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Makers of History
Xerxes
BY JACOB ABBOTT
WITH ENGRAVINGS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Copyright, 1878, by JACOB ABBOTT
[Illustration: ARTABANUS AND THE GHOST]
PREFACE.
One special object which the author of this series has had in view, in
the plan and method which he has followed in the preparation of the
successive volumes, has been to adapt them to the purposes of text-books
in schools. The study of a _general compend_ of history, such as is
frequently used as a text-book, is highly useful, if it comes in at the
right stage of education, when the mind is sufficiently matured, and has
acquired sufficient preliminary knowledge to understand and appreciate
so condensed a generalization as a summary of the whole history of a
nation contained in an ordinary volume must necessarily be. Without this
degree of maturity of mind, and this preparation, the study of such a
work will be, as it too frequently is, a mere mechanical committing to
memory of names, and dates, and phrases, which awaken no interest,
communicate no ideas, and impart no useful knowledge to the mind.
A class of ordinary pupils, who have not yet become much acquainted with
history, would, accordingly, be more benefited by having their attention
concentrated, at first, on detached and separate topics, such as those
which form the subjects, respectively, of these volumes. By studying
thus fully the history of individual monarchs, or the narratives of
single events, they can go more fully into detail; they conceive of the
transactions described as realities; their reflecting and reasoning
powers are occupied on what they read; they take notice of the motives
of conduct, of the gradual development of character, the good or ill
desert of actions, and of the connection of causes and consequences,
both in respect to the influence of wisdom and virtue on the one hand,
and, on the other, of folly and crime. In a word, their _minds_ and
_hearts_ are occupied instead of merely their memories. They reason,
they sympathize, they pity, they approve, and they condemn. They enjoy
the real and true pleasure which constitutes the charm of historical
study for minds that are mature; and they acquire a taste for truth
instead of fiction, which will tend to direct their reading into proper
channels in all future years.
The use of these works, therefore, as text-books in classes, has been
kept continually in mind in the preparation of them. The running index
on the tops of the pages is intended to serve instead of questions.
These captions can be used in their present form as _topics_, in respect
to which, when announced in the class, the pupils are to repeat
substantially what is said on the page; or, on the other hand, questions
in form, if that mode is preferred, can be readily framed from them by
the teacher. In all the volumes, a very regular system of division is
observed, which will greatly facilitate the assignment of lessons.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. THE MOTHER OF XERXES 13
II. EGYPT AND GREECE 33
III. DEBATE ON THE PROPOSED INVASION OF GREECE 56
IV. PREPARATIONS FOR THE INVASION OF GREECE 78
V. THE CROSSING OF THE HELLESPONT 100
VI. THE REVIEW OF THE ARMY AT DORISCUS 125
VII. PREPARATIONS OF THE GREEKS FOR DEFENSE 151
VIII. THE ADVANCE OF XERXES INTO GREECE 178
IX. THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE 201
X. THE BURNING OF ATHENS 224
XI. THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS 245
XII. THE RETURN TO PERSIA 284
ENGRAVINGS.
Page
ARTABANUS AND THE GHOST _Frontispiece._
MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE xii
PHERON DEFYING THE NILE 48
MAP OF GREECE 101
XERXES CROSSING THE HELLESPONT 121
FATE OF THE PERSIAN EMBASSADORS AT SPARTA 160
CITADEL AT ATHENS 241
RETURN OF XERXES TO PERSIA 297
[Illustration: MAP OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE]
XERXES.
CHAPTER I.
THE MOTHER OF XERXES.
B.C. 522-484
Persian magnificence.--The mother of Xerxes.--Cambyses.--Ambition and
selfishness of kings.--General influence exerted by great sovereigns
upon the community.--Labors of great
conquerors.--Caesar.--Darius.--William the Conqueror.--Napoleon.--Heroes
and conquerors.--The main spring of their actions.--Cyrus.--Character
and career of Cambyses.--Wives of Cambyses.--He marries his
sister.--Death of Cambyses.--Smerdis the magian.--Cunning of
Smerdis.--His feeling of insecurity.--Smerdis suspected.--His imposture
discovered.--Death of Smerdis.--Succession of Darius.--Atossa's
sickness.--The Greek physician.--Atossa's promise.--Atossa's
conversation with Darius.--Success of her plans.--The expedition to
Greece.--Escape of the physician.--Atossa's four
sons.--Artobazanes.--Dispute about the succession.--Xerxes and
Artobazanes.--The arguments.--Influence of Atossa.--The Spartan
fugitive.--His views of the succession.--The decision.--Death of Darius.
