THE GREEKS IN THE ORIENT
ASIA BEFORE ALEXANDER
=Decadence of the Persian Empire.=--The Greeks, engaged in strife,
ceased to attack the Great King; they even received their orders from
him. But the Persian empire still continued to become enfeebled. The
satraps no longer obeyed the government; each had his court, his
treasure, his army, made war according to his fancy, and in short,
became a little king in his province. When the Great King desired to
remove a satrap, he had scarcely any way of doing it except by
assassinating him. The Persians themselves were no longer that nation
before which all the Asiatic peoples were wont to tremble. Xenophon, a
Greek captain, who had been in their pay, describes them as follows:
"They recline on tapestries wearing gloves and furs. The nobles, for
the sake of the pay, transform their porters, their bakers, and cooks
into knights--even the valets who served them at table, dressed them
or perfumed them. And so, although their armies were large, they were
of no service, as is apparent from the fact that their enemies
traversed the empire more freely than their friends. They no longer
dared to fight. The infantry as formerly was equipped with buckler,
sword, and axe, but they had no courage to use them. The drivers of
chariots before facing the enemy basely allowed themselves to be
overthrown at once or leaped down from the cars, so that these being
no longer under control injured the Persians more than the enemy. For
the rest, the Persians do not disguise their military weakness, they
concede their inferiority and do not dare to take the field except
there are Greeks in their army. They have for their maxim 'never to
fight Greeks without Greek auxiliaries on their side.'"
=Expedition of the Ten Thousand.=--This weakness was very apparent
when in 400 Cyrus, brother of the Great King Artaxerxes, marched
against him to secure his throne. There were then some thousands of
adventurers or Greek exiles who hired themselves as mercenaries. Cyrus
retained ten thousand of them. Xenophon, one of their number, has
written the story of their expedition.
This army crossed the whole of Asia even to the Euphrates without
resistance from any one.[95] They at last came to battle near Babylon.
The Greeks according to their habit broke into a run, raising the
war-cry. The barbarians took flight before the Greeks had come even
within bow-shot. The Greeks followed in pursuit urging one another to
keep ranks.
When the war-chariots attacked them, they opened their ranks and let
them through. Not a Greek received the least stroke with the exception
of one only who was wounded with an arrow. Cyrus was killed; his army
disbanded without fighting, and the Greeks remained alone in the heart
of a hostile country threatened by a large army. And yet the Persians
did not dare to attack them, but treacherously killed their five
generals, twenty captains, and two hundred soldiers who had come to
conclude a truce.
The friendless mercenaries elected new chiefs, burned their tents and
their chariots, and began their retreat. They broke into the rugged
mountains of Armenia, and notwithstanding famine, snow, and the arrows
of the natives who did not wish to let them pass, they came to the
Black Sea and returned to Greece after traversing the whole Persian
empire. At their return (399) their number amounted still to 8,000.
=Agesilaus.=--Three years after, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, with a
small army invaded the rich country of Asia Minor, Lydia, and Phrygia.
He fought the satraps and was about to invade Asia when the Spartans
ordered his return to fight the armies of Thebes and Athens. Agesilaus
was the first of the Greeks to dream of conquering Persia. He was
distressed to see the Greeks fighting among themselves. When they
announced to him the victory at Corinth where but eight Spartans had
perished and 10,000 of the enemy, instead of rejoicing he sighed and
said, "Alas, unhappy Greece, to have lost enough men to have
subjugated all the barbarians!" He refused one day to destroy a Greek
city. "If we exterminate all the Greeks who fail of their duty," said
he, "where shall we find the men to vanquish the barbarians?" This
feeling was rare at that time. In relating these words of Agesilaus
Xenophon, his biographer, exclaims, "Who else regarded it as a
misfortune to conquer when he was making war on peoples of his own
race?"
