both proved very disastrous. He spent the strength of his Empire in trying to regain the West, when he needed all his resources to defend himself against the New Persians, who assailed the eastern frontier in war after war. His great buildings, especially the magnificent church of Saint Sophia (headpiece, p. 688), required so much money that his
1148. The -church tower and its oriental ancestor
1149. The
decline of the Eastern Empire after Justinian
yo6
Ancient Times ,
1150. Invasion of the Slavs; Eastern Empire no longer Roman
1151. Mohammed (570-632 A.D.) and the founding of Islam
treasury was emptied and the government was bankrupt. From the mistakes of Justinian the Eastern Empire never recovered, and at his death it entered upon an age of steady decline.
Meantime a new invasion of barbarians was bringing in the Slavs, a non-German group of Indo-European peoples. They poured into the Balkan Peninsula to the gates of Constantinople and even down into Greece. They were soon holding the territory in these regions which they still occupy. Under these circumstances the Eastern Empire at Constantinople, although it was without interruption the direct descendant of the Roman Empire, was no longer Roman, any more than was the Empire of Charlemagne in the West. The Eastern Empire became what it was in population and civilization, a mixed Greek-Slavic-Oriental State.
Moreover, a vast section of the Eastern emperor’s dominions lay in the Orient. Of these eastern dominions a large part was now about to be invaded and seized by a great Semitic migration like those which we have repeatedly seen as the nomads of the Arabian desert were led by Sargon or the rulers of Ham-murapi’s line into Babylonia; or as the Hebrews swept in from the desert and seized the towns of Palestine (§§ 135, 166, 175, 293). The last and the greatest movement of the Semitic barbarians was now about to take place. Not long after the death of Justinian, there was born in Mecca (Fig. 273) in Arabia a remarkably gifted lad named Mohammed. As he grew up he believed, like so many Semitic teachers, that a commanding voice spoke within him- as he wandered in the wilderness. This voice within him brought him messages which he felt compelled to communicate to his people as teachings from God, whom he called Allah. After much persecution and great danger to his life, he gathered a group of faithful followers about him, and when he died, in 632 a. d., he had established a new religion among the Arabs, which he had called Islam, meaning " reconciliation”; that is, reconciliation to Allah, the sole God. The new believers he had called Muslims, or, as we spell it,
The Triumph of the Barbarians 707
Moslems, meaning "the reconciled.” By us they are often called Mohammedans, after their prophet. After Mohammed’s death the Moslem leaders gathered together his teachings, till
Fig. 273. A Bird’s-eye View of Mecca and its Mosque
Mecca is one of the few towns in the barren Arabian peninsula; for by far the great majority of the Arabs live as roving shepherds (§ 134) and not in towns. Mecca had been a sacred place long before the time of Mohammed, and the people had been accustomed to come there as pilgrims, to do homage to a sacred black stone called the Kaaba. Mohammed did not interfere with these customs. After his death the Moslems built a large court modeled on a colonnaded Greek market place (Fig. 212, M), around the Kaaba. Such a structure was the simplest form of a mosque. Over the Kaaba they erected a square shelter, which we see in the middle of the mosque court. To this place the Moslem believers still come in great numbers as pilgrims every year. Our sketch shows an exaggerated representation of the procession of pilgrims. In his later years Mohammed lived at Medina, over 200 miles north of Mecca, and the pilgrims also visit his tomb there
then unwritten, and copied them to form a book called the Koran (Fig. 274), now the Bible of the Moslems.
The Moslem leaders who inherited Mohammed’s power were called caliphs, a word meaning " substitute.” As rulers, they proved to be men of the greatest ability. They organized the untamed desert nomads, who now added a burning religious
1152. Rise of the oriental Empire of the Moslems
708
Ancient Times
1153. The
nomad Arabs learn city civilization along the Fertile Crescent
zeal to the wild courage of barbarian Arabs. This combination made the Arab armies of the caliphs irresistible. Within a few years after Mohammed’s death they took Egypt and Syria from
the feeble successors of Justinian at Constantinople. They thus reduced the Eastern Empire to little more than the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. At the same time the Arabs crushed the empire of the New Persians and brought the Sassanian line of kings to an end (640 A.D.), after it had lasted a little over four hundred years. Thus the Moslems built up a great oriental empire, with its center at the east end of the Fertile Crescent.
Just as the people of Sargon and Hammurapi took over the city
This writing has descended from the an- civilization which they cient alphabet of the Phoenicians (Fig. found along the lower 160), and, like the Phoenician writing, it
is still written and read from right to left. The Arab writers love to give it decorative flourishes, producing a handsome page. The rich, decorative border is a good example of Moslem art. The whole page was done by hand. In such hand-written books as these the educated Moslems wrote out translations of the hooks of the great Greek philosophers and scientists, like Aristotle ; for example, one of the most valuable of the books of Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer (§ 1059), we. now possess only in an Arabic translation. At the same time the Moslems wrote their own treatises on algebra, astronomy, grammar, and other sciences (§ 1155) in similar books to which the West owes ijiuch
Fig. 274. A Page of a Manuscript Copy of the Koran, the Bible of the Moslems
The Mohammedan Conquests at their Greatest Extent, about the Year 750 (indicated by
OBLIOUR SHAnTNTJ T lMRT?Ok"l7\r T TMTTC\
7io
Ancient limes
Euphrates (§ 167), so now of the desert took over the city
Fig. 275. Moorish Mosque Tower, or Minaret, in Spain
in the same region the Moslem Arafis civilization of the New Persians. With the ruins of Babylon looking down upon them, the Moslems built their splendid capital at Bagdad beside the New Persian royal residence of Ctesiphon (headpiece, p. 667). They built of course under the influence of the ancient structures of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Assyria. The Babylonian temple towers or Christian-church towers of similar character showed them the first models of the minarets (Fig. 272, 2) with which they adorned their mosques, as the Moslem houses of prayer are called. Here, as Sargon’s people and as the Persians had so long before done, the once wandering Arabs learned to read and write, and could thus put the Koran into writing. Here too they learned the business of government and became experienced rulers. Thus beside the shapeless mounds of the older
It was built, not long before 1200 a.d., out of the ruins of Roman and West Gothic buildings found here by the Moors, and blocks bearing Latin inscriptions are to be seen in a number of places in its walls. The Moors erected it as the minaret of their finest mosque at Seville, Spain. After extensive alterations at the top by Christian architects, it was converted into the bell tower of a Christian church. While the Christian-church towers in the Orient strongly influenced the Moslem minarets, we see how the reverse was the case in some buildings of the West where Moslem minarets became church spires
The Triumph of the Barbarians 711
capitals, Akkad, Babylon, and Ctesiphon, the power and civilization of the Orient rose into new life again for the last time.
Bagdad became the finest city of the East and one of the most splendid in the world. The caliphs extended their power eastward to the frontiers of India. Westward the Moslems pushed along the African coast of the Mediterranean, as their Phoenician kindred had done before, them (§ 397). It was the Moslem overthrow of Carthage and its bishop, which now relieved the bishop of Rome (the Pope) of his only dangerous rival in the West. Only two generations after the death of Mohammed the Arabs crossed over from Africa into Spain (71 'i a.d.). As they moved on into France they threatened to girdle the entire Mediterranean. At the battle of Tours (732 a.d.), however, just a hundred years after the death of Mohammed, the Moslems were unable to crush the Frankish army under Charles Martel (§ 1144). They withdrew permanently from France into Spain, where they established a western Moslem kingdom, which we call Moorish. The magnificent buildings which it left behind are the most splendid in Spain to-day (Fig. 275).
The Moorish kingdom developed a civilization far higher than that of the Franks, and indeed the highest in Europe of that age. Thus while Europe was sinking into the ignorance of the Middle Ages, the Moslems were the leading students of science, astronomy, mathematics, and grammar. There was soon much greater knowledge of these matters among the Moslems than in Christian Europe. Such Arabic words as algebra and our numerals, which we received from the Arabs, ' suggest to us how much we owe to them.
As we look out over this final world situation, we see lying in the middle the remnant of the Roman Empire ruled by , Constantinople, and holding little more than the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor; while on one side was the lost West, made up of the German kingdoms of the former Northern barbarians; and on the other side was the lost East, now part
“M. >-a-
lipns of Bagdad and the Moslem advance to the West; the battle of Tours (732 A.D.)
1155. Leadership of Moslem civilizatiqn
1156. Emergence of the forerunners * of the nations of modern Europe
712
Ancient Times
llgj. Surviving influences of Rome in later Europe
of the great oriental empire of the caliphs of Bagdad. Looking at Europe without the East, we discover that there was at its western end a Moslem, oriental kingdom (the Moors), while at its eastern end there was a Christian oriental state (Constantinople). Between these lay chiefly the German Empire of Charlemagne, with vast masses of Slavs on the east of it, and detached German peoples in the outlying island of Britain. Out of these fragments of the Roman Empire and the newly formed nations of the North, the nations of modern Europe came forth. In France, and the two southern peninsulas of Spain and Italy, Latin speech survived among the people, to become French, Spanish, and Italian. While in the island of Britain the Gerfnan language spoken by the invading Angles and Saxons (§ 1129), mingled with much Latin and French to form our own English speech, written with Roman letters inherited from Greece, Phoenicia, and Egypt (Fig. 160).
Thus Rome left her stamp on the peoples of Europe, still evident, not only in the languages they use, but also in many other important matters of life, and especially in law and government. In Roman law, still a power in modern government, we have the great creation of Roman genius, which has more profoundly affected the later world than any other Roman institution. Another great achievement of Rome was the universal spread of that international civilization brought forth by Greece under contact with the Orient. Rome gave to that civilization the far-reaching organization which under the Greeks it had lacked. That organization, though completely transformed into oriental despotism, endured for five centuries and long withstood the barbarian invasions from the North, which would otherwise have overwhelmed the disorganized Greek world long before. The Roman State was the last bulwark of civilization intrenched on the Mediterranean against the Indo-European barbarians. But the bulwark, though shaken, did not fall because of hostile assaults from without. It fell because of decay within.
The Triumph of the Barbarians
713
Nor did it fall everywhere. For, as we have seen, a fragment of the vast Empire still survived in the East. The emperors ruling at Constantinople traced their predecessors back in an unbroken line to Augustus, and they ruled as his successors. Founded on the site of an. ancient Greek city, lying in the midst of the Greek East, Constantinople had always been Greek in both language and civilization. But at the same time, as we have seen, it was largely oriental also. Notwithstanding this, it never wholly lost the tradition of old Greek culture. Learning, even though of a mechanical type, never died out there, as it did so completely in the West; nor did art ever fall so low. As Rome declined, Constantinople became the greatest and most splendid city of Europe, exciting the admiration and surprise of all visitors from the less civilized West. Thus the last surviving fragment of the Empire, which by right of succession might still continue to call itself Roman, lived on for a thousand years after the Germans had completely conquered the West Nor did the Germans ever gain Constantinople, but in 1453 this last remnant of the Roman Empire fell into the hands of the Turks, who have held it ever since.
