EGYPT AND GREECE.
B.C. 484
Xerxes assumes the crown.--His message to Artobazanes.--Question of the
succession again debated.--Advice of Atossa.--Decision of
Artabanus.--Unfinished wars of Darius.--Egypt and Greece.--Character of
the Egyptians.--Character of the Greeks.--Architecture.--Monuments of
Greece.--Egyptian architecture.--Form of Egypt.--Delta of the
Nile.--Fertility of Egypt.--No rain in Egypt.--Rising of the
Nile.--Preparations for the inundation.--Gradual rise of the
water.--Appearance of the country during an inundation.--The three
theories.--Objections to the first.--Second and third theories.--Reasons
against them.--Ideas of the common people in regard to the
inundation.--Story of King Pheron.--His punishment.--Sequel of the story
of King Pheron.--Nilometers.--Use of Nilometers.--Enormous structures of
Egypt.--Comparative antiquity of various objects.--Great age of the
Pyramids.--Egypt a mark for the conqueror.--Its relation to
Persia.--Xerxes resolves to subdue Egypt first.--The Jews.--The
Egyptians subdued.--Return to Susa.
The arrangements which Darius had made to fix and determine the
succession, before his death, did not entirely prevent the question from
arising again when his death occurred. Xerxes was on the spot at the
time, and at once assumed the royal functions. His brother was absent.
Xerxes sent a messenger to Artobazanes[C] informing him of their
father's death, and of his intention of assuming the crown. He said,
however, that if he did so, he should give his brother the second rank,
making him, in all respects, next to himself in office and honor. He
sent, moreover, a great many splendid presents to Artobazanes, to evince
the friendly regard which he felt for him, and to propitiate his favor.
[Footnote C: Plutarch, who gives an account of these occurrences, varies
the orthography of the name. We, however, retain the name as given by
Herodotus.]
Artobazanes sent back word to Xerxes that he thanked him for his
presents, and that he accepted them with pleasure. He said that he
considered himself, nevertheless, as justly entitled to the crown,
though he should, in the event of his accession, treat all his brothers,
and especially Xerxes, with the utmost consideration and respect.
Soon after these occurrences, Artobazanes came to Media, where Xerxes
was, and the question which of them should be the king was agitated anew
among the nobles of the court. In the end, a public hearing of the cause
was had before Artabanus, a brother of Darius, and, of course, an uncle
of the contending princes. The question seems to have been referred to
him, either because he held some public office which made it his duty to
consider and decide such a question, or else because he had been
specially commissioned to act as judge in this particular case. Xerxes
was at first quite unwilling to submit his claims to the decision of
such a tribunal. The crown was, as he maintained, rightfully his. He
thought that the public voice was generally in his favor. Then, besides,
he was already in possession of the throne, and by consenting to plead
his cause before his uncle, he seemed to be virtually abandoning all
this vantage ground, and trusting instead to the mere chance of
Artabanus's decision.
Atossa, however, recommended to him to accede to the plan of referring
the question to Artabanus. He would consider the subject, she said, with
fairness and impartiality, and decide it right. She had no doubt that he
would decide it in Xerxes's favor; "and if he does not," she added, "and
you lose your cause, you only become the second man in the kingdom
instead of the first, and the difference is not so very great, after
all."
Atossa may have had some secret intimation how Artabanus would decide.
However this may be, Xerxes at length concluded to submit the question.
A solemn court was held, and the case was argued in the presence of all
the nobles and great officers of state. A throne was at hand to which
the successful competitor was to be conducted as soon as the decision
should be made. Artabanus heard the arguments, and decided in favor of
Xerxes. Artobazanes, his brother, acquiesced in the decision with the
utmost readiness and good humor. He was the first to bow before the king
in token of homage, and conducted him, himself, to the throne.
Xerxes kept his promise faithfully of making his brother the second in
his kingdom. He appointed him to a very high command in the army, and
Artobazanes, on his part, served the king with great zeal and fidelity,
until he was at last killed in battle, in the manner hereafter to be
described.
As soon as Xerxes found himself established on his throne, he was called
upon to decide immediately a great question, namely, which of two
important wars in which his father had been engaged he should first
undertake to prosecute, the war in Egypt or the war in Greece.