The name of Xerxes is associated in the minds of men with the idea of
the highest attainable elevation of human magnificence and grandeur.
This monarch was the sovereign of the ancient Persian empire when it was
at the height of its prosperity and power. It is probable, however, that
his greatness and fame lose nothing by the manner in which his story
comes down to us through the Greek historians. The Greeks conquered
Xerxes, and, in relating his history, they magnify the wealth, the
power, and the resources of his empire, by way of exalting the greatness
and renown of their own exploits in subduing him.
The mother of Xerxes was Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great, who was
the founder of the Persian empire. Cyrus was killed in Scythia, a wild
and barbarous region lying north of the Black and Caspian Seas. His son
Cambyses succeeded him.
A kingdom, or an empire, was regarded, in ancient days, much in the
light of an estate, which the sovereign held as a species of property,
and which he was to manage mainly with a view to the promotion of his
own personal aggrandizement and pleasure. A king or an emperor could
have more palaces, more money, and more wives than other men; and if he
was of an overbearing or ambitious spirit, he could march into his
neighbors' territories, and after gratifying his love of adventure with
various romantic exploits, and gaining great renown by his ferocious
impetuosity in battle, he could end his expedition, perhaps, by adding
his neighbors' palaces, and treasures, and wives to his own.
Divine Providence, however, the mysterious power that overrules all the
passions and impulses of men, and brings extended and general good out
of local and particular evil, has made the ambition and the selfishness
of princes the great means of preserving order and government among men.
These great ancient despots, for example, would not have been able to
collect their revenues, or enlist their armies, or procure supplies for
their campaigns, unless their dominions were under a regular and
complete system of social organization, such as should allow all the
industrial pursuits of commerce and of agriculture, throughout the mass
of the community, to go regularly on. Thus absolute monarchs, however
ambitious, and selfish, and domineering in their characters, have a
strong personal interest in the establishment of order and of justice
between man and man throughout all the regions which are under their
sway. In fact, the greater their ambition, their selfishness, and their
pride, the stronger will this interest be; for, just in proportion as
order, industry, and internal tranquillity prevail in a country, just in
that proportion can revenues be collected from it, and armies raised and
maintained.
It is a mistake, therefore, to suppose of the great heroes, and
sovereigns, and conquerors that have appeared from time to time among
mankind, that the usual and ordinary result of their influence and
action has been that of disturbance and disorganization. It is true that
a vast amount of disturbance and disorganization has often followed from
the march of their armies, their sieges, their invasions, and the other
local and temporary acts of violence which they commit; but these are
the exceptions, not the rule. It must be that such things are
exceptions, since, in any extended and general view of the subject, a
much greater amount of social organization, industry, and peace is
necessary to raise and maintain an army, than that army can itself
destroy. The deeds of destruction which great conquerors perform attract
more attention and make a greater impression upon mankind than the
quiet, patient, and long-continued labors by which they perfect and
extend the general organization of the social state. But these labors,
though less noticed by men, have really employed the energies of great
sovereigns in a far greater degree than mankind have generally imagined.
Thus we should describe the work of Caesar's life in a single word more
truly by saying that he _organized_ Europe, than that he conquered it.
His bridges, his roads, his systems of jurisprudence, his coinage, his
calendar, and other similar means and instruments of social arrangement,
and facilities for promoting the pursuits of industry and peace, mark,
far more properly, the real work which that great conqueror performed
among mankind, than his battles and his victories. Darius was, in the
same way, the organizer of Asia. William the Conqueror completed, or,
rather, advanced very far toward completing, the social organization of
England; and even in respect to Napoleon, the true and proper memorial
of his career is the successful working of the institutions, the
systems, and the codes which he perfected and introduced into the social
state, and not the brazen column, formed from captured cannon, which
stands in the Place Vendome.
These considerations, obviously true, though not always borne in mind,
are, however, to be considered as making the characters of the great
sovereigns, in a moral point of view, neither the worse nor the better.
In all that they did, whether in arranging and systematizing the
functions of social life, or in ruthless deeds of conquest and
destruction, they were actuated, in a great measure, by selfish
ambition. They arranged and organized the social state in order to form
a more compact and solid pedestal for the foundation of their power.