Section 102. Retrospect
Besides the .internal decay of Rome and the triumph of the Christian Church, the other great outstanding feature of the last centuries of the Roman Empire was the incoming of the barbarians, with the result that while Mediterranean civilization • steadily declined, it nevertheless slowly spread northward, especially under the influence of the Church, till it transformed the ruder life of the North. At this point then we have returned to the region of western and northern Europe, where we first took up the career of man, and there, among the crumbling monuments of the Stone Age, Christian churches now began to rise. Books and civilized government, once found only along the Mediterranean, reached the northern shores of Europe, where
1158. Survival of a fragment of the Empire at Constantinople, and its fall in 1453 A.D,
1159. From the fist-hatchet to the Christian civilization of northern Europe in fifty thousand years
714
Ancient limes
1160. The
long struggle of civilization and barbarism
grass and great forest trees were growing over the shell heaps of the Stone Age Norsemen (Fig. 13). What a vast sweep of the human career rises before our imagination as we picture the first church spires among the massive tombs of Stone Age man (Fig. 20)!
We have watched the men of Europe struggling upward through thousands of years of Stone Age barbarism, while * toward the end of that struggle, civilization was arising in the Orient. Then on the borders of the Orient we saw the Stone Age Europeans of the ALge&n receiving civilization from the Nile and thus developing a wonderful civilized world of their own. This remarkable JEgean civilization, the earliest in Europe, was overwhelmed and destroyed by the incoming of those Indo-European barbarians whom we call the Greeks (§ 380). Writing, art, architecture, and shipbuilding, which had arisen on the borders of southeastern Europe, passed away, and civilization in Europe perished at the hands of the Greek nomads from the Danube. Civilization would have been lost entirely, had not the Orient, where it was born, now preserved it. Southeastern Europe, controlled by the Greeks, was therefore able to make another start, and from the Orient it again received writing, art, architecture, shipbuilding, and many other things which make up civilization. After having thus halted civilization in Europe for over a thousand years, the Greeks left behind their early barbarism (cf. Fig. 155), and, developing a noble and beautiful culture of their own, they carried civilization to the highest level it ever attained. Then, as the Indo-European barbarians from the North again descended to the Mediterranean (Section 99), Roman organization prevented civilization from being destroyed for the second time. Thus enough of the civilization which the Orient and the Greeks had built up was preserved, so that after long delay it rose again in Europe to become what we find it to-day. Such has been the long struggle of civilization and barbarism which we have been following.
The Triumph of the Barbarians 715
To-day, marking the various stages of that long career, the 1161. The stone fist-hatchets lie deep in the river gravels of France; the we’hlrefoi-fumiture of the pile-villages sleeps at the bottom of the Swiss lowed t0 re‘
. . cover ancient
lakes; the majestic pyramids and temples announcing the dawn history of civilization rise along the Nile; the silent and deserted city-mounds by the Tigris and Euphrates shelter their myriads of clay tablets; the palaces of Crete look out toward the sea they once ruled; the noble temples and sculptures of Greece still ' proclaim the new world of beauty and freedom first revealed by the Greeks; the splendid Roman roads and aqueducts assert the supremacy and organized control of Rome; and the Christian churches' proclaim the new ideal of human brotherhood. These things still reveal the fascinating trail along which our ancestors came, and in following that trail we have recovered the earliest chapters in the wonderful human story which we call Ancient History.
QUESTIONS
Section 99. Describe the German peoples at home; in migration and war. Describe the incoming of the West Goths and the results. What chief movements of the barbarians took place after the death of Theodosius? What was the effect upon the Western Empire? Describe the two great barbarian invasions of Italy in the middle of the fifth century A.D. and the end of the line of emperors at Rome, Describe Justinian’s Digest. What had happened*to the old religions? What did Justinian do about Greek philosophy? Describe the division of the Church.
Section 100. Tell about Augustine and his writings. Describe the growing power of the Church at Rome. Sketch the story of the Franks and their alliance with the bishop of Rome. What elements of culture had the church now gained ? What forms did early church architecture have, and whence did they come ?
Section ioi. Tell the story of Mohammed. What did his successors accomplish in civilization ? in conquest ? Describe briefly the world situation which resulted. How long did the Roman Empire last? What influences did it leave behind?
716
Ancient Times
Section 102. Where did mankind first gain civilization? Where did civilization first arise in Europe? What happened when the Greeks came in? Where was civilization then preserved? Who carried it to its highest level ? By whom was it almost destroyed for the second time ? What organization saved it for the second time ?
Note. The scene below shows us the condition of Europe at least fifty thousand years ago, in the Early Stone Age (§§6-12), when man began the long upward climb which carried him through all the ages of developing and declining civili2ation which we have been following.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
It is not the aim of this bibliography to mention all of ev§n the important books in various languages that relate to the periods in question. The writer is well aware that teachers are busy people, and that high-school libraries and local public libraries usually furnish at best only a few historical works. It is therefore most important that those books should be given prominence in this list which the teacher has some chance of procuring and finding the time to use. It not infrequently happens that the best account of a particular period or topic is in a foreign language or in a rare publication, such as a doctor’s dissertation, which could only be found in one of our largest libraries. All such titles, however valuable, are omitted from this list. They can be found mentioned in all the more scholarly works in the various fields.
A small high-school library on the ancient world, of moderate cost, including a standard book or two on each main period or topic, has been indicated in the following list by a dagger (t) before each title. From these a selection can be made. The price will average not more than $i .50 per volume. Preference is sometimes indicated by double dagger (ft).
All books with a star (*) are suited chiefly for the teacher and are rather advanced for the high-school student. Where a book is referred to often, the star or dagger usually appears only with the first mention.
, CHAPTER I
*Sollas, Ancient Hunters. fTYLOR, Primitive Culture. IHoernes,
Primitive Man. tMYRES, The Dawn of History, chaps, i-ii, vii-xi. An excellent little book in which only the traditional Babylonian chronology needs revision. *Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Prehistoric Times. *Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age. A very valuable and sumptuously illustrated presentation of Early Stone Age life.
CHAPTERS II AND III '
Breasted, History of Egypt, tBreasted, History of the Ancient A. Histories Egyptians. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chaps, ii-iv, vi-viii.
717
7i8
B. Art and archaeology
C. Mythology and religion
D. Social life
E. Excavation and discovery
F. Original sources in English
G. The monuments as they are today
A. Histories
B. Art and archaeology
C. Mythology and religion
D. Social life
IMaspero, Art in Egypt. A useful little manual in Ars una — species mille. (Hachette & Cie, and Scribner’s, New York.) *Maspero, Manual of Egyptian Archeology, (Last edition, I9I4* Putnam’s.) fHEDWiG Fechheimer, Die Plastik der Aegypter (156 beautiful plates showing the finest examples of Egyptian sculpture. The best series to be had, and very low priced).
* Breasted, The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt. ,
fERMAN, Life in Ancient Egypt.
IEdwards, Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers. *Petrie, Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt. Weigall, Treastiry of the ATile. Two quarterly journals begun in 1914, called Ancient Egypt (edited by Petrie ; $2,00 a year; subscriptions taken by Dr. W. C. Winslow, 525 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.) and fourfial of Egyptian Archceology (published by the Egypt Exploration Fund). Both report discoveries in Egypt as fast as made.
^Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vols. I~V. tPetrie, Egyptian Tales. IMaspero, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt (translated from the French by Mrs. C. H. W. Johns).
The Underwood & Underwood series of Egyptian views, edited by tBreasted, Egypt through the Stereoscope: u fourney through the Land of the Pharaohs (100 views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See remarks above, p. viii. f(Selected views, with explanations printed on the backs, may be secured at moderate cost. The most useful fifteen on Egypt are Nos. 17, 27, 29, 30, 31, 42, 48, 52, 57, 60, 62, 69, 82, 89, 97.)
CHAPTER IV
*King, History of Sumer and A Mad and * History of Babylonia. t Good speed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Recent discoveries have greatly altered the chronology. fC. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia {Cambridge Manuals). *Hall, The Ancient History of the Arear East, chaps, v, x, xii. *Olmstead, Sargon of Assyria. *Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria.
There is no handbook corresponding to Maspero’s Art in Egypt. *Handcock, Mesopotamian Archceology. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East. *Jastrow, Civilization of the Babylonians and Assyrians.
*Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia ynd Assyria. See also his Civilization.
ISayce, Babylonian and Assyrian Life and Customs. *JastroWj Civilization.
Bibliography
719
*Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Vol. I. There is no journal reporting discoveries in Babylonia and Assyria (like Ancient Egypt above), but see the new journal of the American Archaeological Institute, called Art and Archeology ($2.00 a year; subscriptions taken by The Macmillan Company, 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York), which reports discovery in the whole field of ancient man.
*R. F. Harper (Ed.), Assyrian and Babylonian Literature. IBots-FORD, A Source Book of Ancient History, chap. iii. *Sayce (Ed.), Records of the Past (First Series, 12 vols.; Second Series, 6 vols.). fC. H. W. Johns, Oldest Code of Laws in the World (Laws of Hammurapi). ♦King, Letters of Hammurapi.
The buildings surviving in Babylonia and Assyria are in a very ruinous state. Photographs are now available in the excellent series by Underwood & Underwood on Mesopotamia.
CHAPTER V
tG00DSPEED, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians.- fC. H. W. Johns, Ancient Assyria (Cambridge Manuals). *King, Histojy of Babylonia. *Hall, Ancient History of the Near East. *Olmstead, Sargon of Assyria. * Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria.
There is no handbook of Assyrian art. The Patterson-Kleinmann series of photographs contains the most important Assyrian sculptures. See also *Jastrow, Civilization.
On religion, social life, excavation and discovery, and original sources, see the books mentioned under Chapter IV, above.
CHAPTER VI
There is no good modem history of Persia in English based on the sources, but see especially : t Benjamin, Story of Persia (Story of the Nations Series). Meyer, " Persia,” in Encyclopedia Britannica. Kaw-linson, Five Great Monarchies: Persia. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. xii.
'*Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art: Persia. Rawlinson, Monarchies.
Meyer, " Persia,” in Encyclopedia Britannica. Rawlinson, Monarchies.
*Jac:$son, Zoroaster. Rawlinson, Monarchies.
tjACKSON, Persia, Past and Present. This valuable book is the best introduction to the subject of Persia as a whole, and cojitains much information on all the above subjects. tMiCHAELis, A Century of Archeological Discovery.
