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THE HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.
THE
HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY.
FROM THE GERMAN
OF
PROFESSOR MAX DUNCKER,
BY
EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A.,
_FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD._
VOL. II.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1879.
Bungay:
CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
The present volume has been translated from the fifth
edition of the original, and has had, throughout, the
benefit of Professor Duncker's revision.
E. A.
_Oxford, Jan. 14, 1879._
CONTENTS.
BOOK III.
_ASSYRIA. PHOENICIA. ISRAEL._
CHAPTER I. PAGE
THE STORY OF NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS 1
CHAPTER II.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ASSYRIAN KINGDOM 26
CHAPTER III.
THE NAVIGATION AND COLONIES OF THE PHENICIANS 49
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL 89
CHAPTER V.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY IN ISRAEL 109
CHAPTER VI.
DAVID'S STRUGGLE AGAINST SAUL AND ISHBOSHETH 128
CHAPTER VII.
THE RULE OF DAVID 150
CHAPTER VIII.
KING SOLOMON 179
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAW OF THE PRIESTS 201
CHAPTER X.
JUDAH AND ISRAEL 227
CHAPTER XI.
THE CITIES OF THE PHENICIANS 262
CHAPTER XII.
THE TRADE OF THE PHENICIANS 294
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RISE OF ASSYRIA 308
BOOK III.
ASSYRIA. PHOENICIA. ISRAEL.
ASSYRIA.
CHAPTER I.
THE STORY OF NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS.
About the middle course of the Tigris, where the mountain wall of the
Armenian plateau steeply descends to the south, there is a broad stretch
of hilly country. To the west it is traversed by a few water-courses
only, which spring out of the mountains of Sindyar, and unite with the
Tigris; from the east the affluents are far more abundant. On the
southern shore of the lake of Urumiah the edge of the plateau of Iran
abuts on the Armenian table-land, and then, stretching to the
south-east, it bounds the river valley of the Tigris toward the east.
From its vast, successive ranges, the Zagrus of the Greeks, flow the
Lycus and Caprus (the Greater and the Lesser Zab), the Adhim and the
Diala. The water, which these rivers convey to the land between the
Zagrus and the Tigris, together with the elevation of the soil, softens
the heat and allows olive trees and vines to flourish in the cool air on
the hills, sesame and corn in the valleys between groups of palms and
fruit-trees. The backs of the heights which rise to the east are covered
by forests of oaks and nut trees. Toward the south the ground gradually
sinks--on the west immediately under the mountains of Sindyar, on the
east below the Lesser Zab--toward the course of the Adhim into level
plains, where the soil is little inferior in fertility to the land of
Babylonia. The land between the Tigris and the Greater Zab is known to
Strabo and Arrian as Aturia.[1] The districts between the Greater and
Lesser Zab are called Arbelitis and Adiabene by western writers.[2] The
region bounded by the Lesser Zab and the Adhim or the Diala is called
Sittacene, and the land lying on the mountains rising further toward the
east is Chalonitis. The latter we shall without doubt have to regard as
the Holwan[3] of later times.
According to the accounts of the Greeks, it was in these districts that
the first kingdom rose which made conquests and extended its power
beyond the borders of its native country. In the old time--such is the
story--kings ruled in Asia, whose names were not mentioned, as they had
not performed any striking exploits. The first of whom any memorial is
retained, and who performed great deeds, was Ninus, the king of the
Assyrians. Warlike and ambitious by nature, he armed the most vigorous
of his young men, and accustomed them by long and various exercises to
all the toils and dangers of war. After collecting a splendid army, he
combined with Ariaeus, the prince of the Arabs, and marched with numerous
troops against the neighbouring Babylonians. The city of Babylon was not
built at that time, but there were other magnificent cities in the land.
The Babylonians were an unwarlike people, and he subdued them with
little trouble, took their king prisoner, slew him with his children,
and imposed a yearly tribute on the Babylonians. Then with a still
greater force he invaded Armenia and destroyed several cities. Barzanes,
the king of Armenia, perceived that he was not in a position to resist.
He repaired with costly presents to Ninus and undertook to be his
vassal. With great magnanimity Ninus permitted him to retain the throne
of Armenia; but he was to provide a contingent in war and contribute to
the support of the army. Strengthened by these means, Ninus turned his
course to Media. Pharnus, king of Media, came out to meet him with a
strong force, but he was nevertheless defeated, and crucified with his
wife and seven children, and Ninus placed one of his own trusty men as
viceroy over Media. These successes raised in Ninus the desire to
subjugate all Asia as far as the Nile and the Tanais. He conquered, as
Ctesias narrates, Egypt, Phoenicia, Coele Syria, Cilicia, Lycia and
Caria, Lydia, Mysia, Phrygia, Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and reduced the
nations on the Pontus as far as the Tanais. Then he made himself master
of the land of the Cadusians and Tapyrians, of the Hyrcanians,
Drangians, Derbiccians, Carmanians, Chorasmians, Barcians, and
Parthians. Beside these, he overcame Persia, and Susiana, and Caspiana,
and many other small nations. But in spite of many efforts he failed to
obtain any success against the Bactrians, because the entrance to their
land was difficult and the number of their men of war was great. So he
deferred the war against the Bactrians to another opportunity, and led
his army back, after subjugating in 17 years all the nations of Asia,
with the exception of the Indians and Bactrians. The king of the
Arabians he dismissed to his home with costly presents and splendid
booty; he began himself to build a city which should not only be greater
than any other then in existence, but should be such that no city in the
future could ever surpass it. This city he founded on the bank of the
Tigris,[4] in the form of an oblong, and surrounded it with strong
fortifications. The two longer sides measured 150 stades each, the two
shorter sides 90 stades each, so that the whole circuit was 480 stades.
