| |
CHAPTER LIII.
(53) RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. - CYRUS.
In the preceding chapter, I have
followed the history of Central Greece very nearly down to the point at which
the history of the Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which the
two streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same channel. I now revert
to the affairs of the. Asiatic Greeks, and of the Asiatic kings as connected
with them, at the point in which they were left in my seventeenth chapter.
The
concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad and serious moment to
the Hellenic world. The Ionic and Aeolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been
conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus: “down to that time
(says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free.” Their conqueror Croesus, who
ascended the throne in 560 bc, appeared to be at the summit of human
prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless
treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as
far as Hie river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the
Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some
boundary which we cannot define, but comprising in a southeastern direction
Persis proper, or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line of Mount Zagros—the present boundary
line between Persia and Turkey. Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the
Euphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians, or Chaldeans, under
their king Labynetus : a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature,
partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an
honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline,—but which was
then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldeans dominion under Labynetus
reached to the borders of Egypt, including, as dependent territories, both Judge
and Phenicia in Egypt, reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent,
sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries, and himself
favorably disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynetus and
with Amasis, Croesus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyages was his
brother-in-law the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of
calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years or a little more, the whole of
their territories had become embodied in one vast empire, under the son of an
adventurer as yet not known even by name.
The
rise and fall of Oriental dynasties has been in all times distinguished by the
same general features. A brave and adveturous prince, at the head of a
population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion,—while his
successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to
oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to
those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize
the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the Persian empire, first the subject
and afterwards the dethroner of the Median Astyages, corresponds to this
general description, far at least as we can pretend to know his history. For in
truth, even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are very
imperfectly known, whilst the facts which preceded his rise up to that
sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have to choose between
different accounts at variance with each other, and of which the most complete
and detailed is stamped with all the character of romance. The Cyropaedia of Xenophon is memorable and interesting,
considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical novel: that
it should have been quoted so largely as authority on matters of history, is
only one proof among many how easily authors have been satisfied as to the
essentials of historical evidence. The narrative given by Herodotus of the
relations between Cyrus and Astyages, agreeing with Xenophon in little more
than the fact that it makes Cyrus son of Cambyses and Mandane, and grandson of
Astyages, goes even beyond the story of Romulus and Remus in respect to
tragical incident and contrast. Astyages, alarmed by a dream, condemns the new-born
infant of his daughter Mandane to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom the order is
given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen, who exposes it in the
mountains, where it is miraculously suckled by a bitch. Thus preserved, and
afterwards brought up as the herdsman’s child, Cyrus manifests great superiorly
both physical and mental, is chosen king in play by the boys of the village,
and in this capacity severely chastises the son of one of the courtiers; for
which offence he is carried before Astyages, who recognizes him for his
grandson, but is assured by the Alagi that his dream is out, and that he has no
farther danger to apprehend from the boy,—and therefore permits him to live.
With Harpagus, however, Astyages is extremely incensed, for not having executed
his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, and served up to be
eaten by his unconscious father at a regal banquet. The father, apprized
afterwards of the fact, dissembles bis feelings, but conceives a deadly
vengeance against Astyages for this Thyestean meal. He persuades Cyrus, who has
been sent back to his father and mother in Persia, to head a revolt of the
Persians against the Medes; whilst Astyages—to fill up the Grecian conception
of madness as a precursor to ruin—sends an army against the revolters,
commanded by Harpagus himself. Of course the army is defeated,—Astyages, after
a vain resistance, is dethroned,—Cyrus becomes king in his place,—and Harpagus
repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest insults.
Such
are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at some length in
Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader sufficiently romantic, though
the historian intimates that he had heard three other narratives different from
it, and that all were more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation,
than his own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded Persian
informants. In what points the other three stories departed from it, we do not
hear.
To
the historian of Halikarnassus, we have to oppose the physician of the
neighboring town Cnidus,—Ctesias, who contradicted Herodotus, not without
strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially upon that which is the
very foundation of the early narrative respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed that
Cyrus was noway related to Astyages. However indignant
we may be with Ctesias, for the disparaging epithets which he presumed to apply
to an historian whose work is to us inestimable,—we must nevertheless admit
that as surgeon, in actual attendance on king Artaxerxes Mnemon,
and healer of the wound inflicted on that prince at Cunaxa by his brother Cyrus
the younger, he had better opportunities even than Herodotus of conversing with
sober-minded Persians; and that the discrepancies between the two statements
are to be taken as a proof of the prevalence of discordant, yet equally
accredited, stories. Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose one out
of four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity.