E. Excava
tion and
discovery
F. Original sources in English
G. The monuments as they are to-day
A. Histories
B. Art an& archaeology
A. Histories
B. Art and archaeology
C. Mythology and religion
D. Social life
E. Exploration £id discovery
7 20
X J. fi't' fi^t' j- err*i
/*’. Original sources in English
Mythology and religion
C. Excavation and discovery
D. Social life
E. Original sources in English
F. Palestine, its people and monuments as they are to-day
A. Histories
fToLMAN, The Behistan Inscription of King Darius. The Persian monuments are not numerous, and this inscription of Behistun is the most important. A considerable part of it will be found quoted in Botsford, A Source Book of Ancient History, pp. 57—59* Avesta will be found in the series called Sacred Books of the East.
CHAPTER VII
*George Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. The most valuable of the many books on Palestine, but a little advanced for high-school pupils. *Henry Preserved Smith, Old Testament History. *Cornill, History of the People of Israel, f Kent, History of the Hebrew People, f Kent, History of the Jewish People. *Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. ix. +Macalister, A History of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals).
*Budde, The Religion of Israel to the Exile. *Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile, f J. M. Powis Smith, The Prophet and his Problems (Scribner’s).
Hilprecht, Recent Research in Bible Lands, f Macalister, A History of Civilization in Palestine (Cambridge Manuals). Current reports •Will be found in Journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and in Art and Archeology (see above).
Day, Social Life of the Hebrews.
The Old Testament in the Revised Version, tMoore, The Literature of the Old Testament. *Cornill, Introduction to the Cationical Books of the Old Testament. *Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament. t Botsford, A Source Book of Ancient History, chap. iv.
The Underwood & Underwood stereoscopic photographs (edited by Hurlbut), Traveling in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope (ioo views with guidebook and maps). t(A selection of the best ten would include Nos, 8, 9, 18, 25, 39, 40, 41, 47, 61, 71.) Smith, George Adam, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Paton, Guide to Jerusalem.
CHAPTER VIII '
f Botsford, Hellenic History, chap. i. IWestermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 43—5°, IGoodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 65-71. tfMYRES, Dawn of History, chap. viii. !Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece,, chap. i. tBury, History of Greece (second e’dition), pp. 1-43. tfREiNACH, Stojy of Art, pp. 26—32* ttHawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece. !Baikie, Sea Kings of Crete. IZimmern, Greek Commonwealth, Pt. I (second edition).
Bibliography
721
The surviving documents are here almost wholly archaeological, but a few selections bearing 011 this chapter are to be found in Botsford and Sihler’s Hellenic Civilization, chap. ii.
CHAPTER IX
BOTSFORD, Hellenic History, chap. ii. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. vii. Goodspeed, Ancient Worldpp. 65—77. Myres, Dawn, chap. ix. Kimball-Bury, “Students’ Greece, chap. ii. Bury, Greece, chap. i. *Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, pp. 31-72. Hawes, Crete. Baikie, Sea Kings. *Mosso, Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization.
See note under preceding chapter, also tBotsford, Source Book of Ancient History, chap. vii.
CHAPTER X
Botsford, Hellenic History, chap. iii. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. viii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 83-87, 91-99. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, chap. ii. Bury, Greece, chap. i. IGreenidge, Greek Constitutional History, chap. ii. ttCapps, Homer to Theocritus,^. 14-138. f Keller, Homeric Life. ^Seymour, Homeric Age. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth.
ft Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic Civilization, chap. ii. Botsford, Source Book of Ancient History, chaps, viii-ix. IThallon, Readings in Greek History, chap. i. Selections from the Iliad and Odyssey.
CHAPTER XI
Botsford, Hellenic History, chap. iv. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. ix. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 79-82, 87-92, ioo~ ior. Kimball-Bury, Students9 Greece, chap. iii. Bury, Greece, chap. ii. t Allcroft, History of Sicily, chaps, i—ii. Greenidge, Greek Constitutional History, chaps, ii—iii. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, pp. 129-140. Keller, Colonization, pp. 26-50. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth.
Botsford and Sihler, Hellenic-Civilization, chap. iii. Botsford, Source Book, chap. xi. Herodotus (R awlinson), IV, 150—159. Hesiod and Tkeognis (Collins). Hesiod (Mair). Thallon, Readings, chaps, ii-iv.
CHAPTER XII *
Botsford, Hellenic History, chaps, vi-ix. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. x. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 101-108, 115— 125. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, pp. 79-89, and chaps, v-vi.
B. Sources
and source
selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selection
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
722
Ancient 1 imes
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
Greentdge, Greek Constitutional History, pp. 135-187. Bury, Greece, pp. 144-162 and chaps, iv—v. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, vi-vii. ftBenn, Ancient Philosophy, chaps, i-ii. Reinach, Story of Art, pp. 33-41. IMahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chaps, iv-v. Zim-mern, Greek Commonwealth.
Botsford and Sihler, chap. iv. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, x, xii-xiv. \Aristotle's Constitution of Athens (KENYON or PoSTE), chaps, i-xxii. \Plutarch's Lives of Theseus and Solon, tHerodotus, I, 29-33, 59~64; III, 39-46, 120-125. Thallon, Readings, chaps, iv and vi.
CHAPTER XIII
Botsford, Hellenic Histoiy, chaps, x-xi. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap. xii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 126-144. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, chaps, vii-viii. Allcroft, History of Sicily, chaps, iiiff. Burv, Greece, chaps, vi-vii. Hall, Near East, chap. xii. fHogarth, Ancient East, pp. 120-186. *Abbott, Pericles, chap. iii. *Grundy, Great Persian War.
Botsford and Sihler, pp. 162-172. IFling, Source Book of Greek History, chap. v. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xv-xvi. Herodotus, Bks. VI-IX, especially VII, 140-233'. Plutarcji's Lives of Aristides, Themistocles, Pausanias. \Alschylus’ Persians, especially lines 355-520. Thallon, Readings, chaps, vii-viii.
CHAPTER XIV
Botsford, Hellenic Histoiy. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xi and xiii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 109-115, 144-155, 168-173. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, pp. 64-74 and chaps, ix-x. Bury, Greece, pp. 120-143 and chap. viii. ISeignobos, Ancient Civilization, chap, xi. Greenidge, Gre^k Constitutional History', pp. 78-120, 189207. t Grant, Greece in the Age of Pericles, chaps, v-vii. * Abbott, Pericles, chaps, iv-viii. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth.
Botsford and Sihler, chaps, vi-vii. Botsford, Source Book, chap.
xvii. Plutarch's Lives of Aristides, Cimon, Lvcurgus. Xenophon's State of the Lacedcemonians. Aristotle's Athenian Constitution, chaps, xxiii— xxvii. t Thucydides (Jowett), I, 98-103, 127-139. Thallon, Readings,. chaps, v and ix.
• CHAPTER XV
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xiv-xv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, 156-169. Kimball-Burv, Students' Greece, chap. xi. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, chap. xiv.
Bibliography
723
Bury, Greece, chap. ix. Grant, Age of Pericles, chaps, vii-x, xii. Benn, Ancient Philosophy, chap. iii. IITarbell, Histoiy of Greek Art, chaps, iii, vii, and viii. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, viii-xii. f Monroe, History of Education, pp. 28-59. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chaps, vi ff. Abbott, Pericles, chaps/ xvi-xviii. Zimmern, Greek Com monwealth.
Botsford and Sihler, chaps, viii-xi. Botsford, Source Book, chap.
xviii. Plutarch's Pericles. Thallon, Readings, chap. ix.
CHAPTER XVI
Botsford, Hellenic Histo7y. Westermann, Ancient Actions, chap.
xvi. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 174-199. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, chaps, xii and xiv. Bury, Greece, chaps. A-xi. Allcroft, Sicily. Grant, Age of Pericles, chap. xi. Abbott, Pericles, chaps, xiv-xv. *Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. II. *WhiBley, Political Parties in Athens. Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth.
Botsford and Sihler, chap. vi. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xix-xx. Fling, Source Book, chap. vii. Plutarch's Lives of Alcibiades, Nicias, Lysander. Thucydides (Jowett), Selections. Thallon, Readings, chaps, x-xii.
CHAPTER XVII
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chap.
xvii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 200-215. Kimball-Bury, Students' Greece, chaps, xv-xvii. Allcroft, History of Greece, 4.04-362 b.c. Bury, Greece, chaps, xii-xiv. Allcroft, Sicily. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, pp. 330-338. t San key, Spa; tan and Theban Supremacies.
BOTSFORD, Source Book, chaps, xxii-xxiii. tXenophon's Anabasis, IV, 7 ff.; Agesilaos (Dakyns). Nepos' Epaminondas. Plutarch's Lives of Pelopidas and Timoleon. Thallon, Readings, chaps, xiii-xiv.
CHAPTER XVIII
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancie?it Nations, pp. i93~I98. -Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 184-189, 215-220. Bury, Greece (see Index). Allcroft, History of Greece, 404-362 b.c., chap. xi. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chaps, xv-xvii. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chaps, vi ff. Benn, Ancient Philosophy, chaps, iv-vi. Reinach, Story of Art, pp. 50-58, 66-74. Monroe, History of Education, pp. 59-72. Tarbell, Greek AH, chap. ix. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. III. ITaylor, Plato. *Mauthner, Aristotle.
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
724
Ancient Times
B. Sources
and source
selections
A. Histories
B, Sources' and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
Botsford and Sihler, chaps, xii-xv. Fling, Source Book, chap. viii. THALLON, Readings, pp. 513-516, 532-558. Xenophon's Economics (Dakyns). Plato's Apology. Selections from Euripides in tApPLETON, Greek Poets, and in tGoLDWlN Smith, Specimens of Greek Tragedy. Aristophanes' Achamians and Birds (Frere in-Everyman’s).
CHAPTER XIX -
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 187-193 and chap. xix. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 220-247. Kimbaix-Bury, Students' Greece, chaps, xviii-xx. Allcroft, History of Greece, 362-323 B.C. Bury, Greece, chaps, xvi-xviii. tHOGARTH, Ancient East, pp. 186-217. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lect. IV. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chap. xiv. tCuRTEls, Macedonian Empire. tWheeler, Alexander.
Botsford and Sihler, chap. xvi, passim. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xxiv-xxv. Plutarch's Lives of Demosthenes, Phocion, Alexander. \Arrian's Anabasis (selections). Justin, History, Bk. IX (Bohn). Demosthenes' Crown and Third Philippic. THALLON, Readings, chap. xv. Davis, Readings, I, chap. ix.
CHAPTER XX
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient 'Nations, chap. xx. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 248-256, 258-269. *Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chap. xv. Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, Lects. V-VII. tSHUCKBURGH, Greek History, pp. 235-310. Greenidge, Greek Constitutional History, chap. vii. Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History, chap. ix. t Mahaffy, Progress of Hellenism, Lects. II-IV. *Greek Life and Thought, chaps, iii-v, xvi.
