inform her pupil that the Olympic games, celebrated near the town of
Olympia, recurred every fifth year; that is to say, there was a clear
interval of four years between each revolution of the games. Each
Olympiad, therefore, containing four years, it is usual in citing the
particular Olympiad in which an event happened, to cite also the year,
should that be known, or, being known, should that be of importance.
Thus Olymp. CX. 3 would mean that such a thing, say X, occurred in the
third year of the 110th Olympiad; that is, four times 110 will be 440;
and this, deducted from 777 (the era of the Olympiads), leaves 337 years
B.C. as the era when X occurred. Only that, upon reviewing the case, we
find that the 110th Olympiad was not absolutely completed, not by one
year; which, subtracted from the 337, leaves 336 B.C. as the true date.
If her pupil should say, 'But were there no great events in Greece
before the Olympiads?' the teacher will answer, 'Yes, a few, but not
many of a rank sufficient to be called Grecian.' They are merely local
events; events of Thessaly, suppose; events of Argos; but much too
obscure, both as to the facts, as to the meaning of the facts, and as to
the dates, to be worth any student's serious attention. There were,
however, three events worthy to be called _Grecian_; partly because
they interested more States than one of Greece; and partly because they
have since occupied the Athenian stage, and received a sort of
consecration from the great masters of Grecian tragedy. These three
events were the fatal story of the house of Oedipus; a story
stretching through three generations; and in which the war against the
Seven Gates of Thebes was but an episode. Secondly, the Argonautic
expedition (voyage of the ship _Argo_, and of the sailors in that ship,
_i.e._, the Argonauts), which is consecrated as the first voyage of any
extent undertaken by Greeks. Both these events are as full of heroic
marvels, and of supernatural marvels, as the legends of King Arthur,
Merlin, and the Fairy Morgana. Later than these absolute romances comes
the semi-romance of the Iliad, or expedition against Troy. This, the
most famous of all Pagan romances, we know by two separate criteria to
be later in date than either of the two others; first, because the
actors in the Iliad are the descendants of those who figured as actors
in the others; secondly, from the subdued tone of the romantic[38] which
prevails throughout the Iliad. Now, with respect to these three events
in Grecian history, anterior to the Olympiads, which are all that a
young student ought to notice, it is sufficient if generally she is made
aware of the order in which they stand to each other, or, at least, that
the Iliad comes last in the series, and if as to this last and greatest
of the series, she fixes its era precisely to one thousand years before
Christ. Chronologers, indeed, sometimes bring it down to something
lower. But one millennium, the clear unembarrassed cyphers of 1,000,
whether in counting guineas or years, is a far simpler and a far more
rememberable era than any qualifications of this round number; which
qualifications, let it not for a moment be forgotten, are not at all
better warranted than the simpler expression. One only amongst all
chronologers has anything to stand upon that is not as unsubstantial as
a cloud; and this is Sir Isaac Newton. And the way in which he proceeded
it may be well to explain, in order that the young pupil may see what
sort of evidences we have _prior to the Olympiads_ for any chronological
fact. Sir Isaac endeavoured by calculating backwards to ascertain the
exact time of some celestial phenomenon--as, suppose, an eclipse of the
sun, or such and such positions of the heavenly bodies with regard to
each other. This phenomenon, whatever it were, call X. Then if (upon
looking into the Argonautic Expedition or any other romance of those
elder times) he finds X actually noticed as co-existing with any part of
the adventures, in that case he has fixed by absolute observation, as it
were, what we may call the latitude and longitude of that one historical
event; and then using this, as we use our modern meridian of Greenwich,
as a point of starting, he can deduce the distances of all subsequent
events by tracing them through the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons
of the several actors concerned. The great question which will then
remain to be settled is, how many years to allow for a generation; and,
secondly, in monarchies, how much to allow for a reign, since often two
successive reigns will not be two successive generations, because whilst
the two reigns are distinct quantities, the two lives are coincident
through a great part of their duration. Now, of course, Sir Isaac is
very often open to serious criticism, or to overpowering doubts. That is
inevitable. But on the whole he treads upon something like a firm
footing. Others, as regards that era, tread upon mere clouds, and their
authority goes for nothing at all.