That
Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which he overran
covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor
to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite indisputable; but of the steps by
which this was achieved, we know very little. The native Persians whom he
conducted to an empire, so immense, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and
four nomadic tribes,—all of them rude, hardy, and brave,—dwelling in a
mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, or any of the
commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale.
Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity, probably also in respect to
numbers and powers, among one another: first in estimation among them stood the
Pasargadae; and the first phratry, or clan, among the Pasargadae were the Achaemenidae, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his
relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a
politic fiction, we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the
spacious deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila, which
he saw in his march with the Ten Thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the
Tigris, gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was
reported to him us having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However
this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last complete: though
the Medes always continued to be the second nation in the empire, after the
Persians, properly so called; and by early Greek writers the great enemy in the
East is often called the Mede,” as well
as “the Persian.” Ecbatana always continued to be one of the capital cities,
and the usual summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspes,
on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of
the Tigris, being their winter abode.
The
vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east, the Oxus and
Caspian sea to the north, the Persian gulf and Indian ocean to the south, and
the line of Mount Zagros to the west, appears to have been occupied in these
times by a great variety of different tribes and people, but all or most of
them belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of the Zend
language. It was known amongst its inhabitants by the common name of Iran, or
Aria: it is, in its central parts at least, a high, cold plateau, totally
destitute of wood and scantily supplied with water; much of it, indeed, is a
salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile,
where water can be procured and irrigation applied; and scattered masses of
tolerably dense population thus grew up. But continuity of cultivation is not
practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large proportion of the
population of Iran seems to have consisted of wandering or nomadic tribes, with
their tents and cattle. The rich pastures, and the freshness of the summer
climate, in the region of mountain and valley near Ecbatana, are extolled by
modern travellers, just as they attracted the Great
King in ancient times, during the hot months. The more southerly province
called Persis proper (Farsistan) consists also in part of mountain land
interspersed with valley and plain, abundantly watered, and ample in pasture,
sloping gradually down to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry.
The care bestowed, both by Medes and Persians, on the breeding of their horses,
was remarkable. There were doubtless material differences between different
parts of the population of this vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along
with their common language and religion, they had also something of a common
character, which contrasted with the Indian population east of the Indus, the
Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Massagetae and other Nomads of the
Caspian and the sea of Aral,—less brutish, restless, and bloodthirsty, than the
latter,—more fierce, contemptuous, and extortionate, and less capable of sustained
industry, than the two former. There can be little doubt, at the time of which
we arc now speaking, when the wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their
maximum, that Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been since
European observers have been able to survey it; especially the northeastern
portion, Bactria and Sogdiana: so that the invasions of the nomads from
Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destructive at various intervals
since the Mohammedan conquest, wero before that period successfully kept back.
The
general analogy among the population of Iran probably enabled the Persian
conqueror with comparative ease to extend his empire to the east, after the
conquest of Ecbatana, and to become the full heir of the Median kings. And if
we may believe Ctesias, even the distant province of Bactria had been before
subject to those kings: it at first resisted Cyrus, but finding that he had
become son-in-law of Astyages as well as master of his person, it speedily
acknowledged his authority.
According
to the representation of Herodotus, the war between Cyrus and Croesus of Lydia
began shortly after the capture of Astyages, and before the conquest of Bactria.
Croesus was the assailant, wishing to avenge his brother-in-law, to arrest the
growth of the Persian conqueror, and to increase his own dominions: his more
prudent councillors in vain represented to him that
he had little to gain, and much to lose, by war with a nation alike hardy and
poor. He is represented, as just at that time recovering from the affliction
arising out of the death of his son. To ask advice of the oracle, before he
took any final decision, was a step which no pious king would omit; but in the
present perilous question, Croesus did more,—he took a precaution so extreme,
that, if his piety had not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary
munificence to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the suspicion of a
guilty skepticism. Before he would send to ask advice respecting the project
itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of the chief surrounding
oracles,—Delphi, Dodona, Branchidae near Miletus, Amphiaraus at Thebes,
Trophonius at Lebadeia, and Ammon in Libya. His
envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on the
hundredth day afterwards to ask at the respective oracles how Croesus was at
that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial: of the manner in which it
was met by four out of the six oracles consulted, we have no information, and
it rather appears that their answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus
maintained his credit undiminished, and Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than
Apollo at Branchidae, solved the question with such unerring precision, as to
afford a strong additional argument against persons who might be disposed to
scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian
priestess, on the day named, “What is Croesus now doing?” than she exclaimed,
in the accustomed hexameter verse, “I know the number of grains of sand, and
the measures of the sea; I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks
not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a copper with
Jamb’s flesh,—copper above and copper below.” Croesus was awestruck on
receiving this reply. It described with the utmost detail that which he had
been really doing, insomuch that ho accounted the Delphian oracle and that of
Amphiaraus the only trustworthy oracles on earth,— following up these feelings
with a holocaust of the most munificent character, in order to win the favor of
the Delphian god. Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon a vast
sacrificial pile were placed the most splendid purple robes and tunics,
together with conches and censers of gold and silver: besides which he sent to
Delphi itself the richest presents in gold and silver,—ingots, statues, bowls,
jugs, etc., the size and weight of which we read with astonishment; the more so
as Herodotus himself saw them a century afterwards at Delphi. Nor was Croesus
altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been creditable, though
less triumphant than that of the Pythian priestess. He sent to Amphiaraus a
spear and shield of pure gold, which were afterwards seen at Thebes by
Herodotus: this large donative may help the reader to conceive the immensity of
those which he sent to Delphi.