By referring to the map, the reader will see that, as the Persian empire
extended westward to Asia Minor and to the coasts of the Mediterranean
Sea, the great countries which bordered upon it in this direction were,
on the north Greece, and on the south, Egypt; the one in Europe, and the
other in Africa. The Greeks and the Egyptians were both wealthy and
powerful, and the countries which they respectively inhabited were
fertile and beautiful beyond expression, and yet in all their essential
features and characteristics they were extremely dissimilar. Egypt was a
long and narrow inland valley. Greece reposed, as it were, in the bosom
of the sea, consisting, as it did, of an endless number of islands,
promontories, peninsulas, and winding coasts, laved on every side by
the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Egypt was a plain, diversified
only by the varieties of vegetation, and by the towns and villages, and
the enormous monumental structures which had been erected by man. Greece
was a picturesque and ever-changing scene of mountains and valleys; of
precipitous cliffs, winding beaches, rocky capes, and lofty headlands.
The character and genius of the inhabitants of these two countries took
their cast, in each case, from the physical conformations of the soil.
The Egyptians were a quiet, gentle, and harmless race of tillers of the
ground. They spent their lives in pumping water from the river, in the
patient, persevering toil of sowing smooth and mellow fields, or in
reaping the waving grain. The Greeks drove flocks and herds up and down
the declivities of the mountains, or hunted wild beasts in forests and
fastnesses. They constructed galleys for navigating the seas; they
worked the mines and manufactured metals. They built bridges, citadels,
temples, and towns, and sculptured statuary from marble blocks which
they chiseled from the strata of the mountains. It is surprising what a
difference is made in the genius and character of man by elevations,
here and there, of a few thousand feet in the country where his genius
and character are formed.
The architectural wonders of Egypt and of Greece were as diverse from
each other as the natural features of the soil, and in each case the
structures were in keeping and in harmony with the character of the
landscape which they respectively adorned. The harmony was, however,
that of contrast, and not of correspondence. In Greece, where the
landscape itself was grand and sublime, the architect aimed only at
beauty. To have aimed at magnitude and grandeur in human structures
among the mountains, the cliffs, the cataracts, and the resounding ocean
shores of Greece, would have been absurd. The Grecian artists were
deterred by their unerring instincts from the attempt. They accordingly
built beautiful temples, whose white and symmetrical colonnades adorned
the declivities, or crowned the summits of the hills. They sculptured
statues, to be placed on pedestals in groves and gardens; they
constructed fountains; they raised bridges and aqueducts on long ranges
of arches and piers; and the summits of ragged rocks crystallized, as it
were, under their hands into towers, battlements, and walls. In Egypt,
on the other hand, where the country itself was a level and unvarying
plain, the architecture took forms of prodigious magnitude, of lofty
elevation, and of vast extent. There were ranges of enormous columns,
colossal statues, towering obelisks, and pyramids rising like mountains
from the verdure of the plain. Thus, while nature gave to the country
its elements of beauty, man completed the landscape by adding to it the
grand and the sublime.
The shape and proportions of Egypt would be represented by a green
ribbon an inch wide and a yard long, lying upon the ground in a
serpentine form; and to complete the model, we might imagine a silver
filament passing along the center of the green to denote the Nile. The
real valley of verdure, however, is not of uniform breadth, like the
ribbon so representing it, but widens as it approaches the sea, as if
there had been originally a gulf or estuary there, which the sediment
from the river had filled.
In fact, the rich and fertile plain which the alluvial deposits of the
Nile have formed, has been protruded for some distance into the sea, and
the stream divides itself into three great branches about a hundred
miles from its mouth, two outermost of which, with the sea-coast in
front, inclose a vast triangle, which was called the Delta, from the
Greek letter _delta_, (Greek: D), which is of a triangular form. In
ascending the river beyond the Delta, the fertile plain, at first
twenty-five or thirty miles wide, grows gradually narrower, as the
ranges of barren hills and tracts of sandy deserts on either hand draw
nearer and nearer to the river. Thus the country consists of two long
lines of rich and fertile intervals, one on each side of the stream. In
the time of Xerxes the whole extent was densely populated, every little
elevation of the land being covered with a village or a town. The
inhabitants tilled the land, raising upon it vast stores of corn, much
of which was floated down the river to its mouth, and taken thence to
various countries of Europe and Asia, in merchant ships, over the
Mediterranean Sea. Caravans, too, sometimes came across the neighboring
deserts to obtain supplies of Egyptian corn. This was done by the sons
of Jacob when the crops failed them in the land of Canaan, as related in
the sacred Scriptures.