The walls reached a height of 100 feet, and were so thick that there was
room in the gangway for three chariots to pass each other. These walls
were surmounted by 1500 towers, each of the height of 200 feet. As to
the inhabitants of the city, the greater number and those of the most
importance were Assyrians, but from the other nations also any who chose
could fix his dwelling here, and Ninus allotted to the settlers large
portions of the surrounding territory, and called the city Ninus, after
his own name.
When the city was built Ninus resolved to march against the Bactrians.
He knew the number and bravery of the Bactrians, and how difficult
their land was to approach, and therefore he collected the armies of all
the subject nations, to the number of 1,700,000 foot soldiers, 210,000
cavalry, and towards 10,600 chariots of war. The narrowness of the
passes which protect the entrance to Bactria compelled Ninus to divide
his army. Oxyartes, who at that time was king of the Bactrians, had
collected the whole male population of his country, about 400,000 men,
and met the enemy at the passes. One part of the Assyrian army he
allowed to enter unmolested; when a sufficient number seemed to have
reached the plains he attacked them and drove them back to the nearest
mountains; about 100,000 Assyrians were slain. But when the whole force
had penetrated into the land, the Bactrians were overcome by superior
numbers and scattered each to his own city. The rest of the cities were
captured by Ninus with little trouble, but Bactra, the chief city, where
the palace of the king lay, he could not reduce, for it was large and
well-provisioned, and the fortress was very strong.
When the siege became protracted, Onnes, the first among the counsellors
of the king and viceroy of Syria, who accompanied the king on this
campaign, sent for his wife Semiramis to the camp. Once when he was
inspecting the flocks of the king in Syria, he had seen at the dwelling
of Simmas, the keeper of these flocks, a beautiful maiden, and he was so
overcome with love for her that he sought and obtained her as a wife
from Simmas. She was the foster-child of Simmas. In a rocky place in the
desert his shepherds had found the maiden about a year old, fed by doves
with milk and cheese; as Simmas was childless he had taken the foundling
as his child, and given her the name of Semiramis Onnes took her to the
city of Ninus. She bore him two sons, Hyapates and Hydaspes, and as she
had everything which beauty requires, she made her husband her slave; he
did nothing without her advice, and everything succeeded admirably. She
also possessed intelligence and daring, and every other gift likely to
advance her. When requested by Onnes to come to the camp, she seized the
opportunity to display her power. She put on such clothing that it could
not be ascertained whether she was a man or a woman, and this succeeded
so well that at a later time the Medes, and after them the Persians
also, wore the robe of Semiramis. When she arrived in the camp she
perceived that the attack was directed only against the parts of the
city lying in the plain, not against the high part and the strong
fortifications of the citadel, and she also perceived that this
direction of the attack induced the Bactrians to be careless in watching
the citadel. She collected all those in the army who were accustomed to
climbing, and with this troop she ascended the citadel from a deep
ravine, captured a part of it, and gave the signal to the army which was
assaulting the walls in the plain. The Bactrians lost their courage when
they saw their citadel occupied, and the city was taken. Ninus admired
the courage of the woman, honoured her with costly presents, and was
soon enchained by her beauty; but his attempts to persuade Onnes to give
up Semiramis to him were in vain; in vain he offered to recompense him
by the gift of his own daughter Sosana in marriage. At length Ninus
threatened to put out his eyes if he did not obey his commands. The
terror of this threat and the violence of his own love drove Onnes out
of his mind. He hung himself. Thus Semiramis came to the throne of
Assyria. When Ninus had taken possession of the great treasures of gold
and silver which were in Bactra, and had arranged everything there, he
led his army back. At Ninus Semiramis bore him a son, Ninyas, and at his
death, when he had reigned 52 years, Ninus bequeathed to her the
sovereign power. She buried his corpse in the royal palace, and caused a
huge mound to be raised over the grave, 6000 feet in the circuit and
5400 feet high, which towered over the city of Ninus like a lofty
citadel, and could be seen far through the plain in which Ninus lay.
As Semiramis was ambitious, and desired to surpass the fame of Ninus,
she built the great city of Babylon, with mighty walls and towers, the
two royal citadels, the bridge over the Euphrates, and the temple of
Belus, and caused a great lake to be excavated to draw off the water of
the Euphrates. Other cities also she founded on the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and caused depots to be made for those who brought merchandise
from Media, Paraetacene, and the bordering countries. After completing
these works she marched with a great army to Media and planted the
garden near Mount Bagistanon. The steep and lofty face of this mountain,
more than 10,000 feet in height, she caused to be smoothed, and on it
was cut her picture surrounded by 100 guards; and an inscription was
engraved in Syrian letters, saying that Semiramis had caused the
pack-saddles of her beasts of burden to be piled on each other, and on
these had ascended to the summit of the mountain. Afterwards she made
another large garden near the city of Chauon, in Media,[5] and on a rock
in the middle of it she erected rich and costly buildings, from which
she surveyed the blooming garden and the army encamped in the plain.