CONQUEST OF ASIA BY ALEXANDER
=Macedon.=--Sparta and Athens, exhausted by a century of wars, had
abandoned the contest against the king of Persia. A new people resumed
it and brought it to an end; these were the Macedonians. They were a
very rude people, crude, similar to the ancient Dorians, a people of
shepherds and soldiers. They lived far to the north of Greece in two
great valleys that opened to the sea. The Greeks had little regard for
them, rating them as half barbarians; but since the kings of Macedon
called themselves sons of Herakles they had been permitted to run
their horses in the races of the Olympian games. This gave them
standing as Greeks.
=Philip of Macedon.=--These kings ruling in the interior, remote from
the sea, had had but little part in the wars of the Greeks. But in 359
B.C. Philip ascended the throne of Macedon, a man young, active, bold,
and ambitious. Philip had three aims:
1. To develop a strong army;
2. To conquer all the ports on the coast of Macedon;
3. To force all the other Greeks to unite under his command
against the Persians.
He consumed twenty-four years in fulfilling these purposes and
succeeded in all. The Greeks let him alone, often even aided him; in
every city he bribed partisans who spoke in his favor. "No fortress is
impregnable," said he, "if only one can introduce within it a mule
laden with gold." And by these means he took one after another all the
cities of northern Greece.
=Demosthenes.=--The most illustrious opponent of Philip was the orator
Demosthenes. The son of an armorer, he was left an orphan at the age
of seven, and his guardians had embezzled a part of his fortune. As
soon as he gained his majority he entered a case against them and
compelled them to restore the property. He studied the orations of
Isaeus and the history of Thucydides which he knew by heart. But when
he spoke at the public tribune he was received with shouts of
laughter; his voice was too feeble and his breath too short. For
several years he labored to discipline his voice. It is said that he
shut himself up for months with head half shaved that he might not be
tempted to go out, that he declaimed with pebbles in his mouth, and on
the sea-shore, in order that his voice might rise above the uproar of
the crowd. When he reappeared on the tribune, he was master of his
voice, and, as he preserved the habit of carefully preparing all his
orations, he became the most finished and most potent orator of
Greece.
The party that then governed Athens, whose chief was Phocion, wished
to maintain the peace: Athens had neither soldiers nor money enough to
withstand the king of Macedon. "I should counsel you to make war,"
said Phocion, "when you are ready for it." Demosthenes, however,
misunderstood Philip, whom he regarded as a barbarian; he placed
himself at the service of the party that wished to make war on him and
employed all his eloquence to move the Athenians from their policy of
peace. For fifteen years he seized every occasion to incite them to
war; many of his speeches have no other object than an attack on
Philip. He himself called these Philippics, and there are three of
them. (The name Olynthiacs has been applied to the orations delivered
with the purpose of enlisting the Athenians in the aid of Olynthus
when it was besieged by Philip.) The first Philippic is in 352. "When,
then, O Athenians, will you be about your duty? Will you always roam
about the public places asking one of another: What is the news? Ah!
How can there be anything newer than the sight of a Macedonian
conquering Athens and dominating Greece? I say, then, that you ought
to equip fifty galleys and resolve, if necessary, to man them
yourselves. Do not talk to me of an army of 10,000 or of 20,000 aliens
that exists only on paper. I would have only citizen soldiers."
In the third Philippic (341) Demosthenes calls to the minds of the
Athenians the progress made by Philip, thanks to their inaction. "When
the Greeks once abused their power to oppress others, all Greece rose
to prevent this injustice; and yet today we suffer an unworthy
Macedonian, a barbarian of a hated race, to destroy Greek cities,
celebrate the Pythian games, or have them celebrated by his slaves.
And the Greeks look on without doing anything, just as one sees hail
falling while he prays that it may not touch him. You let increase his
power without taking a step to stop it, each regarding it as so much
time gained when he is destroying another, instead of planning and
working for the safety of Greece, when everybody knows that the
disaster will end with the inclusion of the most remote."