They maintained peace and order among their people, just as a master
would suppress quarrels among his slaves, because peace among laborers
is essential to productive results. They fixed and defined legal
rights, and established courts to determine and enforce them; they
protected property; they counted and classified men; they opened roads;
they built bridges; they encouraged commerce; they hung robbers, and
exterminated pirates--all, that the collection of their revenues and the
enlistment of their armies might go on without hinderance or
restriction. Many of them, indeed, may have been animated, in some
degree, by a higher and nobler sentiment than this. Some may have felt a
sort of pride in the contemplation of a great, and prosperous, and
wealthy empire, analogous to that which a proprietor feels in surveying
a well-conditioned, successful, and productive estate. Others, like
Alfred, may have felt a sincere and honest interest in the welfare of
their fellow-men, and the promotion of human happiness may have been, in
a greater or less degree, the direct object of their aim. Still, it can
not be denied that a selfish and reckless ambition has been, in general,
the main spring of action with heroes and conquerors, which, while it
aimed only at personal aggrandizement, has been made to operate, through
the peculiar mechanism of the social state which the Divine wisdom has
contrived, as a means, in the main of preserving and extending peace
and order among mankind, and not of destroying them.
But to return to Atossa. Her father Cyrus, who laid the foundation of
the great Persian empire, was, for a hero and conqueror, tolerably
considerate and just, and he desired, probably, to promote the welfare
and happiness of his millions of subjects; but his son Cambyses,
Atossa's brother, having been brought up in expectation of succeeding to
vast wealth and power, and having been, as the sons of the wealthy and
the powerful often are in all ages of the world, wholly neglected by his
father during the early part of his life, and entirely unaccustomed to
control, became a wild, reckless, proud, selfish, and ungovernable young
man. His father was killed suddenly in battle, as has already been
stated, and Cambyses succeeded him. Cambyses's career was short,
desperate, and most tragical in its end.[A] In fact, he was one of the
most savage, reckless, and abominable monsters that have ever lived.
[Footnote A: His history in given in the first chapter of DARIUS THE
GREAT.]
It was the custom in those days for the Persian monarchs to have many
wives, and, what is still more remarkable, whenever any monarch died,
his successor inherited his predecessor's family as well as his throne.
Cyrus had several children by his various wives. Cambyses and Smerdis
were the only sons, but there were daughters, among whom Atossa was the
most distinguished. The ladies of the court were accustomed to reside in
different palaces, or in different suites of apartments in the same
palace, so that they lived in a great measure isolated from each other.
When Cambyses came to the throne, and thus entered into possession of
his father's palaces, he saw and fell in love with one of his father's
daughters. He wished to make her one of his wives. He was accustomed to
the unrestricted indulgence of every appetite and passion, but he seems
to have had some slight misgivings in regard to such a step as this. He
consulted the Persian judges. They conferred upon the subject, and then
replied that they had searched among the laws of the realm, and though
they found no law allowing a man to marry his sister, they found many
which authorized a Persian king to do whatever he pleased.
Cambyses therefore added the princess to the number of his wives, and
not long afterward he married another of his father's daughters in the
same way. One of these princesses was Atossa.
Cambyses invaded Egypt, and in the course of his mad career in that
country he killed his brother Smerdis and one of his sisters, and at
length was killed himself. Atossa escaped the dangers of this stormy and
terrible reign, and returned safely to Susa after Cambyses's death.
Smerdis, the brother of Cambyses, would have been Cambyses's successor
if he had survived him; but he had been privately assassinated by
Cambyses's orders, though his death had been kept profoundly secret by
those who had perpetrated the deed. There was another Smerdis in Susa,
the Persian capital, who was a magian--that is, a sort of priest--in
whose hands, as regent, Cambyses had left the government while he was
absent on his campaigns. This magian Smerdis accordingly conceived the
plan of usurping the throne, as if he were Smerdis the prince, resorting
to a great many ingenious and cunning schemes to conceal his deception.
Among his other plans, one was to keep himself wholly sequestered from
public view, with a few favorites, such, especially, as had not
personally known Smerdis the prince. In the same manner he secluded from
each other and from himself all who had known Smerdis, in order to
prevent their conferring with one another, or communicating to each
other any suspicions which they might chance to entertain. Such
seclusion, so far as related to the ladies of the royal family, was not
unusual after the death of a king, and Smerdis did not deviate from the
ordinary custom, except to make the isolation and confinement of the
princesses and queens more rigorous and strict than common. By means of
this policy he was enabled to go on for some months without detection,
living all the while in the greatest luxury and splendor, but at the
same time in absolute seclusion, and in unceasing anxiety and fear.
One chief source of his solicitude was lest he should be detected by
means of his _ears_! Some years before, when he was in a comparatively
obscure position, he had in some way or other offended his sovereign,
and was punished by having his ears cut off. It was necessary,
therefore, to keep the marks of this mutilation carefully concealed by
means of his hair and his head-dress, and even with these precautions he
could never feel perfectly secure.