Here she remained for a long time, and gave herself up to every kind of
pleasure. She was unwilling to contract another marriage from fear of
losing the sovereign power, but she lived with any of her warriors who
were distinguished for their beauty. All who had enjoyed her favours she
secretly put to death. After this retirement she turned her course to
Egbatana, caused a path to be cut through the rocks of Mount Zagrus, and
a short and convenient road to be made across them, in order to leave
behind an imperishable memorial of her reign. In Egbatana she erected a
splendid palace, and in order to provide the city with water she caused
a tunnel to be made through the lofty mountain Orontes at its base,
which conveyed the water of a lake lying on the other side of the
heights into the city. After this she marched through Persia and all the
countries of Asia which were subject to her, and caused the mountains to
be cut through and straight and level roads to be built everywhere,
while in the plains she at one place raised great mounds over her dead
generals, and in another built cities on hills; and wherever the army
was encamped eminences were raised for her tent so that she might
overlook the whole. Of these works many are still remaining in Asia and
bear the name of Semiramis. Then she subjugated Egypt,[6] a great part
of Libya, and nearly the whole of Ethiopia, and finally returned to
Bactra.
A long period of peace ensued, till she resolved to subjugate the
Indians on hearing that they were the most numerous of all nations, and
possessed the largest and most beautiful country in the world. For two
years preparations were made throughout her whole kingdom; in the third
year she collected in Bactria 3,000,000 foot soldiers, 500,000 horsemen,
and 100,000 chariots. Beside these, 100,000 camels were covered with the
sewn skins of black oxen, and each was mounted by one warrior; these
animals were intended to pass for elephants with the Indians. For
crossing the Indus 2000 ships were built, then taken to pieces again,
and the various parts packed on camels. Stabrobates, the king of the
Indians, awaited the Assyrians on the bank of the Indus. He also had
prepared for the war with all his power, and gathered together even a
larger force from the whole of India. When Semiramis approached he sent
messengers to meet her with the complaint that she was making war upon
him though he had done her no wrong; and in his letter he reproached her
licentious life, and calling the gods to witness, threatened to crucify
her if victorious. Semiramis read the letter, laughed, and said that the
Indians would find out her virtue by her actions. The fleet of the
Indians lay ready for battle on the Indus. Semiramis caused her ships to
be put together, manned them with her bravest warriors, and, after a
long and stubborn contest, the victory fell to her share. A thousand
ships of the Indians were sunk and many prisoners taken. Then she also
took the islands and cities on the river, and out of these she collected
more than 100,000 prisoners. But the king of the Indians, pretending
flight, led his army back from the Indus; in reality he wished to induce
the enemy to cross the Indus. As matters succeeded according to her
wishes, Semiramis caused a large and broad bridge to be thrown skilfully
over the Indus, and on this her whole army passed over. Leaving 60,000
men to protect the bridge, she pursued the Indians with the rest of her
army, and sent on in front the camels clothed as elephants. At first
the Indians did not understand whence Semiramis could have procured so
many elephants and were alarmed. But the deception could not last.
Soldiers of Semiramis, who were found careless on the watch, deserted to
the enemy to escape punishment, and betrayed the secret. Stabrobates
proclaimed it at once to his whole army, caused a halt to be made, and
offered battle to the Assyrians. When the armies approached each other
the king of the Indians ordered his horsemen and chariots to make the
attack. Semiramis sent against them her pretended elephants. When the
cavalry of the Indians came up their horses started back at the strange
smell, part of them dislodged their riders, others refused to obey the
rein. Taking advantage of this moment, Semiramis, herself on horseback,
pressed forward with a chosen band of men upon the Indians, and turned
them to flight. Stabrobates was still unshaken; he led out his
elephants, and behind them his infantry. Himself on the right wing,
mounted on the best elephant, he chanced to come opposite Semiramis. He
made a resolute attack upon the queen, and was followed by the rest of
the elephants. The soldiers of Semiramis resisted only a short time. The
elephants caused an immense slaughter; the Assyrians left their ranks,
they fled, and the king pressed forward against Semiramis; his arrow
wounded her arm, and as she turned away his javelin struck her on the
back. She hastened away, while her people were crushed and trodden down
by their own numbers; and at last, as the Indians pressed upon them,
were forced from the bridge into the river. As soon as Semiramis saw the
greater part of her army on the nearer bank, she caused the cables to be
cut which held the bridge; the force of the stream tore the beams
asunder, and many Assyrians who were on the bridge were plunged in the
river. The other Assyrians were now in safety, the wounds of Semiramis
were not dangerous, and the king of the Indians was warned by signs from
heaven and their interpretation by the seers not to cross the river.
After exchanging prisoners Semiramis returned to Bactra. She had lost
two-thirds of her army.