Such being the state of the case, let the pupil never trouble her memory
for one moment with so idle an effort as that of minutely fixing or
retaining dates that, after all, are more doubtful, and for us
irrecoverable, than the path of some obscure trading ship in some past
generation through the Atlantic Ocean. Generally, it will be quite near
enough to the truth if she places upon the meridian of 1000 years B.C.
the three Romances--Argonautic, Theban, Trojan; and she will then have
the satisfaction of finding that, as at the opening of authentic
history, she found the Roman, the Greek, and the Asiatic inaugural
events coinciding in the same exact focus, so in these semi-fabulous or
ante-Olympian events, she finds that one and the same effort of memory
serves to register _them_, and also the most splendid of the Jewish
eras--that of David and Solomon. The round sum of 1000 years B.C., so
easily remembered, without distinction, without modification, '_sans
phrase_' (to quote a brutal regicide), serves alike for the Seven-gated
Thebes,[39] for Troy, and for Jerusalem in its most palmy days.
V. _A Perplexity Cleared Up._--Before passing onward here, it is highly
important to notice a sort of episode in history, which fills up the
interval between 777 and 555, but which is constantly confounded and
perplexed with what took place before 777.
The word _Assyria_ is that by which the perplexity is maintained. The
Assyrian empire, as the pupil is told, was destroyed in the person of
Sardanapalus. Yet, in her Bible, she reads of Sennacherib, King of
Assyria. 'Was Sennacherib, then, before Sardanapalus?' she will ask; and
her teacher will inform her that he was not.
Such things puzzle her. They seem palpable contradictions. But now let
her understand that out of the Assyrian empire split off three separate
kingdoms, of which one was called the Assyrian, not empire, but kingdom;
there lurks the secret of the error. And to this kingdom of Assyria it
was that Sennacherib belonged. Or, in order to represent by a sensible
image this derivation of kingdoms from the stock of the old
superannuated Assyrian empire (to which belonged Nimrod, Ninus, and
Semiramis--those mighty phantoms, with their incredible armies); let her
figure to herself some vast river, like the Nile or the Ganges, with the
form assumed by its mouths. Often it will happen, where such a river is
not hemmed in between rocks, or confined to the bed of a particular
valley, that, perhaps, a hundred or two of miles before reaching the
sea, upon coming into a soft, alluvial soil, it will force several
different channels for itself. As these must make angles to each other,
in order to form different roads, the land towards the disemboguing of
the river will take the arrangement of a triangle. And as that happens
to be the form of a Greek capital D (in the Greek alphabet called
Delta), it has been usual to call such an arrangement of a great river's
mouth a Delta.
Now, then, let her think of the Assyrian empire under the notion of the
Nile, descending from far distant regions, and from fountains that were
concealed for ages, if even now discovered. Then, when it approaches
the sea, and splits up its streams, so as to form a Delta, let her
regard that Delta as the final state of the Assyrian power, the kingdom
state lasting for about two centuries until swallowed up altogether, and
remoulded into unity by the Persian empire.
The Delta, therefore, or the Nile dividing into three streams, will
represent the three kingdoms formed out of the ruins of the Assyrian
empire, when falling to pieces by the death of Sardanapalus. One of
these three kingdoms is often called the Median; one the Chaldæan; and
the third is called the Assyrian kingdom. But the most rememberable
shape in which they can be recalled is, perhaps, by the names of their
capitals. The capital cities were as follows: of the first, _Ecbatana_,
which is the modern _Hamadan_; of the second, _Babylon_, on the
Euphrates, of which the ruins have been fully ascertained in our own
times; at present, nothing remains _but_ ruins, and these ruins are
dangerous to visit, both from human marauders prowling in that
neighbourhood, and from wild beasts of the most formidable class, which
are so little disturbed in their awful lairs, that they bask at noon-day
amongst the huge hills of half-vitrified bricks. Finally, of the third
kingdom, which still retained the name of Assyria, the metropolis was
_Nineveh_, on the Tigris, revealed by Layard.