There were two great natural wonders in Egypt in ancient times as now:
first, it never rained there, or, at least, so seldom, that rain was
regarded as a marvelous phenomenon, interrupting the ordinary course of
nature, like an earthquake in England or America. The falling of drops
of water out of clouds in the sky was an occurrence so strange, so
unaccountable, that the whole population regarded it with astonishment
and awe. With the exception of these rare and wonder-exciting instances,
there was no rain, no snow, no hail, no clouds in the sky. The sun was
always shining, and the heavens were always serene. These meteorological
characteristics of the country, resulting, as they do, from permanent
natural causes, continue, of course, unchanged to the present day; and
the Arabs who live now along the banks of the river, keep their crops,
when harvested, in heaps in the open air, and require no roofs to their
huts except a light covering of sheaves to protect the inmates from the
sun.
The other natural wonder of Egypt was the annual rising of the Nile.
About midsummer, the peasantry who lived along the banks would find the
river gradually beginning to rise. The stream became more turbid, too,
as the bosom of the waters swelled. No cause for this mysterious
increase appeared, as the sky remained as blue and serene as before, and
the sun, then nearly vertical, continued to shine with even more than
its wonted splendor. The inhabitants however, felt no surprise, and
asked for no explanation of the phenomenon. It was the common course of
nature at that season. They had all witnessed it, year after year, from
childhood. They, of course, looked for it when the proper month came
round, and, though they would have been amazed if the annual flood had
failed, they thought nothing extraordinary of its coming.
When the swelling of the waters and the gradual filling of the channels
and low grounds in the neighborhood of the river warned the people that
the flood was at hand, they all engaged busily in the work of completing
their preparations. The harvests were all gathered from the fields, and
the vast stores of fruit and corn which they yielded were piled in
roofless granaries, built on every elevated spot of ground, where they
would be safe from the approaching inundation. The rise of the water was
very gradual and slow. Streams began to flow in all directions over the
land. Ponds and lakes, growing every day more and more extended, spread
mysteriously over the surface of the meadows; and all the time while
this deluge of water was rising to submerge the land, the air continued
dry, the sun was sultry, and the sky was without a cloud.
As the flood continued to rise, the proportion of land and water, and
the conformation of the irregular and temporary shores which separated
them, were changed continually, from day to day. The inhabitants
assembled in their villages, which were built on rising grounds, some
natural, others artificially formed. The waters rose more and more,
until only these crowded islands appeared above its surface--when, at
length, the valley presented to the view the spectacle of a vast expanse
of water, calm as a summer's sea, brilliant with the reflected rays of a
tropical sun, and canopied by a sky, which, displaying its spotless blue
by day and its countless stars at night, was always cloudless and
serene.
The inundation was at its height in October. After that period the
waters gradually subsided, leaving a slimy and very fertilizing deposit
all over the lands which they had covered. Though the inhabitants
themselves, who had been accustomed to this overflow from infancy, felt
no wonder or curiosity about its cause, the philosophers of the day, and
travelers from other countries who visited Egypt, made many attempts to
seek an explanation of the phenomenon. They had three theories on the
subject, which Herodotus mentions and discusses.
The first explanation was, that the rising of the river was occasioned
by the prevalence of northerly winds on the Mediterranean at that time
of the year, which drove back the waters at the mouth of the river, and
so caused the accumulation of the water in the upper parts of the
valley. Herodotus thought that this was not a satisfactory explanation;
for sometimes, as he said, these northerly winds did not blow, and yet
the rising of the river took place none the less when the appointed
season came. Besides, there were other rivers similarly situated in
respect to the influence of prevailing winds at sea in driving in the
waters at their mouths, which were, nevertheless, not subject to
inundations like the Nile.