Some time afterwards she was attacked by a conspiracy, which her own son
Ninyas set on foot against her by means of an eunuch. Then she
remembered a prophecy given to her in the temple of Zeus Ammon during
the campaign in Libya; that when her son Ninyas conspired against her
she would disappear from the sight of men, and the honours of an
immortal would be paid to her by some nations of Asia. Hence she
cherished no resentment against Ninyas, but, on the contrary,
transferred to him the kingdom, ordered her viceroys to obey him, and
soon after put herself to death, as though, according to the oracle, she
had raised herself to the gods. Some relate that she was changed into a
dove, and flew out of the palace with a flock of doves. Hence it is that
the Assyrians regard Semiramis as an immortal, and the dove as divine.
She was 62 years old, and had reigned 42 years.
The preceding narrative, which is from Diodorus, is borrowed in
essentials from the Persian history of Ctesias, who lived for some time
at the Persian Court in the first two decades of the reign of Artaxerxes
Mnemon (405-361 B.C.). On the end of Semiramis the account of Ctesias
contained more details than the account of Diodorus. This is made clear
by some fragments from Ctesias preserved by other writers. In Nicolaus
of Damascus we are told that after the Indian war Semiramis marched
through the land of the Medes. Here she visited a very lofty and
precipitous mountain, which could only be ascended on one side. On this
she at once caused an abode to be built from which to survey her army.
While encamped here, Satibaras the eunuch told the sons of Onnes,
Hyapates and Hydaspes, that Ninyas would put them to death if he
ascended the throne; they must anticipate him by removing their mother
and Ninyas out of the way, and possessing themselves of the sovereign
power. Moreover, it was to their great dishonour to be spectators of the
licentiousness of their mother, who, even at her years, daily desired
every youth that came in her way. The matter, he said, was easy of
accomplishment; when he summoned them to the queen (he was entrusted
with this business) they could come to the summit of the mountain and
throw their mother down from it. But it happened that behind the altar,
near which they held this conversation, a Mede was lying, who
overheard them. He wrote down everything on a skin and sent it to
Semiramis. When she had read it she caused the sons of Onnes to be
summoned, and gave strict orders that they should come in arms.
Delighted that the deity favoured the undertaking, Satibaras fetched the
young men. When they appeared Semiramis bade the eunuch step aside, and
then she spoke to them: "You worthless sons of an honest and brave
father have allowed yourselves to be persuaded by a worthless slave to
throw down from this height your mother, who holds her empire from the
gods, in order to obtain glory among men, and to rule after the murder
of your mother and your brother Ninyas. Then she spoke to the
Assyrians."[7] Here the fragment of Nicolaus breaks off. From the
fragments of Cephalion we may gather that the sons of Onnes were put to
death by Semiramis. Yet Cephalion gave a different account of the death
of Semiramis from Ctesias; according to him Ninyas slew her.[8] In
Ctesias, as is clear from the account of Diodorus and other remains of
Ctesias, nothing was spoken of beyond the conspiracy which Ninyas
prepared against her.[9]
After the death of Semiramis, so Diodorus continues his narrative,
Ninyas ruled in peace, for he by no means emulated his mother's military
ambition and delight in danger. He remained always in the palace, was
seen by no one but his concubines and eunuchs, took upon himself no care
or trouble, thought only of pleasure and pastime, considered it the
object of sovereign power to give himself up undisturbed to all sorts of
enjoyment. His seclusion served to hide his excesses in obscurity; he
seemed like an invisible God, whom no one ventured to offend even in
word. In order to preserve his kingdom he put leaders over the army,
viceroys, judges, and magistrates over every nation, and arranged
everything as seemed most useful to himself. To keep his subjects in
fear he caused each nation to provide a certain number of soldiers every
year, and these were quartered together in a camp outside the city, and
placed under the command of men most devoted to himself. At the end of
the year they were dismissed and replaced by others to the same number.