The
envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask, at the same time,
whether Croesus should undertake an expedition against the Persians,—and if
so, whether he should prevail on any allies to assist him. In regard to the
second question, the answer both of Apollo and Amphiaraus was decisive,
recommending him to invite the alliance of the most powerful Greeks. In regard
to the first and most momentous question, their answer was as remarkable for
circumspection as it had been before for detective sagacity: they told Croesus
that, if he invaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty monarchy. The
blindness of Croesus interpreted this declaration into an unqualified promise
of success. He sent farther presents to She oracle, and again inquired whether
his kingdom would be durable. “When a mule shall become king of the Medes
(replied the priestess), then must thou run away, —be not ashamed.”
More
assured than ever by such an answer, Croesus sent to Sparta, under the kings Anaxandrides and Aristo, to tender presents and solicit
their alliance. His propositions were favorably entertained,—the more so, as he
had before gratuitously furnished some gold to the Lacedaemonians, for a statue
to Apollo The alliance now formed was altogether general,—no express effort,
being as yet demanded from them, though it soon came to be. But the incident is
to be noted, as marking the first plunge of the leading Grecian state into
Asiatic politics; and that too without any of the generous Hellenic sympathy
which afterwards induced Athens to send her citizens across the Aegean. Croesus
was the master and tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, and their contingents
seem to have formed part of his army for the expedition now contemplated; which
army consisted principally, not of native Lydians, but of foreigners.
The
river Halys formed the boundary at this time between the Median and Lydian
empires: and Croesus, marching across that river into the territory of the
Syrians or Assyrians of Cappadocia, took the city of Pteria and many of its
surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage and destruction upon these distant
subjects of Ecbatana. Cyrus lost no time in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than that of Croesus, and at
the same time tried, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on the Ionians to revolt
from him. A bloody battle took place between the two armies, but with
indecisive result: and Croesus, seeing that he could not hope to accomplish
more with his forces as they stood, thought it wise to return to his capital,
in order to collect a larger army for the next campaign. Immediately on
reaching Sardis, he despatched envoys to Labynetus
king of Babylon; to Amasis king of Egypt; to the Lacedaemonians, and to other
allies; calling upon all of them to send auxiliaries to Sardis during the
course of the fifth coming month. In the mean time, he dismissed all the
foreign troops who had followed him into Cappadocia.
Had
these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted with success;
and on the part of the Lacedaemonians at least, there was no tardiness; for
their ships were ready and their troops almost on board, when the unexpected
news reached them that Croesus was already ruined. Cyrus had foreseen and
forestalled the defensive plan of his enemy. He pushed on with his army to
Sardis without delay, compelling the Lydian prince to give battle with his own
unassisted subjects. The open and spacious plain before that town was highly
favorable to the Lydian cavalry, which at that time, Herodotus tells us, was
superior to the Persian. But Cyrus devised a stratagem whereby this cavalry
was rendered unavailable,—placing in front of his line the baggage camels,
which the Lydian horses could not endure either to smell or to behold. The
horsemen of Croesus were thus obliged to dismount; nevertheless, they fought
bravely on foot, and were not driven into the town till after a sanguinary
combat.
Though
confined within the walls of his capital. Croesus had still good reason for
hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies, to whom he sent pressing
envoys of acceleration: for Sardis was considered impregnable,—one assault had
already been repulsed, and the Persians would have been reduced to the slow
process of blockade. But on the fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for
the besiegers that which they could not have accomplished either by skill or
force. Sardis was situated on an outlying peak of the northern side of Tmolus;
it was well-fortified every where except towards the mountain; and on that
side, the rock, was so precipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications were
thought unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault to be possible.