These three kingdoms had some internal wars and revolutions during the
two centuries which elapsed from the great period 777 (the period of
Sardanapalus), until the days of Cyrus, the Persian. By that time the
three had become two, the kingdom of Nineveh had been swallowed up, and
Cyrus, who was destined to form the Persian empire upon their ruins,
found one change less to be effected than might have been looked for. Of
the two which remained, he conquered one, and the other came to him by
maternal descent. Thus he gained all three, and moulded them into one,
called Persia.
VI. _Five and Five and Five._--The crowning action in which Cyrus
figures is, therefore, that of conqueror of Babylon, and all the details
of his career point forward, like markings on the dial, towards that
great event, as full of interest for the imagination as any of the
events of pre-Christian history. I would fain for once by the aid of
metre, fix more firmly in the mind of the reader the grandeur and
imposing significance of this event:
Thus in Five and Five and Five did Cyrus the Great of Elam,[40]
On a festal night break in with roar of the fierce alalagmos.[41]
Over Babylonian walls, over tower and turret of entrance,
Over helmèd heads, and over the carnage of armies.
Idle the spearsman's spear, Assyrian scymitar idle;
Broken the bow-string lay of the Mesopotamian archer;
'Ride to the halls of Belshazzar, ride through the murderous uproar;
Ride to the halls of Belshazzar!' commanded Cyrus of Elam.
They rode to the halls of Belshazzar. Oh, merciful, merciful angels!
That prompt sweet tears to men, hang veils, hang drapery darkest,--
If any may hide or may pall this night's tempestuous horror.
Like a deluge the army poured in on their snorting Bactrian horses,
Rattled the Parthian quivers, rang the Parthian harness of iron,
High upon spears rode the torches, and from them in showery blazes
Rained splendour lurid and fierce on the dreamlike ruinous uproar,
Such as delusions often from fever's fierce vertical ardour
Show through the long-chambered halls and corridors endless,
Blazing with cruel light--show to the brain of the stricken man;
Such as the angel of dreams sometimes sends to the guilty.
Such light lay in open front, but palpable ebony blackness,
Sealed every far-off street in deep and awful abysses,
Out of which rose like phantoms, rose and sank as a sea-bird
Rises and sinks on the waves of a dim, tumultuous ocean,
Faces dabbled in blood, phantasmagory direful and scenic.
* * * * *
But where is Belshazzar the Lord? Has he fled? Has he found an asylum?
Or still does he pace in his palace, blind-seeming or moonstruck?
Still does he tread proudly the palace, fancy-deluded,
Prophets of falsehood trusting, or false Babylonian idols,
Defying the odious truth from the summit of empire!
Lo! at his palace gates the fierce Apollyon's great army,
With maces uplifted, stand to make way for great Cyrus of Elam.
Watching for signal from him whose truncheon this way or that bids:
'Strike!' said Cyrus the King. 'Strike!' said the princes of Elam;
And the brazen gates at the word, like flax that is broken asunder
By fire from earth or from heaven, snapped as a bulrush,
Snapped as a reed, as a wand, as the tiny toy of an infant.
Marvellous the sight that followed! Oh, most august revelation!
Mile-long were the halls that appeared, and open spaces enormous;
Areas fit to hold armies on the day of muster for battle;
Hosts upon either side, for amplest castrametation.
Depth behind depth, and dim labyrinthine apartments.
Golden galleries above running high into darkening vistas,
Staircases soaring and climbing, till sight grew dizzy with effort
Of chasing the corridors up to their whispering gloomy recesses.
Nations were ranged in the halls, nations ranged at a banquet,
Even then lightly proceeding with timbrel, dulcimer, hautboy,
Gong and loud kettledrum and fierce-blown tempestuous organ.
Banners floated in air, colossal embroidery tissues
Of Tyrian looms, scarlet, black, violet and amber,
Or the perfectest cunning of trained Babylonian artist,
Or massy embossed, from the volant shuttle of Phrygian.
Banners suspended in shade, or in the full glare of the lamplight,
Mid cressets and chandeliers by jewelly chains swinging pendant.