Hence his subjects always saw a great force in the camp ready to punish
disobedience or defection. In the same way his descendants also reigned
for 30 generations, till the empire passed to the Medes.[10] Slightly
differing from this account, Nicolaus tells us that Sardanapalus--to
whom in the order of succession the kingdom of Ninus and Semiramis
finally descended--neither carried arms nor went out to the
hunting-field, like the kings in old times, but always remained in his
palace. Yet even in his time the old arrangements were kept and the
satraps of the subject nations gathered with the fixed contingent at the
gate of the king.[11]
From what source is the narrative of Ninus and Semiramis derived? what
title to credibility can be allowed it? Herodotus states that the
dominion of the Assyrians in Asia was the oldest; their supremacy was
followed by that of the Medes, and the supremacy of the Medes was
followed by the kingdom of the Achaemenids. Herodotus too is acquainted
with the name of Semiramis; he represents her as ruling over Babylon,
and building wonderful dykes in the level land, which the river had
previously turned into a lake.[12] Strabo tells of the citadels, cities,
mountain-roads, aqueducts, bridges, and canals which Semiramis
constructed through all Asia, and to Semiramis Lucian traces back the
old temples of Syria.[13] We may assume in explanation that the
tradition of Hither Asia has ascribed to the first king and queen of
Assyria the construction of the ancient road over the Zagrus, of old
dykes and aqueducts in the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, the
building, not of Nineveh only, but also of Babylon, the erection of the
great monuments of forgotten kings of Babylon,--as a fact, Assyrian
kings built in Babylon also in the seventh century. We may find it
conceivable that this tradition has gathered together and carried back
to the time of the foundation all that memory retained of the acts of
Assyrian rulers, the campaigns of conquest of a long series of warlike
and mighty sovereigns, the sum total of the exploits to which Assyria
owed her supremacy. Yet against such an origin of this narrative doubts
arise not easy to be removed. It is true that when this tradition
explains the mode of life and the clothing of the kings of Asia, and the
clothing of the Medes and Persians, from the example of Semiramis, who
wore in the camp a robe, half male and half female (p. 6); when this
tradition derives the inaccessibility of the kings of Asia and their
seclusion in the palace from the fact that Ninyas wished to hide his
excesses, and appear to his subjects as a higher being,--traits of this
kind can be set aside as additions of the Greeks. To the Babylonians and
Assyrians, the Medes and Persians, the life and clothing of their rulers
could not appear contemptible or remarkable, nor their own clothing half
effeminate, though the Greeks might very well search for an explanation
of customs so different from their own, and find them in the example and
command of Semiramis, and the example of Ninyas. And if in Herodotus the
empire of the Assyrians over Asia appears as a hegemony of
confederates,[14] this idea is obviously borrowed from Greek models. The
opposite statement of the division of the Assyrian kingdom into
satrapies, the yearly change of the contingents of troops, comes from
Ctesias, who transferred the arrangements of the Persian kingdom, with
which he was acquainted, to their predecessors, the kingdom of the
Assyrians, or found this transference made in his authorities, Persian
or Mede, and copied it.
Yet, after making as much allowance as we can for the amalgamating
influence of native tradition, after going as far as we can in setting
apart what may be due to the Greeks, how could such an accurate
narrative, so well acquainted with every detail of the siege of Bactra,
and the battle on the Indus, have been preserved for many centuries in
the tradition of Hither Asia, retained even after the overthrow of
Assyria, and down to the date when curious Greeks, 200 years after the
fall of Nineveh, reached the Euphrates and Tigris? We possess a positive
proof that about this time, in the very place to which this tradition
must have clung most tenaciously, within the circuit of the old Assyrian
country, no remembrance of that mighty past was in existence. When, in
the year 401 B.C., Xenophon with his 10,000 marched past the ruins of
the ancient cities of the Assyrian kingdom, the ruins of Asshur, Chalah,
and Nineveh, before Ctesias wrote, he was merely told that these were
cities of the Medes which could not be taken; into one of them the queen
of the Medes had fled before the Persian king, and the Persians, with
the help of heaven, took and destroyed it when they gained the dominion
over Media.[15] From the Assyrians, therefore, Herodotus and Ctesias
could not have obtained the information given in their statements about
Ninus and Semiramis, nor could their knowledge have come from the
Babylonians. The tradition of Babylonia would never have attributed the
mighty buildings of that city and land to the queen of another nation,
to which Babylon had succumbed. Hence the account of the Greeks about
Assyria and her rulers could only come from the Medes and Persians. But
our narrative ascribes to Semiramis even the great buildings of the
Median rulers, the erection of the royal citadel of Egbatana, the
residence of the Median kings; the parks and rock sculptures of Media,
even the rock figure on Mount Bagistanon (p. 7). This sculpture in the
valley of the Choaspes on the rock-wall of Bagistan (Behistun) is in
existence. The wall is not 10,000 but only 1500 feet high. It is not
Semiramis who is pourtrayed in those sculptures, but Darius, the king of
Persia, and before him are the leaders of the rebellious provinces. It
was the proudest monument of victory in all the history of Persia. Would
a Persian have shown this to a Greek as a monument of Semiramis? It
would rather be a Mede, who would wish to hide from the Greeks that
Media was among the provinces a second time conquered and brought to
subjection.
The difficulty of ascertaining the sources of our narrative is still
further increased in no inconsiderable degree by the fact that the books
of Ctesias are lost, and that Diodorus has not drawn immediately from
them, but from a reproduction of Ctesias' account of Assyria. Yet the
express references to the statements of Ctesias which Diodorus found in
his authority, as well as fragments relating to the subject which have
been elsewhere preserved, allow us to fix with tolerable accuracy what
belongs to Ctesias in this narrative, and what Clitarchus, the renewer
of his work, whom Diodorus had before him, has added.[16] It is Ctesias
who enumerates the nations which Ninus subdued (p. 3). With him
Semiramis was the daughter of a Syrian and Derceto, who throws herself
into the lake of Ascalon, and is then worshipped as a goddess there.[17]
To Ctesias belongs the nourishment of the child Semiramis by the doves
of the goddess, her rise from the shepherd's hut to the throne of
Assyria. He represents her as raising the mountain or the tomb of Ninus;
he ascribes to her the building of Babylon, its mighty walls and royal
citadels, the aqueducts, and the great temple of Bel. He represented her
as marching to the Indus[18] and afterwards towards Media; as making
gardens there and building the road over the Zagrus. He represented her
as raising the mounds over the graves of her lovers;[19] he told of her
sensuality, of the designs of her sons by the first marriage, and the
plot of Ninyas; he recounted her end, which was as marvellous as her
birth and her youth: she flew out of the palace up to heaven with a
flock of doves. If the conquest of Egypt by Semiramis also belongs to
Ctesias,[20] the march through Libya, and the oracle given to her in the
oasis of Ammon, together with the version of her death, which rests on
this oracle (she caused herself to disappear, _i.e._ put herself to
death, in order to share in divine honours), belong to Clitarchus.