But Hyroeades, a Persian soldier, having accidentally
seen one of the garrison descending this precipitous rock to pick up his
helmet, which had rolled down, watched his opportunity, tried to climb up, and
found it not impracticable. Others followed his example, the stronghold was
thus seized first, and the whole city was speedily taken by storm.
Cyrus
had given especial orders to spare the life of Croesus, who was accordingly
made prisoner. But preparations were made for a solemn and terrible spectacle.
The captive king was destined to be burnt in chains, together with fourteen
Lydian youths, on a vast pile of wood: and we are even told that the pile
was already kindled and the victim beyond the reach of human aid. when Apollo
sent a miraculous rain to preserve him. As to the general fact of supernatural
interposition, in one way or another, Herodotus and Ctesias both agree, though
they describe differently the particular miracles wrought. It is certain that
Croesus, after some time, was released and well treated by his conqueror, and
lived to become the confidential adviser of the latter as well as of his son Cambyses:
Ctesias also acquaints us that a considerable town and territory near Ecbatana,
called Barene, was assigned to him, according to a
practice which we shall find not unfrequent with the
Persian kings.
The
prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between Persians and Lydians,
whereby Croesus is said by Herodotus to have first earned this favorable
treatment, are hardly worth repeating; but the indignant remonstrance sent by
Croesus to the Delphian god is too characteristic to be passed over. He
obtained permission from Cyrus to lay upon the holy pavement of the Delphian
temple the chains with which he had at first been bound. The Lydian envoys were
instructed, after exhibiting to the god these humiliating memorials, to ask
whether it was his custom to deceive his benefactors, and whether he was not
ashamed to have encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous?
The god, condescending to justify himself by the lips of the priestess,
replied: “Not even a god can escape his destiny Croesus has suffered for the
sin of his fifth ancestor (Gyges), w ho, conspiring with a woman, slew his
master and wrongfully seized the sceptre. Apollo
employed all his influence with that Moerea (Fates)
to obtain that this sin might be expiated by the children of Croesus, and not
by Croesus himself; but the Moerae would grant nothing more than a postponement
of the judgment for three years. Let Croesus know that Apollo has thus procured
for him a reign three years longer than his original destiny, after having
tried in vain to rescue him altogether. Moreover, he sent that rain which at
the critical moment extinguished the burning pile. Nor has Croesus any right to
complain of the prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on the war; for
when the god told him, that he would subvert a great empire, it was his duty to
have again inquired which empire the god meant, and if he neither understood
the meaning, nor chose to ask for information, he has himself to blame for the
result. Besides. Croesus neglected the warning given to him, about the acquisition
of the Median kingdom by a mule: Cyrus was that mule,— son of a Median mother
of royal breed, by a Persian father, at once of different race and of lower
position.”
This
triumphant justification extorted even from Croesus himself a full confession,
that the sin lay with him, and not with the god. It certainly illustrates, in a
remarkable manner, the theological ideas of the time; and it shows us how
much, in the mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own,
unrecorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to cast
themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the historical web
being in part put together, in part originally spun, for the purpose of setting
forth the religious sentiment and doctrine woven in as a pattern. The Pythian
priestess predicts to Gyges that the crime which he had committed in
assassinating his master would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as
Herodotus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was at
last fulfilled: we see thus that the history of the first Mermnad king is made
up after the catastrophe of the last. There was something in the main facts of
the history of Croesus profoundly striking to the Greek mind: a king at the
summit of wealth and power,—pious in the extreme, and munificent towards the
gods,—the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia,—then precipitated, at
once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent
helped much towards the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to
exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed
prophecy. In the affecting story (discussed in a former chapter) of Solon and
Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction, because
he thought himself the happiest of mankind,—the gods not suffering anyone to be
arrogant except themselves; and the warning of Solon is made to recur to
Croesus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative of
Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just recounted, of
the relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. An account is provided,
satisfactory to the religious feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was
ruined,—but nothing less than the overruling and omnipotent Moerae could be
invoked to explain so stupendous a result.
It
is rarely that these supreme goddesses, or hyper-goddesses—since the gods
themselves must submit to them—are brought into such distinct light and action.