The second theory was, that the Nile took its rise, not, like other
rivers, in inland lakes, or among inland mountains, but in some remote
and unknown ocean on the other side of the continent, which ocean the
advocates of this theory supposed might be subject to some great annual
ebb and flow; and from this it might result that at stated periods an
unusual tide of waters might be poured into the channel of the river.
This, however, could not be true, for the waters of the inundation were
fresh, not salt, which proved that they were not furnished by any ocean.
A third hypothesis was, that the rising of the water was occasioned by
the melting of the snows in summer on the mountains from which the
sources of the river came. Against this supposition Herodotus found more
numerous and more satisfactory reasons even than he had advanced against
the others. In the first place the river came from the south--a
direction in which the heat increased in intensity with every league, as
far as travelers had explored it; and beyond those limits, they supposed
that the burning sun made the country uninhabitable. It was preposterous
to suppose that there could be snow and ice there. Then, besides, the
Nile had been ascended to a great distance, and reports from the natives
had been brought down from regions still more remote, and no tidings had
ever been brought of ice and snow. It was unreasonable, therefore, to
suppose that the inundations could arise from such a cause.
These scientific theories, however, were discussed only among
philosophers and learned men. The common people had a much more simple
and satisfactory mode of disposing of the subject. They, in their
imaginations, invested the beneficent river with a sort of life and
personality, and when they saw its waters rising so gently but yet
surely, to overflow their whole land, leaving it, as they withdrew
again, endued with a new and exuberant fertility, they imagined it a
living and acting intelligence, that in the exercise of some mysterious
and inscrutable powers, the nature of which was to them unknown, and
impelled by a kind and friendly regard for the country and its
inhabitants, came annually, of its own accord, to spread over the land
the blessings of fertility and abundance. The mysterious stream being
viewed in this light, its wonderful powers awakened their veneration and
awe, and its boundless beneficence their gratitude.
[Illustration: PHERON DEFYING THE NILE.]
Among the ancient Egyptian legends, there is one relating to a certain
King Pheron which strikingly illustrates this feeling. It seems that
during one of the inundations, while he was standing with his courtiers
and watching the flow of the water, the commotion in the stream was much
greater than usual on account of a strong wind which was blowing at
that time, and which greatly increased the violence of the whirlpools,
and the force and swell of the boiling eddies. There was given, in fact,
to the appearance of the river an expression of anger, and Pheron, who
was of a proud and haughty character, like most of the Egyptian kings,
threw his javelin into one of the wildest of the whirlpools, as a token
of his defiance of its rage. He was instantly struck blind!
The sequel of the story is curious, though it has no connection with the
personality of the Nile. Pheron remained blind for ten years. At the end
of that time it was announced to him, by some supernatural
communication, that the period of his punishment had expired, and that
his sight might be brought back to him by the employment of a certain
designated means of restoration, which was the bathing of his eyes by a
strictly virtuous woman. Pheron undertook compliance with the
requisition, without any idea that the finding of a virtuous woman would
be a difficult task. He first tried his own wife, but her bathing
produced no effect. He then tried, one after another, various ladies of
his court, and afterward others of different rank and station, selecting
those who were most distinguished for the excellence of their
characters. He was disappointed, however, in them all. The blindness
continued unchanged. At last, however, he found the wife of a peasant,
whose bathing produced the effect. The monarch's sight was suddenly
restored. The king rewarded the peasant woman, whose virtuous character
was established by this indisputable test, with the highest honors. The
others he collected together, and then shut them up in one of his towns.
When they were all thus safely imprisoned, he set the town on fire, and
burned them all up together.
To return to the Nile. Certain columns were erected in different parts
of the valley, on which cubits and the subdivisions of cubits were
marked and numbered, for the purpose of ascertaining precisely the rise
of the water. Such a column was called a Nilometer. There was one near
Memphis, which was at the upper point of the Delta, and others further
up the river. Such pillars continue to be used to mark the height of the
inundations to the present day.