At last one of the nobles of the court, a sagacious and observing man,
suspected the imposture. He had no access to Smerdis himself, but his
daughter, whose name was Phaedyma, was one of Smerdis's wives. The
nobleman was excluded from all direct intercourse with Smerdis, and even
with his daughter; but he contrived to send word to his daughter,
inquiring whether her husband was the true Smerdis or not. She replied
that she did not know, inasmuch as she had never seen any other Smerdis,
if, indeed, there had been another. The nobleman then attempted to
communicate with Atossa, but he found it impossible to do so. Atossa
had, of course, known her brother well, and was on that very account
very closely secluded by the magian. As a last resort, the nobleman sent
to his daughter a request that she would watch for an opportunity to
feel for her husband's ears while he was asleep. He admitted that this
would be a dangerous attempt, but his daughter, he said, ought to be
willing to make it, since, if her pretended husband were really an
impostor, she ought to take even a stronger interest than others in his
detection. Phaedyma was at first afraid to undertake so dangerous a
commission; but she at length ventured to do so, and, by passing her
hand under his turban one night, while he was sleeping on his couch,
she found that the ears were gone.[B]
[Footnote B: For a more particular account of the transaction, and for
an engraving illustrating this scene, see the history of Darius.]
The consequence of this discovery was, that a conspiracy was formed to
dethrone and destroy the usurper. The plot was successful. Smerdis was
killed; his imprisoned queens were set free, and Darius was raised to
the throne in his stead.
Atossa now, by that strange principle of succession which has been
already alluded to, became the wife of Darius, and she figures
frequently and conspicuously in history during his long and splendid
reign.
Her name is brought into notice in one case in a remarkable manner, in
connection with an expedition which Darius sent on an exploring tour
into Greece and Italy. She was herself the means, in fact, of sending
the expedition. She was sick; and after suffering secretly and in
silence as long as possible--the nature of her complaint being such as
to make her unwilling to speak of it to others--she at length determined
to consult a Greek physician who had been brought to Persia as a
captive, and had acquired great celebrity at Susa by his medical science
and skill. The physician said that he would undertake her case on
condition that she would promise to grant him a certain request that he
would make. She wished to know what it was beforehand, but the physician
would not tell her. He said, however, that it was nothing that it would
be in any way derogatory to her honor to grant him.
On these conditions Atossa concluded to agree to the physician's
proposals. He made her take a solemn oath that, if he cured her of her
malady, she would do whatever he required of her, provided that it was
consistent with honor and propriety. He then took her case under his
charge, prescribed for her and attended her, and in due time she was
cured. The physician then told her that what he wished her to do for him
was to find some means to persuade Darius to send him home to his native
land.
Atossa was faithful in fulfilling her promise. She took a private
opportunity, when she was alone with Darius, to propose that he should
engage in some plans of foreign conquest. She reminded him of the
vastness of the military power which was at his disposal, and of the
facility with which, by means of it, he might extend his dominions. She
extolled, too, his genius and energy, and endeavored to inspire in his
mind some ambitious desires to distinguish himself in the estimation of
mankind by bringing his capacities for the performance of great deeds
into action.
Darius listened to these suggestions of Atossa with interest and with
evident pleasure. He said that he had been forming some such plans
himself. He was going to build a bridge across the Hellespont or the
Bosporus, to unite Europe and Asia; and he was also going to make an
incursion into the country of the Scythians, the people by whom Cyrus,
his great predecessor, had been defeated and slain. It would be a great
glory for him, he said, to succeed in a conquest in which Cyrus had so
totally failed.
But these plans would not answer the purpose which Atossa had in view.
She urged her husband, therefore, to postpone his invasion of the
Scythians till some future time, and first conquer the Greeks, and annex
their territory to his dominions. The Scythians, she said, were savages,
and their country not worth the cost of conquering it, while Greece
would constitute a noble prize. She urged the invasion of Greece, too,
rather than Scythia, as a personal favor to herself, for she had been
wanting, she said, some slaves from Greece for a long time--some of the
women of Sparta, of Corinth, and of Athens, of whose graces and
accomplishments she had heard so much.
There was something gratifying to the military vanity of Darius in being
thus requested to make an incursion to another continent, and undertake
the conquest of the mightiest nation of the earth, for the purpose of
procuring accomplished waiting-maids to offer as a present to his queen.
He became restless and excited while listening to Atossa's proposals,
and to the arguments with which she enforced them, and it was obvious
that he was very strongly inclined to accede to her views. He finally
concluded to send a commission into Greece to explore the country, and
to bring back a report on their return; and as he decided to make the
Greek physician the guide of the expedition, Atossa gained her end.