At last, when Philip had taken Elatea on the borders of Boeotia, the
Athenians, on the advice of Demosthenes, determined to make war and to
send envoys to Thebes. Demosthenes was at the head of the embassy; he
met at Thebes an envoy come from Philip; the Thebans hesitated.
Demosthenes besought them to bury the old enmities and to think only
of the safety of Greece, to defend its honor and its history. He
persuaded them to an alliance with Athens and to undertake the war. A
battle was fought at Chaeronea in Boeotia, Demosthenes, then at the age
of forty-eight, serving as a private hostile. But the army of the
Athenians and Thebans, levied in haste, was not equal to the veterans
of Philip and was thrown into rout.
=The Macedonian Supremacy.=--Philip, victorious at Chaeronea, placed a
garrison in Thebes and offered peace to Athens. He then entered the
Peloponnesus and was received as a liberator among the peoples whom
Sparta had oppressed. From this time he met with no resistance. He
came to Corinth and assembled delegates from all the Greek states
(337)[96] except Sparta.
Here Philip published his project of leading a Greek army to the
invasion of Persia. The delegates approved the proposition and made a
general confederation of all the Greek states. Each city was to govern
itself and to live at peace with its neighbors. A general council was
initiated to prevent wars, civil dissensions, proscriptions, and
confiscations.
This confederacy made an alliance with the king of Macedon and
conferred on him the command of all the Greek troops and navies. Every
Greek was prohibited making war on Philip on pain of banishment.
=Alexander.=--Philip of Macedon was assassinated in 336. His son
Alexander was then twenty years old. Like all the Greeks of good
family he was accustomed to athletic exercises, a vigorous fighter, an
excellent horseman (he alone had been able to master Bucephalus, his
war-horse). But at the same time he was informed in politics, in
eloquence, and in natural history, having had as teacher from his
thirteenth to his seventeenth year Aristotle, the greatest scholar of
Greece. He read the Iliad with avidity, called this the guide to the
military art, and desired to imitate its heroes. He was truly born to
conquer, for he loved to fight and was ambitious to distinguish
himself. His father said to him, "Macedon is too small to contain
you."
=The Phalanx.=--Philip left a powerful instrument of conquest, the
Macedonian army, the best that Greece had seen. It comprised the
phalanx of infantry and a corps of cavalry.
The phalanx of Macedonians was formed of 16,000 men ranged with 1,000
in front and 16 men deep. Each had a sarissa, a spear about twenty
feet in length. On the field of battle the Macedonians, instead of
marching on the enemy facing all in the same direction, held
themselves in position and presented their pikes to the enemy on all
sides, those in the rear couching their spears above the heads of the
men of the forward ranks. The phalanx resembled "a monstrous beast
bristling with iron," against which the enemy was to throw itself.
While the phalanx guarded the field of battle, Alexander charged the
enemy at the head of his cavalry. This Macedonian cavalry was a
distinguished body formed of young nobles.
=Departure of Alexander.=--Alexander started in the spring of 334 with
30,000 infantry (the greater part of these Macedonians) and 4,500
knights; he carried only seventy talents (less than eighty thousand
dollars) and supplies for forty days. He had to combat not only the
crowd of ill-armed peoples such as Xerxes had brought together, but an
army of 50,000 Greeks enrolled in the service of the Great King under
a competent general, Memnon of Rhodes. These Greeks might have
withstood the invasion of Alexander, but Memnon died and his army
dispersed. Alexander, delivered from his only dangerous opponent,
conquered the Persian empire in two years.
=Victories of Granicus, Issus, and Arbela.=--Three victories gave the
empire to Alexander. In Asia Minor he overthrew the Persian troops
stationed behind the river Granicus (May, 333). At Issus, in the
ravines of Cilicia, he routed King Darius and his army of 600,000 men
(November, 333). At Arbela, near the Tigris, he scattered and
massacred a still more numerous army (331).