The object of thus accurately ascertaining the rise of the water was not
mere curiosity, for there were certain important business operations
which depended upon the results. The fertility and productiveness of
the soil each year were determined almost wholly by the extent of the
inundation; and as the ability of the people to pay tribute depended
upon their crops, the Nilometer furnished the government with a
criterion by which they regulated the annual assessments of the taxes.
There were certain canals, too, made to convey the water to distant
tracts of land, which were opened or kept closed according as the water
rose to a higher or lower point. All these things were regulated by the
indications of the Nilometer.
Egypt was famed in the days of Xerxes for those enormous structures and
ruins of structures whose origin was then, as now, lost in a remote
antiquity. Herodotus found the Pyramids standing in his day, and
presenting the same spectacle of mysterious and solitary grandeur which
they exhibited to Napoleon. He speculated on their origin and their
history, just as the philosophers and travelers of our day do. In fact,
he knew less and could learn less about them than is known now. It helps
to impress our minds with an idea of the extreme antiquity of these and
the other architectural wonders of Egypt, to compare them with things
which are considered old in the Western world. The ancient and
venerable colleges and halls of Oxford and Cambridge are, many of them,
two or three hundred years old. There are remains of the old wall of the
city of London which has been standing seven hundred years. This is
considered a great antiquity. There are, however, Roman ruins in
Britain, and in various parts of Europe, more ancient still. They have
been standing eighteen hundred years! People look upon these with a
species of wonder and awe that they have withstood the destructive
influences of time so long. But as to the Pyramids, if we go back
_twenty-five hundred_ years, we find travelers visiting and describing
them then--monuments as ancient, as venerable, as mysterious and unknown
in their eyes, as they appear now in ours. We judge that a mountain is
very distant when, after traveling many miles toward it, it seems still
as distant as ever. Now, in tracing the history of the pyramids, the
obelisks, the gigantic statues, and the vast columnar ruins of the Nile,
we may go back twenty-five hundred years, without, apparently, making
any progress whatever toward reaching their origin.
Such was Egypt. Isolated as it was from the rest of the world, and full
of fertility and riches, it offered a marked and definite object to the
ambition of a conqueror. In fact, on account of the peculiar interest
which this long and narrow valley of verdure, with its wonderful
structures, the strange and anomalous course of nature which prevails in
it, and the extraordinary phases which human life, in consequence,
exhibits there, has always excited among mankind, heroes and conquerors
have generally considered it a peculiarly glorious field for their
exploits. Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy, contemplated the
subjugation of it. He did not carry his designs into effect, but left
them for Cambyses his son. Darius held the country as a dependency
during his reign, though, near the close of his life, it revolted. This
revolt took place while he was preparing for his grand expedition
against Greece, and he was perplexed with the question which of the two
undertakings, the subjugation of the Egyptians or the invasion of
Greece, he should first engage in. In the midst of this uncertainty he
suddenly died, leaving both the wars themselves and the perplexity of
deciding between them as a part of the royal inheritance falling to his
son.
Xerxes decided to prosecute the Egyptian campaign first, intending to
postpone the conquest of Greece till he had brought the valley of the
Nile once more under Persian sway. He deemed it dangerous to leave a
province of his father's empire in a state of successful rebellion,
while leading his armies off to new undertakings. Mardonius, who was the
commander-in-chief of the army, and the great general on whom Xerxes
mainly relied for the execution of his schemes, was very reluctant to
consent to this plan. He was impatient for the conquest of Greece. There
was little glory for him to acquire in merely suppressing a revolt, and
reconquering what had been already once subdued. He was eager to enter
upon a new field. Xerxes, however, overruled his wishes, and the armies
commenced their march for Egypt. They passed the land of Judea on their
way, where the captives who had returned from Babylon, and their
successors, were rebuilding the cities and reoccupying the country.
Xerxes confirmed them in the privileges which Cyrus and Darius had
granted them, and aided them in their work. He then went on toward the
Nile. The rebellion was easily put down. In less than a year from the
time of leaving Susa, he had reconquered the whole land of Egypt,
punished the leaders of the revolt, established his brother as viceroy
of the country, and returned in safety to Susa.
All this took place in the second year of his reign.