If, therefore, we may regard it as an established fact that our
narrative has not arisen out of Assyrian or Babylonian tradition, that
the views and additions of Greek origin introduced into it leave the
centre untouched; if we have succeeded in discovering, to a tolerably
satisfactory degree, the outlines of the narrative of Ctesias, the main
question still remains to be answered: from what sources is this
narrative to be derived? In the first attempt to criticise this account
we find ourselves astonished by the certainty of the statements, the
minute and, in part, extremely vivid descriptions of persons and
incidents. Not only the great prince who founded the power of Assyria,
and the queen whose beauty and courage enchanted him, are known to
Ctesias in their words and actions. He can mention by name the man who
nurtured Semiramis as a girl, and her first husband. He knows the names
of the princes of the Arabs, Medes, Bactrians, and Indians with whom
Ninus and Semiramis had to do. The number of the forces set in motion
against Bactria and India are given accurately according to the weapon
used. The arrangements of the battle beyond the Indus, the progress of
the fight, the wounds carried away by Semiramis, the exchange of
prisoners, are related with the fidelity of an eye-witness. Weight is
obviously laid on the fact that after Semiramis had conquered and
traversed Egypt and Ethiopia, after her unbroken success, the last great
campaign against the Indians fails because she attacked them without
receiving any previous injury. The message which Stabrobates sends to
her, the letter which he writes, the reproaches he makes upon her life,
the minute details which Ctesias gives of the relation of Onnes to
Semiramis, of the conspiracy of the sons by this marriage, who felt
themselves dishonoured by the conduct of their now aged mother, of the
letter of the Mede, whose fidelity discovered the plot to her, of the
speeches which Semiramis made on this occasion, carry us back to a
description at once vivid and picturesque. If we take these pictures
together with the account of Ctesias about the decline of the Assyrian
kingdom, in which also very characteristic details appear, if we
consider the style and the whole tone of these accounts of the beginning
and the end of the Assyrian kingdom, we cannot avoid the conclusion that
Ctesias has either invented the whole narrative or followed a poetic
source.
The first inference is untenable, because the whole narrative bears the
colour and stamp of the East in such distinctness that Ctesias cannot
have invented it, and, on the other hand, it contains so much poetry
that if Ctesias were the author of these descriptions we should have to
credit him with high poetic gifts. We are, therefore, driven to adopt
the second inference--that a poetic source lies at the base of his
account. If, as was proved above, neither Assyrian nor Babylonian
traditions can be taken into consideration, Assyrian and Babylonian
poems are by the same reasoning put out of the question. On the other
hand, we find in Ctesias' history of the Medes episodes of at least
equal poetic power with his narrative of Ninus and Semiramis. Plutarch
tells us that the great deeds of Semiramis were praised in songs.[21] It
is certain that they could not be the songs of Assyria, which had long
since passed away, but we find, on the other hand, that there were
minstrels at the court of the Medes, who sang to the kings at the
banquet; it is, moreover, a Mede who warns Semiramis against Hyapates
and Hydaspes; and the other names in the narrative of Ctesias bear the
stamp of the Iranian language. Further, we find, not only in the
fragments of Ctesias which have come down to us, but also in the
narratives of Herodotus and other Greeks concerning the fortunes of the
Medes and Persians down to the great war of Xerxes against the Hellenes,
remains and traces of poems which can only have been sung amongst the
Medes and Persians. We have, therefore, good grounds for assuming that
it was Medo-Persian poems which could tell the story of Ninus and
Semiramis, and that this part of the Medo-Persian poems was the source
from which Ctesias drew. It was the contents of these poems recounted to
him by Persians or Medes which he no doubt followed in this case, as in
his further narratives of Parsondes and Sparethra, of the rebellion and
struggle of Cyrus against Astyages, just as Herodotus before him drew
from such poems his account of the rebellion of the Magi, the death of
Cambyses, and the conspiracy of the seven Persians.
After severe struggles the princes and people of the Medes succeeded in
casting down the Assyrian empire from the supremacy it had long
maintained; they conquered and destroyed their old and supposed
impregnable metropolis. If the tribes of the Medes had previously been
forced to bow before the Assyrians, they took ample vengeance for the
degradation. Hence the Median minstrels had a most excellent reason to
celebrate this crowning achievement of their nation; it afforded them a
most agreeable subject. If, in the earlier and later struggles of the
Medes against Assyria, the bravery of individual heroes was often
celebrated in song, these songs might by degrees coalesce into a
connected whole, the close of which was the overthrow of the Assyrian
empire. The Median poems which dealt with this most attractive material
must have commenced with the rise of the Assyrian kingdom; they had the
more reason for explaining and suggesting motives for this mighty
movement, as it was incumbent on them to make intelligible the wreck of
the resistance of their own nation to the onset of the Assyrians, and
the previous subjection of Media. In these poems no doubt they described
the cruelty of the conqueror, who crucified their king, with his wife
and seven children (p. 3). The more brilliant, the more overpowering the
might of Assyria, as they described it, owing to eminent sovereigns in
the earliest times, the wider the extent of the empire, the more easily
explained and tolerable became the subjection of the Medes, the greater
the glory to have finally conquered. This final retribution formed the
close; the striking contrast of the former exaltation and subsequent
utter overthrow, brought about by Median power and bravery, formed the
centre of these poems.