* * * * *
Draw a veil o'er the rout when advances great Cyrus of Elam,
Dusky-browed archers behind him, and spearmen before,
When he cries 'Strike!' and the gorgeously inlaid pavements
Run ruddy with blood of the festive Assyrians there.
VII.--_Greece and Rome._--My female readers, whom only I contemplate in
every line of this little work, and who would have a right to consider
it disrespectful if I were to leave a single word of Latin or Greek
unexplained, must understand that the Greeks, according to that
universal habit of viewing remote objects in a relation of ascent or
descent with respect to the observer, whence the 'going up to
Jerusalem,' and our own 'going up to London,' always figured a journey
eastwards, that is, directed towards the Euphrates or Tigris, or to any
part of Asia from Greece as tending _upwards_. In this mode of
conceiving their relations to the East, they were governed
semi-consciously by the sense of a vast presence beyond the
Tigris--glorified by grandeur and by distance--the golden city of Susa,
and the throne of the great king. Accordingly, the expedition therefore
of Cyrus the younger against his brother Artaxerxes was called by
Xenophon, when recording it, the Anabasis, or going up of Cyrus; and,
from the accident of its celebrity, this title has adhered to that
expedition; and to that book--as if either could claim it by some
exclusive title; whereas, on the contrary, the Katabasis, or going down,
furnishes by much the larger and the more interesting part of the work.
And, in any case, the title is open to all Asiatic expeditions
whatsoever; to the Trojan that just crossed the water, to the Macedonian
that went beyond the Indus. The word Anàbasis must have its accent on
the syllable _ab_, not on the penultimate syllable _as_.
In coming to the history of Imperial Rome, one is fortunately made
sensible at once of a vast advantage, which is this--that one is not
throwing away one's labour. Sad it is, after ploughing a stiff and
difficult clay, to find all at once that the whole is a task of so
little promise that perhaps, on the whole, one might as well have left
it untouched.
X. Yes, I remember that my cousin, Cecilia Dinbury, took the pains to
master--or perhaps one ought to say to _mistress_--the history.
L. No, to _miss_ it, is what one ought to say.
X. Fie, my dear second cousin--Fie, fie, if you please. To _miss_ it,
indeed! Ah, how we wished that we _had_ missed it. But we had no such
luck. There were we broiling through a hot, hot August, broiling away at
this intolerable stew of Iskis and Fuskis, and all to no end or use.
Granted that too often it is, or it may be so. But here we are safe. Who
can fancy or feel so much as the shadow of a demur, when peregrinating
Rome, that we might be losing our toil?
Now, then, in the highest spirits, let us open our studies. And first
let us map out a chart of the _personnel_ for pretty nearly a century.
Twelve Cæsars--the twelve first--should clearly of themselves make more
than a century. For I am sure all of you, except our two new friends,
know so much of arithmetic as that multiplication and division are a
great menace upon addition and subtraction. It is, therefore, a thing
most desirable to set up compound modes--short devices for abridging
these. Now 10 is the earliest number written with two digits: and the
higher the multiplier, so much harder, apparently, the process. Yet here
at least a great simplification offers. To multiply by 10, all you have
to do is to put a cipher after the multiplicand. Twenty-seven soldiers
are to have 10 guineas each, how much is required to pay all
twenty-seven? Why, 27 into 10 is 27 with a cipher at the end--27:0,
_i.e._, 270. _Ergo_, twelve Cæsars, supposing each to reign ten years,
would make, no, _should_ make, with anything like great lives--12:0,
_i.e._, 120 years. And when you consider that one of the twelve, viz.,
Augustus, singly, for _his_ share, contributed fifty and odd years, if
the other eleven had given ten each that would be 11:0; this would make
a total of about 170.