This was a repetition of the Median wars. The Persian army was ill
equipped and knew nothing of manoeuvring; it was embarrassed with its
mass of soldiers, valets, and baggage. The picked troops alone gave
battle, the rest were scattered and massacred. Between the battles the
conquest was only a triumphal progress. Nobody resisted (except the
city of Tyre, commercial rival of the Greeks); what cared the peoples
of the empire whether they were subject to Darius or Alexander? Each
victory gave Alexander the whole of the country: the Granicus opened
Asia Minor, Issus Syria and Egypt, Arbela the rest of the empire.
=Death of Alexander.=--Master now of the Persian empire Alexander
regarded himself as the heir of the Great King. He assumed Persian
dress, adopted the ceremonies of the Persian court and compelled his
Greek generals to prostrate themselves before him according to Persian
usage. He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his
officers to daughters of the Persian nobles. He aimed to extend his
empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even
to India, warring with the combative natives. After his return with
his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three,
succumbing to a fever of brief duration (323).
=Projects of Alexander.=--It is very difficult to know exactly what
Alexander's purposes were. Did he conquer for the mere pleasure of it?
Or did he have a plan? Did he wish to fuse into one all the peoples of
his empire? Was he following the example already set him by Persia? Or
did he, perhaps, imitate the Great King simply for vain-glory? And so
of his intentions we know nothing. But his acts had great results. He
founded seventy cities--many Alexandrias in Egypt, in Tartary, and
even in India. He distributed to his subjects the treasures that had
been uselessly hoarded in the chests of the Great King. He stimulated
Greek scholars to study the plants, the animals, and the geography of
Asia. But what is of special importance, he prepared the peoples of
the Orient to receive the language and customs of the Greeks. This is
why the title "Great" has been assigned to Alexander.
THE HELLENES IN THE ORIENT
=Dissolution of the Empire of Alexander.=--Alexander had united under
one master all the ancient world from the Adriatic to the Indus, from
Egypt to the Caucasus. This vast empire endured only while he lived.
Soon after his death his generals disputed as to who should succeed
him; they made war on one another for twenty years, at first under the
pretext of supporting some one of the house of Alexander--his brother,
his son, his mother, his sisters or one of his wives, later openly in
their own names.
Each had on his side a part of the Macedonian army or some of the
Greek mercenary soldiers. The Greeks were thus contending among
themselves who should possess Asia. The inhabitants were indifferent
in these wars as they had been in the strife between the Greeks and
the Persians. When the war ceased, there remained but three generals;
from the empire of Alexander each of them had carved for himself a
great kingdom: Ptolemy had Egypt, Seleucus Syria, Lysimachus
Macedonia. Other smaller kingdoms were already separated or detached
themselves later: in Europe Epirus; in Asia Minor, Pontus, Bithynia,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Pergamos; in Persia, Bactriana and Parthia. Thus
the empire of Alexander was dismembered.
=The Hellenistic Kingdoms.=--In these new kingdoms the king was a
Greek; accustomed to speak Greek, to adore the Greek gods, and to live
in Greek fashion, he preserved his language, his religion, and his
customs. His subjects were Asiatics, that is to say, barbarians; but
he sought to maintain a Greek court about him; he recruited his army
with Greek mercenaries, his administrative officers were Greeks, he
invited to his court Greek poets, scholars, and artists.
Already in the time of the Persian kings there were many Greeks in the
empire as colonists, merchants, and especially soldiers. The Greek
kings attracted still more of these. They came in such numbers that at
last the natives adopted the costume, the religion, the manners, and
even the language of the Greeks. The Orient ceased to be Asiatic, and
became Hellenic. The Romans found here in the first century B.C. only
peoples like the Greeks and who spoke Greek.[97]
=Alexandria.=--The Greek kings of Egypt, descendants of Ptolemy,[98]
accepted the title of Pharaoh held by the ancient kings, wore the
diadem, and, like the earlier sovereigns, had themselves worshipped
as children of the Sun. But they surrounded themselves with Greeks
and founded their capital on the edge of the sea in a Greek city,
Alexandria, a new city established by the order of Alexander.