JUSTIN, History, Bk.IX. Phitarch'sLives of Aratus, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Agis, Cleomenes, Eumenes. FLING, Source Book, chap. xiii. tPolybius' Histories. Shuckeurgh, Selections, especially on the Achaean League.
CHAPTER XXI
Botsford, Hellenic History. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxi-xxii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 256-262, 265-267. Hogarth, Ancient East, pp. 218-251. Mahaffy, Alexander's Empire, chaps, xiv, xx, and xxiii; Progress of Hellenism, Lect. V; Greek Life and Thought, chaps, i-ii, vi-xv. Monroe, History of Edttcation, pp. 73-78. tTucKER, Life in Ancient Athens, chap. ix. Tarbell, Greek Art, chap. jl. Capps, Homer to Theocritus, chap. xviij,
Bib liography 725
Botsford- and Sihler, chaps, xvi-xix. Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xxvi-xxvii. tDAYls, Readings, I, chap. x.
CHAPTER XXII
Botsford, History of Rome, chaps, i-iv. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxiii-xxv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 276-3255 33I-342' tBryant, Short History of Ro?ne, chaps, i-vii. tFowLER, Rome, pp. 7-54. tfMyres, Dawn, chap. x. Mosso, Dawn of Civilization, chaps, xxi-xxii, xxiv-xxv. Jones, Companion to Roman History, pp. 1-12. t Heitland, Short History of the Roman Republic, pp. 1-82. tHow and Leigh, Histoiy of Rome, pp. 1-131. f Pelham, - Outlines, pp. 45-67. ttABBOTT, Roman Political Institutions, chap. iv. ICarter, Religion of Numa. *FRANK, Roman Imperialism.
Botsford, Story of Rome, chaps, i-iv; Sotirce Book, chaps, xxix-xxxi. Munro, Source Book, chaps, i, ii, iv, and v. Plutarch's Lives of Romulus, Numa, Pyrrhus, Camillus. Davis, Sotirce Readings, II, pp. 1-40.
CHAPTER XXIII
Botsford, History of Rome, chap. v. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 275-276, 279-284. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 326-331, 343346. Bryant, Short History, pp. 67-74. Fowler, Rome, pp. 55-83. Heitland, Short Histoiy, pp. 82-97. tLiddell, Student’’s Rome, pp. 218229. *Greenidge, Roman Public Life, chap. vii. How and Leigh, Rome, pp. 131-148. tSmith, Carthage and the Carthaginians. Frank, Roman Imperialism.
Botsford, Story of Rome, pp. 101-104; Source Book, chap. xxxii. Munro, Source Book, chap. iii. Dayis, Source Readings, II, pp. 41-50.
CHAPTER XXIV
Botsford, History of Rome, chap. v. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxvi-xxvii. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 346-354. Fowler, Rome, pp. 84-110. Bryant, Short History, pp. 73-79 and chaps, ix-xi. How and Leigh, pp. 169-244. Liddell, Rome, pp. 256-320. *Havell, Republican Rome, pp. 156-274. Heitland, Short Histoiy, pp. 98-145. ^Morris, Hannibal. Frank, Roman Imperialism.
Botsford, Story of Rome, pp. 104-124; Source Book, chap. xxxiii. Munro, Source Book, chap. vi. Davis, Source Readings, II, chap. iii. Polybius, I, 56-63 ; III, 49-56. tLivy, xxi, 32-38. Plutarch's Lives of Fabius and Marcellas,
B. Sources
and source
selections
A, Histories
B. .Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources „ and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
726
Ancietit Times
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. Histories
CHAPTER XXV
Botsford, History of Rome, pp. 116—150* WESTERMANN, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxix-xl. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 354-363, 365-392. Bryant, History, chaps, xii-xiv. Fowler, Atou,
pp. 110-135. IMasom, Rome, 133-78 b.c., chap. i. t Allcroft and Masom, Rome, 202—133 b. c., chaps, x—xiv. t Davis, Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, chap. ii. Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, chap. v. Green idge, Roman Ptiblic Life, chap. viii; Roman History, Vol. I, chap. i. *Duff, Literary History of Rome, pp. 92-117. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 149-198. Heitland, History, pp. 146-248. tAbbott, Society and Politics in Ancient Rome, pp. 22-40.
Botsford, xSfc/7 of Rome, pp. 125-126 and chap. vi; .Store* chaps, xxxiv—xxxv. Davis, Source Readings, XI, pp. 85-104. Munro, Source Book, chaps, vii and xii. Livy, xxxiv, 1-8 ; xlv, 10-12. Plutarch's Lives of Cato the Censor* Flaminius, ^Emilius Paulus.
CHAPTER XXVI
Botsford, Histoiy of Rome, chaps, vii-viii. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xxxi-xxxiv and pp. 379-382. G00DSPEED, Ancient World, pp. 392-428. Bryant, Short History, chaps, xv-xxvi. Fowler, Rome, pp. 136-186. Heitland, History, pp. 249-512. tAbbott, Common People of Ancient Rome, pp. 235—286. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 201-258, 398-469. Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, chaps, vi-vii. How and Leigh, Rome, pp. 331-551. tPreston and Dodge, Private Life of the Romans, chap. v. tAllcroft, Rome, 78-31 b.c. Frank, Roman Imperialism. * Jones, Companion to Roman History.
Botsford. Story of Rome, chaps, vii-viii; Source Book, chaps, xxxvi-xxxvii. Munro, Source Book, pp. 180-185 and chap. viii. Davis, Source Readings, II, pp. 105-162. Plutarch's Lives of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Marius, Sulla, Crass us, Pompey, Cicero, Ccesar, Sertorius. t Casar*s Gallic War, I, 42-47. Sallust's fugurthine I Far (Bohn).
CHAPTER XXVII
Botsford, History of Rome, pp. 204-232. Westermann, Ancient Nations, pp. 382-403. Fowler, Rome, pp. 187-211. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 428-451. *Jones, Roman Empire, chaps, i-iii. fBURY, Student's Roman Empire, chaps, i-xii. Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, chap. xii. Davis, Influence of Wealth, chap. vii. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 357-509. *Firth, Augustus. tFowler, History of Roman
Bibliography
727
Literature, Bk. II. UMackail, Roman Literature, Bk. II, chaps, i-v.
^Tucker, Life in the Roman World, chap. v.
Botsford, Story of Rome, chaps, ix-x; Source Book, chaps, xxxviii- B. Sources sxxix. Munro, Source Book, chaps, ix and xi. Davis, Source Readings, and s?urce 5p. 163-196. ILaing, Masterpieces of Latin Literature (selections)! SeleCt'°nS \The Deeds of Augustus (Fairley’s translation in the Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints), Vol. V, No. 1. Suetonius' Lives of the Ccesars (selections), tTacitus' Annals, XV, 38-45, 60-65.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Botsford, History of Rome, pp. 232-266. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories Nations, pp. 403-435. Fowler, Rome, pp. 211-251. Goodspeed, Anient World, pp. 451-482. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 509-541. Reinach,
Story of Art, pp. 75-83. t Pellison, Roman Life in Pliny's Time, chap. ix.
(Mau and Kelsey, Pompeii, chaps, vii-viii, xii-xxii, xlvi-xlviii, lvi-lix.
Tucker, Roman Life, chaps, i-iii, xix-xxi. Greenidge, Roman Public Life, chap. xi. *Hardy, Studies in Roman History, Series I, chaps, i-v.
[ones, Roman Empire, chaps, iv-vi. Davis, Influence of Wealth, chaps, ii-vi. Bury, Students' Roman Empire.t*Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (an epoch-making work).
Botsford, Story of Rome, chap. xi; Source Book, chap. xl. Davis, B. Sources Source Readings, II, pp. 196-287. Munro, Source Book, pp. 162-171, 176- setectionT [79. Letters of Pliny (Firth). New Testament, The Acts.
CHAPTER XXIX '
Botsford, History of Rome, chap. xii. Westermann, Ancient A. Histories Nations, chaps, xl—xli. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 483-501. Jones,
Roman Empire, chaps, vii-xi. Oman, Byzantine Empire, chap. ii.
Vbbott, Roman Political Institutions, chap. xvi. *Wright, Palmyra md Zenobia, chaps, xi-xv. Seignobos, Ancient Civilization, pp. 332146. Davis, Outline History, pp. 130-183. Pelham, Outlines, pp.
77-586. tCuTTS, St. ferome. Jones, Companion to Roman History.
Cotterill, Medieval Italy, pp. 21-54. Davis, Influence of Wealth, hap. viii. *UHLHORN, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, p. 420-479.
Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xli-xliii, xiv. Davis, Source Readings, B. Sources I, pp. 287-389. Munro, Source Book, pp. 171-174. tROBINSpN, Read- ggigCSt°™ge tgs in European History, Vol. I, pp. 14-27. The Notitia Dignitatum Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints).
728
Ancient Times
A. Histories
B. Sources and source selections
A. General and political histories
B. Constitutional and institutional history
C. Life and society
CHAPTER XXX
Botsford, History of Rome, chaps, xiii-xiv. Westermann, Ancient Nations, chaps, xlii-xlv. Goodspeed, Ancient World, pp. 502-521. fOMAX, Byzantine Empire, chaps, iii, vi, ix, xi-xii. Cotterill, Medieval Italy, pp. 55-116, 159-185, 194, 205, 251-283. f Hodgkin, Dynasty of Theodosius, pp. 55-72, 134-203. fH. W. C. Davis, Medieval Europe, chap. i. Reinach, Story of AH, pp. 84-91. Jones, Roman Empire, pp. 410-446. *Hutton, Church and the Barbarians, chaps, iv-x. *Emerton, Introduction to the Middle Ages. *Morey, Outlines of Roman Law.
Botsford, Source Book, chaps, xliv-xlvi. Davis, Source Readings, II, chaps, x-xi. tRoBlNSON, Readings in European History, Vol. I, pp. 19-27, 97-100 and chaps, iii-vi. Tacitus’ Germania. Ccesat's Gallic Wat', VI, pp. 21-28. tEugippus' Life of St. Severinus (Robinson). Jordanes’> Gothic History (Mierow). English Correspondence of St. Boniface (Kylie).
ADDITIONAL WORKS OF REFERENCE ON THE GREEK AND HELLENISTIC AGE, TOPICALLY ARRANGED
The histories of Greece by Grote, Curtius, Holm, Abbott. IFree-
man, Story of Sicily; * History of Federal Government. *Deniker, Races of Man. * Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens. *Bevan, House of Seleucus, *Ra\vlinson, Bactria. *Hogarth, Philipp and Alexander. *Dodge, Alexander. *Grundy, Thucydides and the History of his Age. *Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas. fTlLLYARD, Agathocles. *Mahaffy, Silver Age of the Greek World.