Usually, they are kept in the dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen
stumbling-block in cases of extreme incomprehensibility; and it is difficult
clearly to determine (as in the case of some complicated political constitutions)
where the Greeks conceived sovereign power to reside, m respect to the
government of the world. But here the sovereignty of the Moerae, and the
subordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth. Yet the gods are
still extremely powerful, because the Moerae comply with their requests up to
a certain point, not thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable; but their
compliance is carried no farther than they themselves choose. Nor would they,
even in deference to Apollo, alter the original sentence of punishment for the
sin of Gyges in the person of his fifth descendant,—a sentence, moreover,
which Apollo himself had formally prophesied shortly after the sin was
committed; so that, if the Moene had listened to his intercession on behalf of
Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been endangered. Their unalterable
resolution has predetermined the ruin of Croesus, and the grandeur of the event
is manifested by the circumstance, that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon
them to alter it, or to grant more than a three years’ respite. The religious
element must here be viewed as giving the form—the historical element as giving
the matter only, and not the whole matter—of the story; and these two elements
will be found conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of
Herodotus, though, as we descend to later times, we shall find the historical
element in constantly increasing proportion. His conception of history is
extremely different from that of Thucydides, who lays down to himself the true
scheme and purpose of the historian, common to him with the philosopher,—to
recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid towards the prevision of the
future.
The
destruction of the Lydian monarchy, and the establishment of the Persians at
Sardis—an event pregnant with consequences to Hellas generally—took place in
546 bc. Sorely did the Ionic Greeks now
repent that they had rejected the propositions made to them by Cyrus for
revolting from Croesus,—though at the time when these propositions were made,
it would have been highly imprudent to listen to them, since the Lydian power
might reasonably be looked upon as the stronger. As soon as Sardis had fallen,
they sent envoys to the conqueror, entreating that they might be enrolled as
his tributaries, on the footing which they had occupied under Croesus. The
reply was a stern and angry refusal, with the exception of the Milesians, to
whom the terms which they agreed were granted: why this favorable exception was
extended to them, we do not know. The hotel continental Ionians and Aeolians
(exclusive of Miletus, and exclusive also of the insular cities which the
Persians had nu mean of attacking), seized with alarm, began io put themselves in
a condition of defence: it seems that the Lydian king
had caused their fortifications to be wholly or partially dismantled, for we
are told that they now began to erect walls; and the Phocaeans especially
devoted to that purpose a present which they had received from the Iberian
Arganthonius, king of Tartessus. Besides thus strengthening their own cities,
they thought it advisable to send a joint embassy entreating aid from Sparta;
they doubtless were not unapprized that the Spartans
had actually equipped an army for the support of Croesus. Their deputies went
to Sparta, where the Phocaean Pythermus, appointed by
the rest to be spokesman, clothing himself in a purple robe, in order to
attract the largest audience possible, ser forth their pressing need of succor
against the impending danger. The Lacedaemonians refused the prayer;
nevertheless, they despatched to Phocaea some
commissioners to investigate the state of affairs,—who perhaps, persuaded by
the Phocaeans, sent Lakrines, one of their number, to
the conqueror at Sardis, to warn him that he should not lay hands on any city
of Hellas,—for the Lacedaemonians would not permit it. “Who are these
Lacedaemonians? (inquired Cyrus from some Greeks who stood near him)—how many
are there of them, that they venture to send me such a notice?”. Having
received the answer, wherein it was stated that the Lacedaemonians had a city
and a regular market at Sparta, he exclaimed: “I have never yet beer afraid of
men like these, who have a set place in the middle of their city, where they
meet to cheat one another and forswear themselves. If I live, they shall have
troubles of their own to talk about, apart from the Ionians.” To buy or sell,
appeared to the Persians a contemptible practice; for they carried out
consistency, one step farther, the principle upon which even many able Greeks
condemned the lending of money on interest; and the speech of Cyrus was
intended as a covert reproach of Grecian habits generally.