Built on a simple plan, Alexandria was more regular than other Greek
cities. The streets intersected at right angles; a great highway 100
feet broad and three and one-half miles in length traversed the whole
length of the city. It was bordered with great monuments--the Stadium
where the public games were presented, the Gymnasium, the Museum, and
the Arsineum. The harbor was enclosed with a dike nearly a mile long
which united the mainland to the island of Pharos. At the very
extremity of this island a tower of marble was erected, on the summit
of which was maintained a fire always burning to guide the mariners
who wished to enter the port. Alexandria superseded the Phoenician
cities and became the great port of the entire world.
=The Museum.=--The Museum was an immense edifice of marble connected
with the royal palace. The kings of Egypt purposed to make of it a
great scientific institution.
The Museum contained a great library.[99] The chief librarian had a
commission to buy all the books that he could find. Every book that
entered Egypt was brought to the library; copyists transcribed the
manuscript and a copy was rendered the owner to indemnify him. Thus
they collected 400,000 volumes, an unheard-of number before the
invention of printing. Until then the manuscripts of celebrated books
were scarce, always in danger of being lost; now it was known where to
find them. In the Museum were also a botanical and zooelogical garden,
an astronomical observatory, a dissecting room established
notwithstanding the prejudices of the Egyptians, and even a chemical
laboratory.[100]
The Museum provided lodgings for scholars, mathematicians,
astronomers, physicians, and grammarians. They were supported at the
expense of the state; often to show his esteem for them the king dined
with them. These scholars held conferences and gave lectures. Auditors
came from all parts of the Greek world; it was to Alexandria that the
youth were sent for instruction. In the city were nearly 14,000
students.
The Museum was at once a library, an academy, and a school--something
like a university. This sort of institution, common enough among us,
was before that time completely unheard of. Alexandria, thanks to its
Museum, became the rendezvous for all the Orientals--Greeks,
Egyptians, Jews, and Syrians; each brought there his religion, his
philosophy, his science, and all were mingled together. Alexandria
became and remained for several centuries the scientific and
philosophical capital of the world.
=Pergamum.=--The kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor was small and weak.
But Pergamum, its capital, was, like Alexandria, a city of artists and
of letters. The sculptors of Pergamum constituted a celebrated school
in the third century before our era.[101] Pergamum, like Alexandria,
possessed a great library where King Attalus had assembled all the
manuscripts of the ancient authors.
It was at Pergamum that, to replace the papyrus on which down to that
time they used to write, they invented the art of preparing skins.
This new paper of Pergamum was the parchment on which the manuscripts
of antiquity have been preserved.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] An episode told by Xenophon shows what fear the Greeks inspired.
One day, to make a display before the queen of Cilicia, Cyrus had his
Greeks drawn up in battle array. "They all had their brazen helmets,
their tunics of purple, their gleaming shields and greaves. The trumpet
sounded, and the soldiers, with arms in action, began the charge;
hastening their steps and raising the war-cry, they broke into a run.
The barbarians were terrified; the Cilician queen fled from her chariot,
the merchants of the market abandoning their goods took to flight, and
the Greeks returned with laughter to their tents."
[96] There were two assemblies in Corinth--the first in, 338, the second
in 337.--ED.
[97] The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles composed in Asia Minor
were written in Greek.
[98] They were called Lagidae from the father of Ptolemy I.
[99] The library of the Museum was burnt during the siege of Alexandria
by Caesar. But it had a successor in the Serapeum which contained 300,000
volumes. This is said to have been burnt in the seventh century by the
Arabs. [The tale of the destruction of the library under orders of Omar
is doubtful.--ED.]
[100] King Ptolemy Philadelphus who had great fear of death passed many
years searching for an elixir of life.
[101] There still remain to us some of the statues executed by the
orders of King Attalus to commemorate his victory over the Gauls of
Asia.