^Gilbert, Greek Co?istilutional Antiquities. *Phillipson, Interna• tional Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome. fCALHOUN, Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation. *Tod, International Arbitration amongst the Greeks. *Whibley, Greek Oligarchies, tHammond, Political Institutions of the Ancient Greeks.
1 IGulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks. *Guhl and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romans. \Gardner, Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. tBLUEMNER, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks, fDavis, A Day in Ancient Athens. *Davidson , Education of the Greek People. *Mahaffy, What have the Greeks done for Modem Civilization ? *Ball, Shoft Histojy of Mathematics. *Jones> Greek Morality. *Ward, The Ancient Lowly. tDoNALDsoN, Woman; her Position and Influence in Greece and Rome. *A bra hams, Greek Dress.
Bibliography
7 29
*Farnell, Higher Aspects of Greek Religion. *Murray, Four Stages in Greek Religion. *Harrison, Religion of Ancient Greece*Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece. *Halliday, Greek Divination. * Fairbanks, Mythology of the Greeks and Romans. IBulfinch, Age'of Fable.
^Gardner, Ancient Athens ; * Handbook of Greek Sculpture. IFowler and Wheeler, Greek Archeology, tRichardson, Vacation Days in Greece. *Schreiber, Atlas of Classical Antiquities (illustrated).
t Fowler, Ancient Greek Literattire. fCROlSET, Greek Literature. tjEVONS, Greek Literature. *Mackail, Lectures on Greek Poetry. *Jebb, Greek Literature; * Classical Greek Poetry; * Attic Orators. *Lang, Horner and the Epic. *Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic. *Moulton, Ancient Classical Drama. *Haigh, Attic Theatre. I Burt, Brief History of Greek Philosophy, f Mayor, Sketch of Ancient Philosophy. *S andys, Classical Greek Scholarship.
There is no cheap 'dictionary of classical antiquities, fHarper, Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. *WHIBLEY, Companion to Greek Studies. *Hall, Companion to Classical Texts. |Tozer, Ancient Geography, t SHEPHERD, Atlas'of Ancient History. The new series of individual maps of the ancient world by f Murray are very valuable, tPutzger, Schulatlas. tSiEGLiN, Schulatlas. A new series of classroom wall maps for ancient history (edited by f Breasted & Huth) is being published by Denoyer and Geppert, Chicago.
t MiCHAELls, A Centtuy of Archeological Discoveries. *Schuchardt, Schliemann's Excavations, tBurrows, Discoveries in Crete. *Mosso, The Palaces of Crete. *Garstang, Asia Minor, ft Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece.
The Underwood & Underwood series of stereoscopic photographs of Greece and its monuments (edited by Richardson), Greece through the Stereoscope (100 views with guidebook and maps). A short description is also printed on the back of each view. See remarks above, p. viii. t(A selection of fifteen of the most useful views comprises Nos. 1, 8,
21 > 35> 39> 42, 48, 54, 62, 64, 77, 80, 87, 96, 97.)
GREEK AUTHORS IN TRANSLATION
Mschylus {Campbell, verse). AIc&us.(Easby-Smith). Aristophanes (Frere; Rogers). Aristotle (Kenyon; Poste). Demosthenes (Kennedy). Euripides (Murray ; Way). Herodotus (Rawlinson). Hesiod (with Callimachus and Theognis, by Banks; with Theognis, Collins; best translation of Hesiod alone, Mair). Homer: Iliad (Lang, Leaf, Myers; Bryant); Odyssey (Butcherand Lang; Bryant). Isocrates
D. Religion
and mythol
ogy
E. Art and archaeology
F. Literature and philosophy
G. Handbooks, atlases, etc.
H. Exploration and discovery
730
Ancie7it limes
A. General and political histories
B. Constitutional and institutional history
C. Life and society
D. Religion and mythology
(Freese). Pausanias (Frazer). Pindar (Myers). Plato (Jowett). Plutarch (Clough; selected Lives, by Perrin). Polybius (SHUCK-burgh). Strabo (Hamilton and Falconer). Thucydides '(Jowett; Crawley). Xenophon (Dakyns).
ADDITIONAL WORKS OF REFERENCE ON THE ROMAN AGE, TOPICALLY ARRANGED
For a detailed criticism of the tradition about earliest Rome (p. 497, note)? see flHNE, History of Rome. Other more extended and valuable histories are those of Mommsen, Heilland, Duruy, Long, Ferrero, Merivale, Gibbons. See also *Mommsen, Provinces. *Bussell, Roman Empire. Other special works are *Dodge, Hannibal. *How, Hannibal and the Great War. IStrachan-Davidson, Cicero. IBoissier, Cicero and his Prie7ids. tFowLER, C<esar. *Sihler, Julius Ccesar.-*Holmes, C&sar*s Conquest of Gaul. *SHUCKBURGH, Augustus. *Tar-Ver, Tiberius. *Baring-Gould, Tragedy of the C&sars. f Capes, Early Empire. * Wat SON, Marcus 'Aurelius. *Bryant, Antoninus Pius. *Gregorovius, Hadrian. ^Henderson, Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero. *Hopkins, Alexander Severus. *Hay, Heliogabalus. *Firth, Constantine. fCuTTS, Constantine. *BoissiER, Roman Africa. tBouCHlER, Life and Letters in Roman Africa; * Roman Spain. *Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century.
t Taylor, Constitutional and Political History of Rome. *Mattingly, Imperial Civil Service. ^Botsford, Roman Assemblies. ^Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration. *Reid, Municipalities of the Roman Empire. *Greenidge, Legal Procedure in Cicero's' Time. *Hadley, Introduction to Roman Law. *Fowler, City State of the Greeks and Romans. tBryce, The Roman and British Empires.
*Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius; * Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, t Becker, Gallus. *Buck-land, Roman Law of Slavery. IInge, Society at Rome under the Ccesars. t Johnston, Private Life of the Romans. *Ingram, History of Slavery. *Friedlaender, Roman Life and Manners. tChurch, Roman Life in the Days of Cicero. *0liver, Roman Economic Conditions. t Roman Farm Management, by a Virginia farmer (Fairfax Harrison).
^Carter, Religious Life of Ancient Rome. *Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People. fG ranger, Worship of the Romans. tGuERBER, Myths of Greece and Rome, t Murray, Manual of Mythology. *Glover, Conflict of Religions. *Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity. *Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches. *CUMONT, Mysteries of Mithra.
Bibliography
731
*E. R. Barker, Buried Herculaneum. *T. B. Platner, Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome. fC. Huelsen, The Roman Forum. *H. B. Walters, Art of the Ro?nans. *R. Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome \ * Pagan and Christian Rome. *J. FERGUSSON, History of Architecture. t Ramsay and Lanciani, Manual of Roman Antiquities.
ft J. W. Mack ail, Latin Literature. * Lawton, Classical Latin Literature. *C. T. Crutwell, History of Roman Literature. *Teuffel and Schwahe, History of Roman Literature. *W. Sellar, Roman Poets of the Republic; * Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. *E. V. Arnold, Roman Stoicism. See works on ancient philosophy under Greece.
t MlCH A ELIS, A Century of Archeological Discoveries. *Mau and Kelsey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. Barker, Buried Herculaneum. *Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy. Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome.
The Underwood & Underwood series of stereoscopic photographs of Rome and Italy (edited by Ellison and Egbert), Italy through the Stereoscope (100 views with explanatory volume and set of maps). See above, p. viii. t(A selection of the most useful fifteen views comprises Nos. 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 33, 34, 43, 45, 46, 47, 58, 60, 62, 91.)
ROMAN AUTHORS AND OTHER SOURCES FOR ROMAN HISTORY IN TRANSLATION
Ammianus Marcellinus (Bohn Ed.). Appian (White). Cesar (Bohn Ed.). Cassidoms1 Letters (Hodgkin). Cicero's Letters (Shuckburgh) ; Works (Bohn Ed.). Dio Cassius (Foster or Carey). Eugippus' St. Severinus (Robinson). Horace (Martin; Lonsdale and Lee; Wickham). fordanes (Mierow). fosephus (Whiston). fust in, iVepos, and Eutropius (Bohn Ed.), fuvenal (Gifford). Livy (Spillan ; Brodribb). Lucretius (Munro). Marcus Aurelius (Rendall or Long). Monumen-tum Ancyranum (Fairley). Ovid (Riley). Pliny's Letters (Firth). Propertius (Moore). Sallust, with Florns and Patercuhis (Bohn Ed.). Strabo (Falconer). Suetonius (Forester). Tacitus (Church and Brodribb). Virgil (Bryce; Crane).
E. Art and
archaeology
F. Literature and philosophy
G. Exploration and discovery
H. The monuments as they are to-day
INDEX
KEY TO PRONUNCIATION
|
l as in fat |
e as in met |
|
l as in errand |
e as in prudent |
|
1 as in face |
e as in be |
|
L as in surface |
e as in begin |
|
i as in far |
e as in her |
|
1 as in fall |
i as in pin |
|
1 as in ask |
1 as in pine |
|
i as in sofa |
|
|
A/bra ham, 208 |
o as in bonnet o as in valgr 5 as in bone o as in obey o as in move o like u in Jude'a
0 as in n6i*
01 as in oil
u as in must u as in muse u as in musician u as in nature u as in pull g as in get ri as in French boh th as in thin
fVbusir (abo-ser'), 235 \cademy, 356, 420, 477 f.
Achaean (a ke'an) League, 450 f. \chaeans (ake'anz), 254 Acropolis (a krop'6 lis), 261, 343, 364, 366 f.
\ctium (ak'shi 11111), 599 \drianople (ad ri an o'pl), 692 \driatic (a dri at'ik), 345 'Egaleos (ega'le os), 322 Egean (e je'an) world, 225 ft.; oriental influences in, 240 f.; fall of, 255 ff.
Egina (eji'na), 331, 344 Egospotami (e gos pot'a ml), 3gi Eneas (e ne'as), 601, 616 Eneid (e ne'id), the, 616 Eschylus (es'ki lus), 363, 371 Etolian (e to'li an) League, 45 Etolians (e to'li anz), 450 Agriculture in Late Stone Age,
22 ff.; -social effects of, 24 Agrippa (agrip'a), 610, 612 Agrippina (agripl'na), 620 Ahuramazda (a ho ra maz'da), 185 Lk'kad, 121, 124 f.
Llaric (al'a rik), 693 Llba Longa (al'ba long'ga), 492 ff. alcibiades (al si bi'a dez), 383, 385 f-> 39°
Alemanni (al e man'I), 691 Alexander (al eg zan'der) the Great, 425 ff., 445 f.