This
blank menace of Lakrines, an insulting provocation to
the enemy rather than a real support to the distressed, was the only benefit
which the Ionic Greeks derived from Sparta. They were left to defend themselves
as best they could against the conqueror; who presently, however, quitted
Sardis to prosecute in person his conquests in the East, leaving the Persian Tabalus with a garrison in the citadel, but consigning both
the large treasure captured, and the authority over the Lydian population, to
the Lydian Paktyas. As he carried away Croesus along
with him, he probably considered himself sure of the fidelity of those Lydians
whom the deposed monarch recommended. But he had not yet arrived at his own
capital, when he received the intelligence that Paktyas had revolted, arming the Lydian population, and employing the treasure, in his
charge to hire fresh troops. On hearing this news, Cyrus addressed himself to
Croesus, according to Herodotus, in terms of much wrath against the Lydians,
and even intimated that he should be compelled to sell them all as slaves. Upon
which Croesus, full of alarm for his people, contended strenuously that Paktyas alone was in fault, and deserving of punishment;
but he at the same time advised Cyrus to disarm the Lydian population, and to
enforce upon them effeminate attire, together with habits of playing on the
harp and shopkeeping. “By this process (he said) you will soon see them become
women instead of men.” This suggestion is said to have been accepted by Cyrus,
and executed by his general Mazares. The conversation here reported, and the
deliberate plan for enervating the Lydian character supposed to be pursued by
Cyrus, is evidently an hypothesis imagined by some of the contemporaries or
predecessors of Herodotus,—to explain the contrast between the Lydians whom
they saw before them, after two or three generations of slavery, and the old
irresistible horsemen of whom they heard in fame, at the time when Croesus was
lord from the Halys to the Aegean sea.
To
return to Paktyas,—he had commenced his revolt, come
down to the sea-coast, and employed the treasures of Sardis in levying a
Grecian mercenary force, with which he invested the place and blocked up the
governor Tabalus. But he manifested no courage worthy
of so dangerous an enterprise; for no sooner had he heard that the Median
general Mazares was approaching at the head of an army dispatched by Cyrus
against him, than he disbanded his force and fled to Kyme for protection as a suppliant. Presently, arrived a menacing summons from
Mazares, demanding that he should be given up forthwith, which plunged the Kymaeans into profound dismay; for the idea of giving up a
suppliant to destruction was shocking to Grecian sentiment. They sent to
solicit advice from the holy temple of Apollo, at Branchidae near Miletus; and
the reply directed, that Paktyas should be
surrendered. Nevertheless, so ignominious did such a surrender appear, that
Aristodikus and some other Kymaean citizens denounced
the messengers as liars, and required that a more trustworthy deputation should
be sent to consult the god. Aristodikus himself, forming one of the second
body, stated the perplexity to the oracle, and received a repetition of the
same answer; whereupon he proceeded to rob the birds’ nests which existed in
abundance in and about the temple. A voice from the inner oracular chamber
speedily arrested him, exclaiming: “Most impious of men, how darest thou to do such things? Wilt thou snatch my
suppliants from the temple itself?” Unabashed by the rebuke, Aristodikus
replied: “Master, thus dost thou help suppliants thyself: and dost thou command
the Kymaeans to give up a suppliant?” “Yes, I do
command it (rejoined the god forthwith), in order that the crime may bring
destruction upon you the sooner, and that you may not in future come to consult
the oracle upon the surrender of suppliants.”
The
ingenuity of Aristodikus completely nullified the oracular response, and left
the Kymaeans in their original perplexity. Not
choosing to surrender Paktyas, nor daring to protect
him against a besieging army, they sent him away to Mitylene, whither the
envoys of Mazares followed and demanded him; offering a reward so considerable,
that the Kymaeans became fearful of trusting them,
and again conveyed away the suppliant to Chios, where he took refuge in the
temple of Athene Poliuchus. But here again the pursuers
followed, and the Chians were persuaded to drag him from the temple and
surrender him, on consideration of receiving the territory of Atarneus (a
district on the continent over against the island of Lesbos) as purchase-money. Paktyas was thus seized and sent prisoner to Cyrus,
who had given the most express orders for this capture : hence the unusual
intensity of the pursuit. But it appears that the territory of Atarneus was
considered as having been ignominiously acquired by the Chians; none even of
their own citizens would employ any article of its produce for holy or
sacrificial purposes.
Mazaras next proceeded to the attack and
conquest of the Greeks on the coast; an enterprise which, since he soon died of
illness, was completed by his successor Harpagus. The towns assailed
successively made a gallant but ineffectual resistance; the Persian general by
his numbers drove the defenders within their walls, against which he piled up
mounds of earth, so as either to carry the place by storm or to compel
surrender. All of them were reduced, one after the other: with all, the terms
of subjection were doubtless harder than those which had been imposed upon
them by Croesus, because Cyrus had already refused to grant these terms to
them, with the single exception of Miletus, and because they had since given
additional offence by aiding the revolt of Paktyas.
The inhabitants of Priene were sold into slavery: they were the first assailed
by Mazares, and had perhaps been especially forward in the attack made by Paktyas on Sardis.
Among
these unfortunate towns, thus changing their master and passing out into a
harsher subjection, two deserve especial notice,— Teos and Phocaea. The
citizens of the former, so soon as the mound around their walls had rendered
farther resistance impossible, embarked and emigrated, some to Thrace, where
they founded Abdera, —others to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where they planted Phanagoria; a portion of them, however, must have remained
to take the chances of subjection, since the town appears in after-times still
peopled and still Hellenic.