The prince of the Assyrians whose success is unfailing till he finds
himself checked in Bactria, the woman of unknown origin found in the
desert, fostered by herdsmen, and raised from the lowest to the most
elevated position,[22] who in bravery surpasses the bravest, who outdoes
the deeds of Ninus, whose charms allure to destruction every one who
approaches her, who makes all whom she favours her slaves in order to
slay them, who without regard to her years makes every youth her lover,
and is, nevertheless, finally exalted to the gods--are these forms due
to the mere imagination of Medo-Persian minstrels, or what material lay
at the base of these lively pictures?
The metropolis of the Assyrians was known to the Greeks as Ninus; in the
inscriptions of the Assyrian kings it is called Ninua. From this the
name of Ninus, the founder of the empire, as well as Ninyas, is
obviously taken. In Herodotus[23] and the chronographers Ninus is the
son of Belus, _i.e._ of Bel, the sky-god already known to us (I. 265).
The monuments of Assyria show us that the Assyrians worshipped a female
deity, which was at once the war-goddess and goddess of sexual
love--Istar-Bilit. Istar was not merely the goddess of battles--bringing
death and destruction, though also conferring victory; she was at the
same time the goddess of sensual love. We have already learned to know
her double nature. In turn she sends life, pleasure, and death. If Istar
of Arbela was the goddess of battle, Istar of Nineveh was the goddess of
love (I. 270). As the goddess of love, doves were sacred to her. In the
temples of Syria there were statues of this goddess with a golden dove
on the head; she was even invoked there under the name of Semiramis, a
word which may mean High name, Name of the Height.[24]
Thus the Medo-Persian minstrels have changed the form and legend of a
goddess who was worshipped in Assyria, whose rites were vigorously
cultivated in Syria, into a heroine, the founder of the Assyrian empire;
just as in the Greek and German epos divine beings have undergone a
similar change. This heroine is the daughter of a maiden who slays the
youth whom she has made happy with her love, who gave her her daughter,
_i.e._ she is the daughter of the goddess herself. Like her mother, the
goddess, the daughter, Semiramis, inspires men with irresistible love,
and thus makes them her slaves. At the same time, as a war-goddess, she
surpasses all men in martial courage, and brings death to all who have
surrendered to her. The origin of the goddess thus transformed into a
heroine is unknown and supernatural; her characteristics are marvellous
powers of victory and charms of love. The neighbourhood of Ascalon,
where we found the oldest and most famous temples of the Syrian goddess
of love (I. 360), was the scene of the origin of the miraculous child.
The doves of the Syrian goddess nourish and protect her in the desert.
She grows up in Syria, where the worship of the goddess of sexual love
was widely spread. Whether Simmas, her foster-father, has arisen out of
Samas, the sun-god of the Semites, and Onnes, the first husband of
Semiramis, out of Anu, the god of Babel and Asshur, cannot indeed be
decided. But in her relation to Onnes, whom her charm makes her slave,
to whom she brings uninterrupted success, till in despair at her loss he
takes his life, the Medo-Persian minstrels describe the glamour of love
and the sensual pleasure, as well as the destruction which proceeds from
her, in the liveliest and most forcible manner. Even after the Indian
campaign she indulges her passions, and then puts those to death to whom
she grants her favours. In this life the poems found a motive for the
plots of her sons, from which she was at first rescued by the fidelity
of a Mede,--a trait which again reveals the origin of the poem. As
Semiramis was a heroine merely, and not a goddess, to the minstrels,
they could represent her overthrow, her defeat and wounds, on the Indus,
which afterwards was the limit of the conquests of the Medians and
Persians. At the end of her life the higher style reappears, the
supernatural origin comes in once more. She flies out of the palace with
the doves of Bilit, which protected her childhood. In Ctesias the
goddess of Ascalon is Derceto,[25] and therefore later writers could
maintain that the kings of Assyria, the descendants or successors of
Semiramis, were named Dercetadae.[26]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Strabo, pp. 736, 737. Arrian, "Anab." 3, 7, 7. The same form of the
name, Athura, is given in the inscriptions of Darius.
[2] Plin. "Hist. Nat." 6, 27; 5, 12: Adiabene Assyria ante dicta.
Ptolemaeus (6, 1) puts Adiabene and Arbelitis side by side. Diodorus, 18,
39. Arrian, Epit. 35: [Greek: ten men mesen ton potamon gen sai ten
Arbelitin eneime Amphimacho.]