VIII.--_Beginning of Modern Era._--From the period of Justinian
commences a new era--an era of unusual transition. This is the broad
principle of change. Old things are decaying, new things are forming and
gathering. The lines of decay and of resurrection are moving visibly and
palpably to every eye in counteracting agency for one result--life and a
new truth for humanity. All the great armies of generous barbarians,
showing, by contrast with Rome and Greece, the opulence of teeming
nature as against the powers of form in utter superannuation, were now,
therefore, no longer moving, roaming, seeking--they had taken up their
ground; they were in a general process of castrametation, marking out
their alignments and deploying into open order upon ground now
permanently taken up for their settlement. The early trumpets, the
morning _réveillé_ of the great Christian nations--England, France,
Spain, Lombardy--were sounding to quarters. Franks had knit into one the
rudiments of a great kingdom upon the soil of France; the Saxons and
Angles, with some Vandals, had, through a whole century, been defiling
by vast trains into the great island which they were called by
Providence to occupy and to ennoble; the Vandals had seated themselves,
though in this case only with no definite hopes, along the extreme
region of the Barbary States. Vandals might and did survive for a
considerable period in ineffective fragments, but not as a power. The
Visigoths had quartered themselves on Spain, there soon to begin a
conflict for the Cross, and to maintain it for eight hundred years, and
finally to prevail. And lastly, the Lombards had thrown a network of
colonization over Italy, which, as much by the cohesions which it shook
loose and broke asunder as by the new one which it bred, exhibited a
power like that of the coral insects, and gave promise of a new empire
built out of floating dust and fragments.
The movements which formerly had resembled those gigantic pillars of
sand that mould themselves continually under the action of sun and wind
in the great deserts--suddenly showing themselves upon the remote
horizon, rear themselves silently and swiftly, then stalking forward
towards the affected caravan like a phantom phantasmagoria, approach,
manoeuvre, overshadow, and then as suddenly recede, collapse,
fluctuate, again to remould into other combinations and to alarm other
travellers--have passed. This vast structure of Central Europe had been
abandoned by all the greater tribes; they had crossed the vast barriers
of Western Europe--the Alps, the Vosges, the Pyrenees, the ocean--these
were now the wards within which they had committed their hopes and the
graves of their fathers. Social developments tended to the same, and no
longer either wishing or finding it possible to roam, they were all now,
through an entire century, taking up their ground and making good their
tumultuous irruptions; with the power of moving had been conjoined a
propensity to move. Rustic life, which must essentially have been
maintained on the great area of German vagrancy, was more and more
confirmed.
With this physical impossibility of roaming, and with the reciprocal
compression of each exercised on the other, coincided the new instincts
of civilization. They were no longer barbarous by a brutal and animal
barbarism. The deep soil of their powerful natures had long been budding
into nobler capacities, and had expanded into nobler perceptions.
Reverence for female dignity, a sentiment never found before in any
nation, gave a vernal promise of some higher humanity, on a wider scale
than had yet been exhibited. Strong sympathies, magnetic affinities,
prepared this great encampment of nations for Christianity. Their
nobility needed such a field for its expansion; Christianity needed such
a human nature for its evolution. The strong and deep nature of the
Teutonic tribes could not have been evolved, completed, without
Christianity. Christianity in a soil so shallow and unracy as the
Græco-Latin, could not have struck those roots which are immovable. The
ultimate conditions of the soil and the capacities of the culture must
have corresponded. The motions of Barbaria had hitherto indicated only
change; change without hope; confusion without tendencies; strife
without principle of advance; new births in each successive age without
principle of regeneration; momentary gain balanced by momentary loss;
the tumult of a tossing ocean which tends to none but momentary rest.
But now the currents are united, enclosed, and run in one direction, and
that is definite and combined.
Now truly began that modern era, of which we happily reap the harvest:
then were laid the first foundations of social order and the first
effective hint of that sense of mutual aid and dependence which has,
century by century, been creating such a balance and harmony of adjusted
operations--of agencies working night and day, which no man sees, for
services which no man creates: the agencies are like Ezekiel's
wheels--self-sustained; the services in which they labour have grown up
imperceptibly as the growth of a yew, and from a period as far removed
from cognizance. One man dies every hour out of myriads, his place is
silently supplied, and the mysterious economy thus propagates itself in
silence, like the motion of the planets, from age to age. Hands
innumerable are every moment writing summonses, returns, reports,
figures--records that would stretch out to the crack of doom, as yet
every year accumulated, written by professional men, corrected by
correctors, checked by controllers, and afterwards read by corresponding
men, re-read by corresponding controllers, passed and ratified by
corresponding ratifiers; and through this almighty pomp of wheels, whose
very whirling would be heard into other planets, did not the very
velocity of their motion seem to sleep on their soft axle, is the
business of this great nation, judicial, fixed, penal, deliberative,
statistical, commercial, all carried on without confusion, never
distracting one man by its might, nor molesting one man by its noise.