The
fate of Phocaea, similar in the main, is given to us with more striking
circumstances of detail, and becomes the more interesting, since the
enterprising mariners who inhabited it had been the torch-bearers of Grecian
geographical discovery in the west. I have already described their adventurous
exploring voyages of former days into the interior of the Adriatic, and along
the whole northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Tartessus
(the region around and adjoining to Cadiz),—together with the favorable
reception given to them by old Arganthonius, king of the country, who invited
them to emigrate in a body to his kingdom, offering them the choice of any site
which they might desire. His invitation was declined, though probably the Phocaeans
may have subsequently regretted the refusal; and he then manifested his
good-will towards them by a large present to defray the expense of constructing
fortifications round their town. The walls, erected in part, by this aid, were both
extensive and well built; yet they could not hinder Harpagus from raising his
mounds of earth up against them, while he was politic enough at the same time
to tempt them with offers of a moderate capitulation; requiring only that they
should breach their walls in one place by pulling down one of the lowers, and
consecrate one building in the interior of the town as a token of subjection.
To accept these terms, was to submit themselves to the discretion of the
besieger, for there could be no security that they would be observed; and the
Phocaeans, while they asked for one day to deliberate upon their reply,
entreated that, during that day, Harpagus should withdraw his troops altogether
from the walls. With this demand the latter complied, intimating, at the same
time, that he saw clearly through the meaning of it. The Phocaeans had
determined that the inevitable servitude impending over their town should not
be shared by its inhabitants, and they employed their day of grace in
preparation for collective exile, putting on shipboard their wives and children
as well as their furniture and the movable decorations of their temples. They
then set sail for Chios, leaving to the conqueror a deserted town for the
occupation of a Persian garrison.
It
appears that the fugitives were not very kindly received at Chios; at least,
when they made a proposition for purchasing from the Chians the neighboring
islands of Oenussae as a permanent abode, the latter were induced to refuse by
apprehensions of commercial rivalry. It was necessary to look farther for a
settlement: and Arganthonius their protector, being now dead, Tartessus was no
longer inviting. Twenty years before, however, the colony of Alalia in the
island of Corsica had been founded from Phocaea by the direction of the oracle,
and thither the general body of Phocaeans now resolved to repair. Having
prepared their ships for this distant voyage, they first sailed back to Phocaea,
surprised the Persian garrison whom Harpagus had left in the town, and slew
them: they then sunk in the harbor a great lump of iron, and bound themselves
by a solemn and unanimous oath never again to see Phocaea until that iron
should come up to the surface. Nevertheless, in spite of the oath, the voyage
of exile had been scarcely begun when more than half of them repented of having
so bound themselves,—and became homesick. They broke their vow and returned to
Phocaea. But as Herodotus does not mention any divine judgment as having been
consequent on the perjury, we may, perhaps, suspect that some gray-headed
citizen, to whom transportation to Corsica might be little less than a sentence
of death, both persuaded himself, and certified to his companions, that he had
seen the sunken lump of iron raised up and floating for a while buoyant upon
the waves. Harpagus must have been induced to pardon the previous slaughter of
his Persian garrison, or at least to believe that it had been done by those Phocaeans
who still persisted in exile. He wanted tribute-paying subjects, not an empty
military post, and the repentant home-seekers were allowed to number
themselves among t he slaves of the Great King.
Meanwhile
the smaller but more resolute half of the Phocaeans executed their voyage to
Alalia in Corsica, with their wives and children, in sixty pentekonters, or
armed ships, and established themselves along with the previous settlers. They
remained there for five years, during which time their indiscriminate piracies
had become so intolerable (even at that time, piracy committed against a
foreign vessel seems to have been both frequent and practised without much disrepute), that both the Tyrrhenian seaports along the
Mediterranean coast of Italy, and the Carthaginians, united to put them down.