Alexandria (al eg zan'dri a), 446, 450, 461 ff.; Jews at, 453 Alexandrian (al eg zan'dri an) education, 475 ff.
Alexandrian library, 472 ft., 594 Alexandrian literature, 475 Alexandrian Museum, 477 Alexandrian scientists, 468 ff.
Ali Baba (a'le ba'ba), 89 Alphabet, Egyptian, 42, 96 f., Phoenician, 270 ff., 501; Greek, ..271 f., 499 f.
A raar'na, tombs at, 92 f., 204;
letters at, 93 i.
A men ho'tep III, 89 Amenhotep IV, 91 ff.
Am'on, 415, 439 Amorites (am'o rlts), 104, 128 A'mos, 208 f.
Amphictyonies{am fik/ti oniz),29i Amphitheater, 644, 650 Ancyra (ansl'ra), 617 Andronicus (an dro nl'kus), 560 Angles (ang'glz), 694 Animals of prehistoric Europe, 3 f.; domestication of, 24 An tig'o nus, 446 Antigonus II, 449
733
734
Ancient Times
Antioch (an'ti ok), 448, 450 Antiochus (an tl'o kus), 445, 448 Antiochus the Great, 550! Antoninus Pius (an to ni'nus pi'us), 634, 664 Antony (an'toni), 586 f., 596ft. Apelles (apel'ez), 466 Aphrodite (af ro di'te), 279, 502 Apollo (a pol'o), 315 f.
Apollodorus (a pol 0 do'rus), 409 A ra'bi a, 101 f.
Ar'abs, 708 ff.
Aramaic (arama'ik), 146 f.;
triumph of, 148, 183, 190 Arameans (ar a me'anz), 144 ff., .. !62
Ar be'la, 435 _
Arcadius (ar ka'di us), 692 f. Archimedes (arki me'dez), 467 f. A re op'a gus, 313, 341, 363 Arginusae (arji nu'se), 391 Ar'go lis, 331 Ar'gos, 283 Aria'na, 176
Aristarchus (ar is tar'kus), 469,656 Aristogiton (a ris to ji'ton), 306, 313 ’
Aristophanes (ar is tof'a nez), 383, 416
Aristotle (ar'istotl), 428, 471, 478 Armenians (arme'ni anz), 255, 629 Arrian (ar'i an), 655 Ar'te mis, 279
Artemisium (ar te mish'ium), 330 f. Aryans (ar'y&nz), 176 ff.
Asculum (as'kulum), 517
Asia (a'shia), 86, 89
Asia Minor (mi'nor), 226, 248 f.,
643
Assur (as'or), 140 f., 150 f. Assurbanipal (a sor ba'ni pal), 160 Assyria (asir'ia), 140 ff., 148 f., 210 ff., 629 Assyrian (asir'i&n) art and sculpture, 158 f.
Assyrian civilization, 158 Assyrian Empire, 151 ff., 155 ff., 160 ff.
Assyriology, 194 Astrology, 168 A the'na, 279, 362, 369 Ath e ne'um, 643
A the'ni an art and literature,362 ff. Athenian Empire, 339 ff., 378 ff. Athenian government, 303 ff.,
341 f., 361, 363!, 379 ' Athenian law, 303, 305 Athenian money and prices, 346 Athenian society, 350 f.
Athenian war, cost of, 347 Athens (ath'enz), 284, 296, 298, 336 ff., 344 ff., 420, 613 Athletic games, 290 f., 307 f. Ath'os, Mount, 324, 328, 439 Attica (at'i ka), 283, 324, 346 Attila (at'i la), 694 Augustan (S gus'tan) Age, 607 ff. Augustine (a gus'tin), 699! Augustus (S.gus'tus), 596 ff. Aurelian (a re'lyan), 676 Australia (&s tra'lia), 3 A ves'ta, 179
Ba'bel, Tower of, 112 Bahyion (bab'i Ion), 128,133,152f., 164 ff.
Babylonia (bab i lo'ni a), 105 f. Babylonian (bab i lo'ni an) art and architecture, 137 Babylonian astrology, 168, 661 Babylonian divination, 134, 503 Babylonian education, 135 f. Babylonian religion, 134 Bagdad', 710 ■ '
Balearic (bal e ar'ik) Islands, 525 Barbarian invasions, 688 ff. Basilica (ba sil'i ka) church, 702 ff. Behistun (be his ton') inscription, 184 f., 190 ff., 194 Bel i sa'ri us, 696 Belshazzar (bel shaz'ar), 181 Black Sea, 344
Boeotia (be o'shia), 284, 334, 402, 404
Boghaz-Koi (bo'ghaz ke'e), 249 Book of the Dead, 91 Bos'po rus, 683 Brindisi (bren'de se), 487 Britain (brit'an), 589, 694, 701 Bronze Age, 222 ff., 227 Brundisium (bran dish'i ran), 487 Brutus (bro'tus), 596, 598 Burgundians (ber gun'di anz); 693 Byzantium (bi zan'shi umj, 683
Index
7 35
Caere (se're), 499, 521 Caesar (se'zar), 586 ft., 613 Calendar, 45, 467, 595 Caligula (ka lig'u lit), 618 f. Callimachus (ka lim'a kus), poet,
473- 475 Callimachus, soldier, 326 Callisthenes (ka lis'the nez), 443 Cambyses (kam bl'sez), 182 Canaanites (ka'ii^nlts), 104, 200 f. Cannae (kan'e), 540 f.
Capua (kap'ua), 497, 521 f., 543 Carchemish (kar'kem isli), 241 Carthage (kSr'thaj), 267, 333, 439, 490, 518, 520 ff., 546 Carthaginian (kar tha jin'i an) civilization, 526 Carthaginians, 489 Cassius (kasli'ius), 596, 598 Catiline (kat'illn), 586 f.
Cecilia Metella (se sil'i a me tel'a), 49 2
Cecrops (se'krops), 407 Censors, 505, 509 Ceres (se'rez), 502 Chaeronea (ker o ne'a), 428 Chaldean (kal de'aii) Empire, 164 ff., 213 Chaldeans (kal de'anz), 162 Chalons (shal6n'), 694 Champollion (sham pol'i on) 96 ff., 455
Charlemagne (shar'le man), 702 Charles Martel (mar tel'), 702 Cheops (ke'ops), 56 Chephren (kef'ren), 56 Chios (ki'os), 300 Christianity, 663 f., 682 ff.
Church, African, 699; Eastern, 698 ff.; Western, 698 if.
Cicero (sis'ero), 586 f., 597, 613 f. Cimbrians (sim'bri anz), 597 Cimon (sl'mon), 339, 341, 356 Claudius (klS'dius), 619! Cleomenes (kle om'e nez), 451 Cleon (kle'on), 383 f.
Cleopatra (kle o pa'tra), 455, 593 f., 598 f. ‘
Clerestory, 70 f.
Clisthenes (klis'the nez), 306 f.,
342
Clitus (kll'tus), 442 .
Clovis (klo'vis), 701 Cnidus (ni'dus), 300 Cnossus (nos'us), 233 f.
Coloni (ko lo'nl), 668 f.
Colosseum (kolose'um), 622, 649 Comitia (ko mish'ia), 507 f. Commodus (kom'Odus), 673 Constantine (kon'stan tin), 683 f. Constantinople (kon stan ti 110'pl),
683 f.
Consuls, 504 f., 509 Copper Age, 222 f.
Cor'inth, 296, 331, 344, 348, 552 Corinthian War, 401 ; architecture, 407 f.
Corsica (kdr'si ka), 535 Council of Five Hundred, 361,
365
Crassus, 587, 590
Crete (kret), 227 if., 235 f., 248
Croesus (kre'sus), 180 f.
Ctesiphon (tes'i foil), 667, 675 Cumae (ku'me), 521 Cuneiform writing, nof., 189 f., 242
Cynocephalae (sin os sef'a le), 550 Cyrene (slre'ne), 415, 525 Cyrus (sl'rus) the Great, 179 ft-Cyrus the Younger, 399!
Dacians (da'shi alls), 627, 630 Damascus (da mas'kus), 151, 211 Darius (darl'us) the Great, 185, 324 ff.
Darius III, 431, 435 David, 204 f.
Decelea (ties e le'a), 389 Delian (de'li an) League, 339, 348,
39° „
De'los, 297, 339, 348 Delphi (del'fl), 315 ff-, 643, 684 De me'ter, 279, 315, 502 Democracy, 301 ff., 307, 395 f., 406 Demosthenes (de mos'the nez),
427 f- . .
Demotic (de mot'ik) writing, 44 Den'mark, 17 ff., 223 Dictator, 506, 531, 539 Diocletian (dl 0 kle'shian), 676 if. Dionysius (dl S nish'i us),- gram marian, 474 f.
Dionysius, tyrant, 490
736
Ancient Times
Dionysus (di o ni'sus), 279, 310, 362
Dipylon (dip'ilon) Gate, 365 Domitian (do misl/ian), 627 Dorians (do'ri anz), 254 f.
Dor'ic column, 311, 34°» 3^7> 37° Draco (dra'ko), 303 Dru'sus, 581
Dur-Sharrukin (dor-shar ro ken'),
*52
Early Stone Age, 5 ff.
Ecbatana (ek bat'a na), 437 Egypt, 35 ff-; Stone Age of, 38; conquered by Assyria, 153 f.; conquered by Alexander, 434; a Roman province, 599 Egyptian art and architecture, 68 ff., 87 ff.
Egyptian classes of society, 67 Egyptian emperors, burial place of, 94 f.
Egyptian Empire, 80 ff.; higher life of, 86ff.; religion inj 91 ff., 659 ; fall of, 93 ff.
Egyptian gods, 50
Egyptian industrial progress, 62 ff.
Egyptian pyramids, 49 ff.
Egyptian science, 78 Egyptian slaves, 67 Egyptian tombs, 49 ff.
Egyptian writing, 40 ff.} 96 ff. Egyptology, 98
Elephantine (el e fan tl'ne), 459 Eleusis (e lfi'sis), 315, 415 Elijah (e ll'jfi), 207 Embalming, 49 E pam i non'das, 403 f.
Ephesus (ef'e sus), 450 Epicureanism, 478 Epimachos (e pim'a kos), 630 E pi'rus, 517
Eratosthenes (er a tos'the nez), 459, 469, 471 f-Erechtheum (e rek tlie'um), 367, 407
E re'tri a, 324 Er go tl'mos, 297 Eskimos (es'ki moz), 12 Etruscans (e trus'kanz), 488 f., 495 ff-
Euaenetus (u e'ne tns), 381
Euboea (ube'a), 324 Euclid (u'klid), 469 Eupatrids (u pat'ridz), 284 -Euripides (u rip'i dez), 372 f., 400, 406
Europe (u'rop), 3 ff., 221 ff.