[3] Polyb. 5, 54. The border line between the original country of
Assyria and Elam cannot be ascertained with certainty. According to
Herodotus (5, 52) Susa lay 42 parasangs, _i.e._ about 150 miles, to the
south of the northern border of Susiana. Hence we may perhaps take the
Diala as the border between the later Assyria and Elam. The use of the
name Assyria for Mesopotamia and Babylonia, as well as Assyria proper,
in Herodotus (_e.g._ 1, 178) and other Greeks,--the name Syria, which
is only an abbreviation of Assyria (Herod. 7, 63),--arises from the
period of the supremacy of Assyria in the epoch 750-650 B.C. Cf. Strabo,
pp. 736, 737, and Noeldeke, [Greek: ASSYRIOS], Hermes, 1871 (5), 443 ff.
[4] The Euphrates, which Diodorus mentions 2, 3 and also 2, 27, is not
to be put down to a mistake of Ctesias, since Nicolaus (Frag. 9, ed.
Mueller) describes Nineveh as situated on the Tigris in a passage
undoubtedly borrowed from Ctesias. The error belongs, as Carl Jacoby
("Rhein. Museum," 30, 575 ff.) has proved, to the historians of the time
of Alexander and the earliest Diadochi, who had in their thoughts the
city of Mabog (Hierapolis), on the Euphrates, which was also called
Nineveh. The mistake has passed from Clitarchus to the narrative of
Diodorus.
[5] Steph. Byzant. [Greek: Chauon, chora tes Medias, Ktesias en proto
Pertikon. E de Semiramis enteuthen exelaunei, k. t. l.]
[6] Diod. 1, 56.
[7] Frag. 7, ed. Mueller.
[8] Frag. 1, 2, ed. Mueller; cf. Justin. 1, 1.
[9] Anonym. tract. "De Mulier." c. 1.
[10] Diod. 2, 21.
[11] Nicol. Frag. 8, ed. Mueller.
[12] 1, 184.
[13] Strabo, pp. 80, 529, 737; Lucian, "de Syria dea," c. 14.
[14] Herod. 1, 102.
[15] Xenoph. "Anab." 3, 4, 6-10.
[16] Diodorus tells us himself (2, 7) that in writing the first 30
chapters of his second book he had before him the book of Clitarchus on
Alexander. Carl Jacoby (_loc. cit._)--by a comparison with the
statements in point in Curtius, who transcribed Clitarchus, and by the
proof that certain passages in the narrative of Diodorus which relate to
Bactria and India are in agreement with passages in the seventeenth
book, in which Diodorus undoubtedly follows Clitarchus; that certain
observations in the description of Babylon in Diodorus can only belong
to Alexander and his nearest successors; that certain preparations of
Semiramis for the Indian campaign agree with certain preparations of
Alexander for his Indian campaign, and certain incidents in Alexander's
battle against Porus with certain incidents in the battle of Semiramis
against Stabrobates; and finally by showing that the situation of the
ancient Nineveh was unknown to the historians of the time of Alexander,
who were on the other hand acquainted with a Nineveh on the Euphrates
(Hierapolis, Mabog; Plin. "Hist. Nat." 5, 23; Ammian. Marcell. 14, 8,
7)--has made it at least very probable that Diodorus had Ctesias before
him in the revision of Clitarchus. We may allow that Clitarchus brought
the Bactrian Oxyartes into the narrative, unless we ought to read
Exaortes in Diodorus; but that the name of the king in Ctesias was
Zoroaster is in my opinion very doubtful. The sources of Ctesias were
stories related by Persians or Medes from the epic of West Iran. That
this should put Zoroaster at the time of Ninus, and make him king of the
Bactrians, in order to allow him to be overthrown by the Assyrians, is
very improbable. Whether Ctesias ascribed to Semiramis the building of
Egbatana is also very doubtful; that he mentioned her stay in Media, and
ascribed to her the building of the road over the Zagrus and the
planting of gardens, follows from the quotation of Stephanus given
above. Ctesias has not ascribed to her the hanging gardens at Babylon.
Diodorus makes them the work of a later Syrian king, whom Ctesias would
certainly have called king of Assyria. Ctesias too can hardly have
ascribed to her the obelisk at Babylon (Diod. 2, 11); so at least the
addition of Diodorus, "that it belonged to the seven wonders," seems to
me to prove.
[17] "Catasterism." c. 38; Hygin. "Astronom." 2, 41. In Diodorus
Aphrodite, enraged by a maiden, Derceto, imbues her with a fierce
passion for a youth. In shame she slays the youth, exposes the child,
throws herself into the lake of Ascalon, and is changed into a fish. For
this reason the image of the goddess Derceto at Ascalon has the face of
a woman and the body of a fish (2, 4).
[18] Diod. 2, 17, _init._
[19] Georg. Syncell. p. 119, ed. Bonn.
[20] Diod. 1, 56.
[21] "De Iside," c. 24.
[22] Diod. 2, 4, _init._
[23] Herod. 1, 7.
[24] Lucian, "De Syria dea," c. 33, 14, 38. The name Semiramoth is found
1 Chronicles xv. 18, 20; xvi. 5; 2, xvii. 8.
[25] Ctesias in Strabo, p. 785.
[26] Agathias, 2, 24.