There subsisted particular treaties between these two, for the regulation of
the commercial intercourse between Africa and Italy, of which the ancient
treaty preserved by Polybius between Rome and Carthage (made in 509 bc) may be considered as a specimen. Sixty Carthaginian and as many Tuscan ships attacked the sixty Phocaean
ships near Alalia, and destroyed forty of them, yet not without such severe
loss to themselves that the victory was said to be on the side of the latter;
who, however, in spite of this Cadmean victory (so a battle was denominated in
which the victors lost more than the vanquished), were compelled to carry back
their remaining twenty vessels to Alalia, and to retire with their wives and
families, in so far as room could be found for them, to Rhegium. At last, these
unhappy exiles found a permanent home by establishing the new settlement of
Elea, or Velia, in the gulf of Policastro, on the Italian coast (then called Oenotrian) southward from Poseidonia,
or Paestum. It is probable that they were here joined by other exiles from
Ionia, in particular by the Colophonian philosopher and poet Xenophanes, from
whom what was afterwards called the Eleatic school of philosophy, distinguished
both for bold consistency and dialectic acuteness, took its rise. The Phocaean
captives, taken prisoners in the naval combat by Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians,
were stoned to death; but a divine judgment overtook the Tyrrhenian town of Agylla, in consequence of this cruelty; and even in the
time of Herodotus, a century afterwards, the Agyllaeans were still expiating the sin by a periodical solemnity and agon, pursuant to
the penalty which the Delphian oracle had imposed upon them.
Such
was the fate of the Phocaean exiles, while their brethren at home remained as
subjects of Harpagus, in common with all the other Jonic and Aeolic Greeks
except Miletus. For even the insular inhabitants of Lesbos and Chios, though
not assailable by sea, since the Persians had no fleet, thought it better to
renounce their independence and enrol themselves as
Persian subjects,—both of them possessing strips of the mainland which they
were unable to protect otherwise. Samos, on the other hand, maintained its
independence, and even reached, shortly after this period, under the despotism
of Polycrates, a higher degree of power than ever. Perhaps the humiliation of
the other maritime Greeks around may have rather favored the ambition of this
unscrupulous prince, to whom I shall revert presently. But we may readily
conceive that the public solemnities in which the Ionic Greeks intermingled,
in place of those gay and richly-decked crowds which the Homeric hymn describes
in the preceding century as assembled at Delos, presented scenes of marked
despondency: one of their wisest men, indeed, Bias of Priene, went so far as to
propose, at the Pan-Ionic festival, a collective emigration of the entire
population of the Ionic towns to the island of Sardinia. Nothing like freedom,
he urged, was now open to them in Asia; but in Sardinia, one great Pan-Ionic
city might be formed, which would not only be free herself, but mistress of her
neighbors. The proposition found no favor; the reason of which is sufficiently
evident from the narrative just given respecting the unconquerable local
attachment on the part of the Phocaean majority. But Herodotus bestows upon it
the most unqualified commendation, and regrets that it was not acted upon. Had
such been the case, the subsequent history of Carthage, Sicily, and even Home,
might have been sensibly altered.
Thus
subdued by Harpagus, the Ionic and Aeolic Greeks were employed as auxiliaries
to him in the conquest of the southwestern inhabitants of Asia Minor,—Carians, Kaunians, Lycians, and Doric Greeks of Cnidus and
Halikarnassus. Of the fate of the latter town, Herodotus tells us nothing,
though it was his native place. The inhabitants of Cnidus, a place situated on
a long outlying tongue of land, at first tried to cut through the narrow
isthmus which joined them to the continent, but abandoned the attempt with a
facility which Herodotus explains by referring it to a prohibition of the
oracle: nor did either the Carians or the Kaunians offer any serious resistance. The Lycians only, in their chief town Xanthus,
made a desperate defence. Having in vain tried to
repel the assailants in the open field, and finding themselves blocked up in
their city, they set fire to it with their own hands; consuming in the flames
their women, children, and servants, while the armed citizens marched out and
perished to a man in combat with the enemy. Such an act of brave
and even ferocious despair is not in the Grecian character. In recounting,
however, the languid defence and easy submission of
the Greeks of Cnidus, it may surprise us to call to mind that they were Dorians
and colonists from Sparta. So that the want of steadfast courage, often imputed
to Ionic Greeks as compared to Dorian, ought properly to be charged on Asiatic
Greeks as compared with European; or rather upon that mixture of indigenous
with Hellenic population, which all the Asiatic colonies, in common with most
of the other colonies, presented, and which in Halikarnassus was particularly
remarkable; for it seems to hat e been half Karian, half Dorian, and was even
governed by a line of Karian despots.
Harpagus
and the Persians thus mastered, without any considerable resistance, the
western and southern portions of Asia Minor; probably, also, though we have no
direct account of it, the entire territory within the Halys which had before
been ruled by Croesus. The tributes of the conquered Greeks were transmitted to
Ecbatana instead of to Sardis. While Harpagus was thus employed, Cyrus himself
had been making still more extensive conquests in Upper Asia and Assyria, of
which I shall speak in the coming chapter.
|