Fa'bi us, 540
Fabricius (fa brish'i us), 494 Fertile Crescent, 101 Feudal Age in Egypt, 74 ff.; tombs of, 76; administration in, 79; commerce of, 79; decline of, 80
Fire-making, 3, 5 Fla min'i us, 539, 575 f.
Fla'vi an emperors, 627 Flint implements, 10 f.
Forum, 495, 509, 609 Franks, 691, 701
Gaius Gracchus (ga'yus grak'us), 577
Galatia (ga la'shia), 449 Ga le'ri us, 686
Gallic invasion of the East, 449 Gard (gar) River, 646 Gaul (gal), 588 ff.
Gelon (je'lon), 333 German barbarians, 579, 588, 626, 664, 674, 682, 688 ff.
Gil'ga mesh, 127
Gizeh (ge'ze), pyramids of, 49 ff.
Gladiators, 564
Glass-making in Egypt, 64 f.
Gortyna (g0r ti'na), 304
Goths, 691, 695
Gracchi (grak'i), 576 ff.
Granicus (grani'kus), 430 Great Mother, 414 Greek architecture and sculpture, 292, 310 ff., 406 ff.
Greek colonies, 287 ff.
Greek commerce, 287, 295 ff. Greek education, 308 Greek games, 290 f., 307 f.
Greek genius, 423 Greek gods, 278 ff.
Greek language, spread of, 453 Greek literature, 293, 315 Greek music, 308 f.
Greek painting, 3x4 f., 406 ff.
Index
737
Greek religion, 276 ff315, 480 Greek sciences, 359 f., 419 Greek slaves, 298 Greek theater, 371, 374 Greek vases, 314
Greeks, 217, 250, 252 ft.; social institutions of, 259; kings of, 260, 286; agriculture of, 260; supremacy of, 344 ff.; in Italy, 490
Gregory (greg'o ri), 701 Guinea (gin'i), 4-71, 525 Gylippus (ii lip'us), 387
Hades, 315
Ha'dri an, 630 ff., 636, 650 Hamilcar Barca (ba rnil'kar bar'ka), 534 Hammurapi (liammora'pe), I28ff.;
code of, 130 ff.
Hannibal (han'i bal), 535 ff.
Har mo’di us, 306, 313 Hasdrubal (has'dro bal), 543 f. Hatshepsut (hat shep'sot), 83 f. Hebrew (he'bro) civilization, 201 f. Hebrew kingdom, 200 ff.; divided, 206 ff.; destruction of, 210 ff. Hebrew literature, 208, 216 Hebrew religion, 214 Hebrew writing, 209 Hebrews, 144 f., 197 f.; exile of, 213 f.; religion of, 214; restored, 216 Hecatasus (hekate'us), 318 f., 360
Helicon (hel'i kon), Mount, 293 Hellenes (hel'enz), 291 f. Hellenistic (hel e nist'ik) Age, 453 <*•
Hellenistic architecture, 560 Hellenistic world, 481 ff. Hellespont (hel'espont), 324, 328, 339
Hephaestion (he fes'ti on), 443 He'ra, 279
Heraclea (herakle'a), 517 Heracleia (herakll'a), 472 Hermes (her'mgz), 279, 502 Herodes Atticus (he rS'dez at'ikus), 642 He rod'o tus, 360 f., 363, 419 He'si od, 293
Hieratic (hi e rat'ik) writing, 44 Hieroglyphics, 44 f.; deciphered, 96 ft.; in Crete, 229; I-Iittite (hit'it), 241 -
Hipparchus (hi pjir'kus), 306 Hippias (hip'i as), 306, 324 Hippocrates (hi pok'ra tgz), 361, 375
Hi'ram, 205 f.
Hittite (hit'it) art and architecture, 242 Hittite Empire, 243 f.; fall of, 255 f. Hittite influence, 240 ff., 248 ff. Hittite religion, 242 {.
Hittite writing, 241 f.
Hittites, 93 f., 143, 149, 199, 202, 239 f.
Ho'mer, 275 f., 375 Ho no'ri us, 692 f.
Horace (hor'as), 615 f.
Horse, in Egypt, 80 f.; in Babylonia, 138, 143 Huns (hunz), 692
Ice Age, 7 f.
Ictinus (ill ti'nus), 369 Ikh na'ton, 92 ff.
Illyricum (i lir'i 1mm), 693 Imhotep (emho'tep), 52 In'di a, 437 Indian Ocean, 79, 437 Indo-European peoples, 171 ff. Ionians (1 o'ni anz), 316, 318 ff., 322 ff.
Ionic (I on'ik) column, 340, 367 f. Iphigenia (if i je ni'a), 410 Iran (e ran'), 176 Iranians (ira'nianz), 176 ft.
Iron Age, 157, 263 Isaac (i'zak), 208 Isaiah (1 za'ya), 210 f.
Ish'tar, 134, 151, 168 Is'lam, 706
Isocrates (Isok'ra, tez), 420, 422 Israel (iz'ra el), 206 Issus (is'usj, Gulf of, 430 f.
Italic tribes, 48S Italy (it'a li), 485 ff.
Jacob, 208
Jeremiah (jergmi'a), 213 Jericho (jer'i ko), 203
73«
Ancient Times
Jerusalem (je ro'sa lem), besieged, 210 f.; destroyed, 213; rebuilt, 216; taken by Sulla, 585; destroyed, 626 Jesus, 115, 661 f., 705 Joseph, 208 Judah (jo'da), 206 Judaism, 216, 661 Jugurtha (j5 ger'tha), 578 f.
Julian (jo'ly&n) "the Apostate,” 686 f., 691 Juno (jd'no), 502 Jupiter (jo'pi ter), 502 Jus tin'i an, 695 ff.t 705 f.; code of, 697
Kaldi (kal'de), 162 Kar'nak, 80 ff.
Kassites (kas'its), 144 Khafre (kaf'ra), 56, 70 f.
Khufu (ko'fo), 54, 56 King’s Peace, 401 Ko'ran, 707
Kuyunjik (koyon jek'), 435
Laconia (la ko'ni a), 283 Lake-dwellers, Swiss, 21 f. Laocoon (la ok'o on), 465 Late Stone Age, 14®.; tools in, 20; architecture in, 26; festivals and athletic contests in, 28; trades in, 29; commerce in, 31 ; wars in, 32 ; in Italy, 486 Latin League, 511, 513 Latin literature, 562 f.
Latin war, 520 Latins, 492 f.
Latium (la'shium), 492 ff., 616 Laws, oldest surviving code of, 132 ; earliest, in,Greece, 303 Le on'i das, 330 Lep'i dus, 597 Lenctra (luk'tra), 404 Library, at Alexandria, 472 ff., 594;
at Rome, 614 Licinius (Hsin'ius), 575 f.
Lictors, 508
Lilybasnm (lil i be'um), 517 Livy (liv'i), 614 f.
Lom'bards, 701 Lucullus (lu kurus), 585 Lyceum (lisB'um), 356, 478
Lydians (lid'i anz), 322 Lysander (1! san'der), 391, 401 f. Lysiades (li si'a dSz), 381 Lysicrates (li sik'ra tez), 381
Macedon (mas'e don), 426, 550 Macedonia (mas e do'ni a), 426 Magi (ma'jl), 661 Magnesia (mag ne'shia), 551 Man ti ne'a, 404 Mar'a thon, 324 if.
Marcellus (marsel'us), 610 Marcus Aurelius (mar'kus & re'-li us), 664 f.
Mar do'ni us, 328, 333 f.
Marduk (mar'dok), 134, 168 Ma'ri us, 579 ff.
Mars, 502 .
Massilia (ma sil'i a), 290 Mausoleum (mS, s5 le'um), 408 Mausolus (m& so'lus), 406 Mayors of the Palace, 701 Mecca (mek'a), 706 f.
Medes (medzj and Persians (per'-shanz), 162, 177 Median Empire, 177 Meg'll ra, 303 Memphis (mem'fis), 57 Me nan'der, 562 Menes (me'nez), 58 Mercury (mer'kfl. ri), 502 * Mesopotamia (mes opo ta'mi a), 629 v- ‘
Messina (messe'na), 528 Metal, Age of, 47 f., 222 f., 486 f. Metaurus (me tj'rus) River, 543 Middle Stone Age, 9 ff.
Mlle'tus, 316, 324
Miltiades (mil tl'a dez), 325 f.
Mithradates (mitii ra da'tez), 583,
585
Mith'ras, 195, 678 Mitylene (mit i le'ne), 383 Mnesicles (ne'sik lez), 367 Mohammed (mo ham'ed), 706 ff. Mohammedan conquests, 709 Money, in Athens, 346; in Greece, 299 ff.; in the Orient, 186, 299 f. Monica (inon'i ka), 699 Monks, 700, 702”
Monotheism, in Egypt, 92 f. j in Palestine, 214
Index
7 39
Moors (morz), 710 f.
Moses (mo'zez), 200 Moslems (mos'lemz), 702, 707 ff., 711 f.
Mycale (mik'alg), 334 Mycenae (mi'se'ng), 237 f., 247 f. Mycenaean (ml sS nS'an) Age, 236 ff.
Na'hum, 163 Na po'le on, 455 Na ram'sin, ] 23 f.
Naucratis (nft'kratis), 289 Nebuchadnezzar (neb u kad nez'-ftr), 164 ff., 213, 368 Nemausus (nem&'sus), 646 Ne'ro, 620 ff.
Ner'va, 627, 634
New Persia (per'sha), 675, 678, 705 Nerw Testament, 662 Nicsea (nl sS'a), 686 Nicias (nish'i as), 384 ff. Nicomedia (nik 3 me'di a), 679 Nile (nil), 37 ff.
Nimes (neni), 646 Nineveh (nin'e ve), 154 f., 163, 213 Nippur (nip por'), 112, 116, 117 Nobles,Greek,leadership of, 283 ff. Nomads, 25 f.
North American Indians, 4, 40 Nu'bi a, 86, 89
Octavian (ok ta'vi an), 596 ff. Odoacer (S dS a'ser), 695 Old Testament, 217 Oligarchy, 395
Olympian (S lim'pi an) games, 308, 356 Oracles, 315
Orient, achievements of, 218 ff.; influence on Greece, 264 f.; revival of, 705 ff.
Orpheus (6r'fu&), 414 O si'ris, 50, 91 Ostracism, 306 f.
Os'tro-Goths, 695
Paastum (pes'tuni), 522 Painted Porch, 363, 365, 497 Pa ler'mS Stone, 46 Palestine (pa.l'es tin), 197 ff., 256 Palmyra (pal ml'ra), 676
Panathensea (pan ath 6 ng'a), 362 Paper, making of, 43 f., 64 f. Papyrus (papl'rus), 43 f.