A full account of this expedition, and of the various adventures which
the party met with on their voyage, is given in our history of Darius.
It may be proper to say here, however, that the physician fully
succeeded in his plans of making his escape. He pretended, at first, to
be unwilling to go, and he made only the most temporary arrangements in
respect to the conduct of his affairs while he should be gone, in order
to deceive the king in regard to his intentions of not returning. The
king, on his part, resorted to some stratagems to ascertain whether the
physician was sincere in his professions, but he did not succeed in
detecting the artifice, and so the party went away. The physician never
returned.
Atossa had four sons. Xerxes was the eldest of them. He was not,
however, the eldest of the sons of Darius, as there were other sons, the
children of another wife, whom Darius had married before he ascended the
throne. The oldest of these children was named Artobazanes. Artobazanes
seems to have been a prince of an amiable and virtuous character, and
not particularly ambitious and aspiring in his disposition, although, as
he was the eldest son of his father, he claimed to be his heir. Atossa
did not admit the validity of this claim, but maintained that the oldest
of _her_ children was entitled to the inheritance.
It became necessary to decide this question before Darius's death; for
Darius, in the prosecution of a war in which he was engaged, formed the
design of accompanying his army on an expedition into Greece, and,
before doing this, he was bound, according to the laws and usages of the
Persian realm, to regulate the succession.
There immediately arose an earnest dispute between the friends and
partisans of Artobazanes and Xerxes, each side urging very eagerly the
claims of its own candidate. The mother and the friends of Artobazanes
maintained that he was the oldest son, and, consequently, the heir.
Atossa, on the other hand, contended that Xerxes was the grandson of
Cyrus, and that he derived from that circumstance the highest possible
hereditary rights to the Persian throne.
This was in some respects true, for Cyrus had been the founder of the
empire and the legitimate monarch, while Darius had no hereditary
claims. He was originally a noble, of high rank, indeed, but not of the
royal line; and he had been designated as Cyrus's successor in a time of
revolution, because there was, at that time, no prince of the royal
family who could take the inheritance. Those, therefore, who were
disposed to insist on the claims of a legitimate hereditary succession,
might very plausibly claim that Darius's government had been a regency
rather than a reign; that Xerxes, being the oldest son of Atossa,
Cyrus's daughter, was the true representative of the royal line; and
that, although it might not be expedient to disturb the possession of
Darius during his lifetime, yet that, at his death, Xerxes was
unquestionably entitled to the throne.
There was obviously a great deal of truth and justice in this reasoning,
and yet it was a view of the subject not likely to be very agreeable to
Darius, since it seemed to deny the existence of any real and valid
title to the sovereignty in him. It assigned the crown, at his death,
not to his son as such, but to his predecessor's grandson; for though
Xerxes was both the son of Darius and the grandson of Cyrus, it was in
the latter capacity that he was regarded as entitled to the crown in the
argument referred to above. The doctrine was very gratifying to the
pride of Atossa, for it made Xerxes the successor to the crown as her
son and heir, and not as the son and heir of her husband. For this very
reason it was likely to be not very gratifying to Darius. He hesitated
very much in respect to adopting it. Atossa's ascendency over his mind,
and her influence generally in the Persian court, was almost
overwhelming, and yet Darius was very unwilling to seem, by giving to
the oldest grandson of Cyrus the precedence over his own eldest son, to
admit that he himself had no legitimate and proper title to the throne.
While things were in this state, a Greek, named Demaratus, arrived at
Susa. He was a dethroned prince from Sparta, and had fled from the
political storms of his own country to seek refuge in Darius's capital.
Demaratus found a way to reconcile Darius's pride as a sovereign with
his personal preferences as a husband and a father. He told the king
that, according to the principles of hereditary succession which were
adopted in Greece, Xerxes was his heir as well as Cyrus's, for he was
the oldest son who was born _after his accession_. A son, he said,
according to the Greek ideas on the subject, was entitled to inherit
only such rank as his father held when the son was born; and that,
consequently, none of his children who had been born before his
accession could have any claims to the Persian throne. Artobazanes, in a
word, was to be regarded, he said, only as the son of Darius the noble,
while Xerxes was the son of Darius the king.
In the end Darius adopted this view, and designated Xerxes as his
successor in case he should not return from his distant expedition. He
did not return. He did not even live to set out upon it. Perhaps the
question of the succession had not been absolutely and finally settled,
for it arose again and was discussed anew when the death of Darius
occurred. The manner in which it was finally disposed of will be
described in the next chapter.