Now, in the semi-fabulous times of Egypt and Assyria, things were not so
managed. Ours are the ages of intellectual powers, of working by
equivalents and substitutions; but theirs were done by efforts of brute
power, possible only in the lowest condition of animal man, when all
wills converged absolutely in one, and when human life, cheap as dog's,
had left man in no higher a state of requirement, and had given up human
power to be applied at will--without art or skill.
Then the armies of a Semiramis even were in this canine state. It was
her curse to have subjects that had no elevation, swarming by myriads
like flies; mere animal life, the mere animal armies which she needed;
what she wanted was exactly what they would yield. To such cattle all
cares beyond that of mere provender were thrown away. Surgical care and
the ambulance, such as the elevation of man's condition, and the
solemnity of his rights, seen by the awful eye of Christianity, will
always require, were simply ridiculous. As well raise hospitals for
decayed butterflies. Provender was all: not _panem et circenses_--bread
and theatrical shows--but simply bread, and that wretched of its kind.
Drink was an ideal luxury. Was there not the Euphrates, was there not
the Tigris, the Aranes? The Roman armies carried _posca_ by way of such
luxury, a drink composed of vinegar and water. But as to Semiramis--what
need of the vinegar? And why carry the water? Could it not be found in
the Euphrates, etc.? Let the dogs lap at the Euphrates, and stay for
their next draught till they come to the Tigris or the Aranes. Or, if
they drank a river or so dry, and a million or two should die, what of
that? Let them go on to the Tigris, and thence to the Aranes, the Oxus,
or Indus. Clothes were dispensable from the climate, food only of the
lowest quality, and finally the whole were summoned only for one
campaign, and usually this was merely a sort of partisan camisade upon a
colossal scale, in which the superfluous population of one vast nation
threw themselves upon another. Mere momentum turned the scale; one
nuisance of superfluous humanity was discharged upon such another
nuisance, the one exterminating the other, or, if both by accident
should be exterminated, what mattered it? The major part of the two
nuisances, like algebraical quantities of plus and minus, extinguished
each other. And, in any case, the result, whatever it might be, of that
one campaign, which was rather a journey terminating in a bad battle of
mobs, than anything artificial enough to deserve the title of camp,
terminated the whole war. Here, at least, we see the determining impulse
of political economy intervening, coming round upon them, if it had not
been perceived before. If the two nations began their warfare, and
planned it in defiance of all common laws and exchequers, at any rate
the time it lasted was governed by that only. The same thing recurred in
the policy of the feudal ages; the bumpkins, the vassals, were compelled
to follow the standard, but their service was limited to a certain
number of weeks. Afterwards, by law, as well as by custom, they
dissolved for the autumnal labour of the harvest. And thus it was, until
the princes would allow of mercenary armies, no system of connecting
politics grew up in Europe, or could grow up; having no means of
fighting each other, they were like leopards in Africa gnawing at a
leopard in Asia; they fumed apart like planets that could not cross; a
vast revolution, which Robertson ascribes to the reign of Francis I.,
but which I, upon far better grounds and on speculations much more
exclusively pursued, date from the age of Louis XI. Differing in
everything, and by infinite degrees for the worse from these early
centuries, the age of Semiramis agreed in this--that if the non-culture
of the human race allowed them to break out into war with little or no
preparation but what each man personally could make, and if thus far
political economy did not greatly control the policy of nations, yet in
the reaction these same violated laws vindicated their force by sad
retributions. Famines, at all events dire exhaustion, invariably put an
end to such tumultuary wars, if they did not much control their
beginnings,[42] and periodically expressed their long retributory
convulsions.