Par me'ni o, 431, 437, 442 Parrhasius (pa ra'sni us), 411 Par'the non, 367, 369 f.
Parthians (par'thi ^liz), 590, 595, 628 f., 675 Pasargadae (pa sar'ga dg), 182, 189 Patesis (pa ta'sSz), 113, 119 Paul, 638, 662, 700 Pausanias (pS, sa'ni as), geographer, 655 Pausanias, Spartan general, 334 Peloponnesian (pel fl po nS'shi&n) War, First, 348 f.; Second, 380 ff.; Third, 385 ff.
Per'ga mum, 453, 463 f., 472 Per i an'der, 303
Pericles (per'i klez), 344, 348, 350 ff.^381 ff.
Peripatetics (per i pa tet'iks), 477 f. Per sep'o lis, 189
Persian (per'shan) art and architecture, 189 Persian Empire, 182 ff.
Persian kings, 194 f.
Persian religion, 195 Persian roads and communications, 187 f.
Persian sea power, 187 .
Persian War, Athens in, 348 Persian writing, 183 Persians, 179 ff., 322 ff., 389 f. Peter, 700
Phalerum (fale'rum), 331 Pharaoh (fa'ro), 53 Pharsalus (farsa'lus), 592 f. Phidias (fld'i as), 367, 369, 382 Philse (fl'lg), 459.
Philip, 426 ff Philippi (fl lip'I), 598 Philistines (fi lis'tinz), 202 f., 256 Philosophy, 316, 318 ff.
Philotas (filo'tas), 441 Phoenicia (fe nisli'ii), 58 Phoenicians (fe nish'anz), 144 f., 2653., 290, 328, 471 ; alphabet of, 270 Phonetic writing, 40 ff.
Phrygians (frij'i anz), 255 Pictorial records, 39 ff.
/
1
740
Ancient Times
Pin'dar, 309, 415, 429 Piraeus (pi re'us), 332, 339, 344, 348
Pi sis'tra tus, 306 Plataea (plate'a), 326, 334, 684 Pla'to, 411, 418, 420 f., 428 Plautus (plft'tns), 562 Plebs, 506
Pliny (plin'i), the elder, 655 f. Pliny, the younger, 635, 654 f. Plow culture, 25 Plutarch .(plo'tark), 655 Pnyx (niks),-343, 366 Polybius (po lib'ius), 561 f. Polygnotus (pol ig no'tus), 363 Pompeii (pom pa'ye), 410, 557, 559, 636 f., 639 Pompey (pom'pi), 584 ff., 590 ff. Poseidon (po sl'don), 279 Pottery, in Egypt, 63; in Europe, 19
Praetor (pre'tor), 506 Praxiteles (praks it'e lez), 408 Prehistoric Europe, 3 ff.
Pri e'ne, 458, 460 f., 476 Psyttaleia (sit'ali'a), 332 Ptolemies (tol'e miz), 86, 446 f., 593
Ptolemy (tol'e mi), astronomer, 656 f.
Punic War, First, M3ff.; Second, 53Sff.; Third, 546 f.
Pyramid Age, 49 ff.; agriculture in, 61; art and architecture in, 68 ff.; cattle raising in, 61 f.; classes of society in, 67; commerce in, 58 f.; government in, 53 ff.; length and date of, 57 f.; occupations in, 62 ff.
Pyrrhus (pir'us), ^ 17 Pythagoras (pi ttaag'o ras), 319 Pytheas (pith'e as), 471
Quaestors (kwes'torz), 505
Ramses (ram'sez) II, 94 Ramses III, 257 Rawlinson (r&'lin son), 190 ff.
Re (ra), 50 Red Sea, 59 Rhetoricians, 420 Rhodes (rodz), 450, 465, 613
Roman amusements, 564 f.
Roman army, 528 ff.
Roman art and architecture, 523, 608, 610 Roman Church, 698 ff.
Roman colonization, 512 Roman commerce and banking, 554 f., 640 Roman conquests, 552 ff.
Roman degeneration, 570, 669 Roman Empire, 601 ff.; civilization of the early Empire, 649 if.; decline of, 667 ff.; division of, 682 ff., 692 Roman government, 504 ff., 520 ff. Roman house, 556 ff.
Roman imperial organization, 552 ff.
Roman money, 501 f., 523, 671 Roman painting, 653 Roman provinces, 553 if., 604 ff., 636 ff., 641 Roman religion, 502 ff., 659 if. Roman Republic, 504, 507, 511;
end of, 574 ff.
Roman roads and bridges, 638 f. Roman schools, 561 Roman sculpture, 652 ■Roman Senate, 506, 509, 574 if. Roman ships, 501; 534 Roman slaves, 566 ff., 669 Roman theaters, 610 Rome (rom), 494 ff., 500; taken by Gauls, 513; rivalry of, with Carthage, 518, 520 ff.
Rom'u lus and Re'mus, 484 Romulus Augustulus (S,gus'tQlus), 695
Rosetta (r<5 zet'ta) Stone, 97 f., i93> 454 f-Royal tombs of Egypt, 94 f.
Sara mis, 331 f., 371 Samnites (sam'nlts), 514 Sa'mos, 298, 324 Sappho (saf'o), 309, 354 Sar din'i a, 535 Sar'dis, 322
Sar'gon of Ak'kad, 122 f.
Sargon II, 152.
Sassanians (sa sa'ni anz), 675, 678 Saul (sSl), 203
Index
7 41
Saxons (sak'snz), 694 Schliemann (shle'man), 245 ff. Scipio (sip'i o), 544 ff.
Scopas (sko'pas), 406, 409 Scylax (si'laksj, 186 f.
Seleucids (se lu'sidz), 448 Seleucus (se lu'kus), 445 f., 448 Semites (sem'Its), 101 f.; traffic of, 103; religion of, 103I; art of, 123 f.j union of, with Sumerians, 126 f.; struggle of, with Indo-Europeans, 172 ff., 524 ff., 706 f. Seneca (sen'e ka), 620 f., 654 Sennacherib (se nak'e rib), 152, 210, 212, 288 Sentl'num, 514 f., 543 Sep tim'i us Se ve'rus, 673, 675 Se ra'pis, 631 Se sos'tris, 80 Se'ti I, 94
Seven Wise Men, 320 Shadoof (sbadof'), 36 Shal ma nc'zer III, 211 Shl'nar, Plain of, 105 f.
Sicilian (si sil'ian) expedition,385 f. Sicilian War, 533 ff.
Sicily (sis'i li), Greek colonists in, 289 f.
Sinai (si'nl), 50, 59 Slavery, fn Egypt, 67 ; in Greece, 298 ; in Rome, 566 ff., 669 Slavs (slavz), 706 Social War, 582
Socrates (sok'ra tez), 416 ff., 420 f. ^gol'o mon, 205 f.
So'lon, 303 ff., 342, 345, 355 Sophia (so fe'a), Saint, 688, 698 Sophists (sof'ists), 357 ff., 370, 372, 4IS
Sophocles (sof'o klez); 353, 371 ff. Spain (span), 594 Sparta, 283, 307, 336 ff., 347 f., 401; fall of, 402 Spartan leadership, 394 ff.
Spar'tan league, 307, 392 Sphinx (sfingks), 50 Stesichorus (ste sik'o rus), 309 f. Stilicho (stil'iko), 692 f.
Stoicism (sto'i sizm), 478 f.
Stone Age, Early, 5 ff.; Late, 14 ff., 221 f.; Middle, 9 ff.; in Egypt, 38 ; in Italy, 488
Stonehenge (stSn'henj), 30 Stra'bo, 613, 661 Sudan (so dan'), 59 Sulla (sul'a), 425, 582 ff.
Su'mer, 108
Su me'ri an agriculture, 108 Sumerian art, 118 Sumerian calendar, 111 Sumerian houses,, 114L Sumerian religion, 112 f.
Sumerian society, 119 Sumerian writing, 109 ff. Sumerians, 107 ff.; -union of, with Semites, I26f.
Susa (so'sa), 189, 437 Swiss lake-villages, 20 f.
Syracuse (sir'a ktis), 289 f., 344,
38S
Syria (sirl a), 448, 585, 643
Tacitus (tas'i tus), 654 Taren'tum, 517, 522 f. Tasmanians (tazma'ni anz), 2 f. Terence (ter'ens), 562 Tetricus (tet'rikus), 676 Teutons (tu'tonz), 579 Thales (tha'lez), 316, 318 Theater, Greek, 310 Thebes (thgbz), in Egypt, 80,86f.,
92. 94. 375 Thebes, in Greece, 284, 402 ff., 429 .
Themistocles (the mis'to klez), 328 ff., 338 f., 341 Theocritus (the ok'ri tus), 475, 616 Theodoric (the od'o rik), 695 Theodosius (the o do'shi us), 684, 692, 697; Edict of, 700 Thermopylae (thermop'i le), 32gff. Theseus (the'sus), 367' Thucydides (thU sid'i dez), 419, 615 Thu'le, 471
Thutmose (thijtmo'se) III, 84 f.,
684
Tibe'ri us, emperor, 617 f. Tiberius Gracchus (grak'us), 576 f. Tibullus (ti bnl'us), 659 Tigranes (tigra'nez), 585 Ti mo'the os, 474 Tiryns (ti'rinz), 237, 247 f.
Ti'tus, 627
742
Ancient Times
Tombs of the Egyptian kings, 94 f. Tours (tor), 711 Tower of Babel, 112 Towns, earliest, 26 f.
Tra'jan, 627 ft., 634 ft., 650 f. Trasimene (tras'i men), Lake, 539 Tri bo'ni an, 697 Tribunes (trib'unz), 505 Triumvirate (tri um'vi rat), 587 Troy (troi), 239, 245 ff., 429 Turks, 713
Tyrants, Age of, 301 ff.; civilization of, 307 ff., 320 Tyre (Hr), 434
Ul'fi las, 691
University, of Alexandria, 477; of Athens, 479 ; of Rome, 642 Ur (er), 126
Valens (va'lenz), 692 Vandals (van'dalz), 691, 693 Ve'nus, 502
Vespasian (ves pa'zhian), 609, 625 f.
Ves'ta, 502
Virgil (ver'jil), 616, 702 Visigoths (viz'i goths), 692
Wedge-form writing, no f., 189 f., 242
West Goths, 692
Women, position of, in Greece, 353 f-
Writing, phonetic,41 ff.; pictorial, 40 ; invention of, 45 Writing materials, 43 f.
Xenophon (zen'o fon), 399 ff., 422 Xerxes (zerk'sez), 187, 190, 328 ff.
Yahveh (yava'), 206
Za'ma, 544 ff.
Ze'no, 479 Ze no'bi a, 676 Zeus (ziis), 277 ff.
Zeuxis (ziik'sis), 411 Zo ro as'ter, 177 ff., 675
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