RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. — CYRUS.
In the preceding chapter, I have followed the history of Central
Greece very nearly down to the point at which the history of the
Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which the two
streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same channel. I now
revert to the affairs of the Asiatic Greeks, and of the Asiatic kings
as connected with them, at the point in which they were left in my
seventeenth chapter.
The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad and
serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and Æolic Greeks
on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the
Lydian king Crœsus: “down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks
had been free.” Their conqueror Crœsus, who ascended the throne in
560 B. C., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and
power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures
at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor,
as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that
river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyagês,
extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but
comprising in a south-eastern direction Persis proper, or Farsistan,
and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line
of Mount Zagros—the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey.
Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians, or Chaldæans, under their king
Labynêtus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly
by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an
honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline,—but
which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldæan
dominion under Labynêtus reached to the borders of Egypt, including,
as dependent territories, both Judæa and Phenicia. In Egypt reigned
the native king Amasis, powerful and affluent, sustained in his
throne by a large body of Grecian mercenaries, and himself favorably
disposed to Grecian commerce and settlement. Both with Labynêtus and
with Amasis, Crœsus was on terms of alliance; and as Astyagês was
his brother-in-law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the
reach of calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years or a little
more, the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast
empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even by name.
The rise and fall of Oriental dynasties has been in all times
distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adventurous
prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and
greedy, acquires dominion,—while his successors, abandoning
themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive
and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims
to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their
own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the
Persian empire, first the subject and afterwards the dethroner of
the Median Astyagês, corresponds to this general description, as
far at least as we can pretend to know his history. For in truth,
even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of Media, are
very imperfectly known, whilst the facts which preceded his rise
up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known at all: we have
to choose between different accounts at variance with each other,
and of which the most complete and detailed is stamped with all the
character of romance. The Cyropædia of Xenophon is memorable and
interesting, considered with reference to the Greek mind, and as a
philosophical novel:[317] that it should have been quoted so largely
as authority on matters of history, is only one proof among many how
easily authors have been satisfied as to the essentials of historical
evidence. The narrative given by Herodotus of the relations between
Cyrus and Astyagês, agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the
fact that it makes Cyrus son of Kambysês and Mandanê, and grandson
of Astyagês, goes even beyond the story of Romulus and Remus in
respect to tragical incident and contrast. Astyagês, alarmed by a
dream, condemns the new-born infant of his daughter Mandanê to be
exposed: Harpagus, to whom the order is given, delivers the child to
one of the royal herdsmen, who exposes it in the mountains, where
it is miraculously suckled by a bitch.[318] Thus preserved, and
afterwards brought up as the herdsman’s child, Cyrus manifests great
superiority both physical and mental, is chosen king in play by the
boys of the village, and in this capacity severely chastises the
son of one of the courtiers; for which offence he is carried before
Astyagês, who recognizes him for his grandson, but is assured by
the Magi that his dream is out, and that he has no farther danger
to apprehend from the boy,—and therefore permits him to live. With
Harpagus, however, Astyagês is extremely incensed, for not having
executed his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, and
served up to be eaten by his unconscious father at a regal banquet.
The father, apprized afterwards of the fact, dissembles his feelings,
but conceives a deadly vengeance against Astyagês for this Thyestean
meal. He persuades Cyrus, who has been sent back to his father and
mother in Persia, to head a revolt of the Persians against the
Medes; whilst Astyagês—to fill up the Grecian conception of madness
as a precursor to ruin—sends an army against the revolters, commanded
by Harpagus himself. Of course the army is defeated,—Astyagês, after
a vain resistance, is dethroned,—Cyrus becomes king in his place,—and
Harpagus repays the outrage which he has undergone by the bitterest
insults.
[317] Among the lost productions of Antisthenês the contemporary
of Xenophon and Plato, and emanating like them from the tuition
of Sokratês, was one Κῦρος, ἢ περὶ Βασιλείας (Diogenes Laërt. vi,
15).
[318] That this was the real story—a close parallel of Romulus
and Remus—we may see by Herodotus, i, 122. Some rationalizing
Greeks or Persians transformed it into a more plausible
tale,—that the herdsman’s wife who suckled the boy Cyrus was
named Κυνώ (Κυών is a dog, male or female); contending that this
latter was the real basis of fact, and that the intervention of
the bitch was an exaggeration built upon the name of the woman,
in order that the divine protection shown to Cyrus might be still
more manifest,—οἱ δὲ τοκέες παραλαβόντες τὸ οὔνομα τοῦτ (~ἵνα
θειοτέρως δοκέῃ τοῖσι Πέρσῃσι περιεῖναί σφι ὁ παῖς~), κατέβαλον
φάτιν ὡς ἐκκείμενον Κῦρον κύων ἐξέθρεψε· ἐνθεῦτεν μὲν ἡ φάτις
αὐτὴ κεχωρήκεε.
In the first volume of this History, I have noticed various
transformations operated by Palæphatus and others upon the Greek
mythes,—the ram which carried Phryxus and Hellê across the
Hellespont is represented to us as having been in _reality_ a man
_named Krius_, who aided their flight,—the winged horse which
carried Bellerophon was a ship _named_ Pegasus, etc.
This same operation has here been performed upon the story of the
suckling of Cyrus; for we shall run little risk in affirming that
the miraculous story is the older of the two. The feelings which
welcome a miraculous story are early and primitive; those which
break down the miracle into a common-place fact are of subsequent
growth.
Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at
some length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader
sufficiently romantic, though the historian intimates that he had
heard three other narratives different from it, and that all were
more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation, than his
own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded Persian
informants.[319] In what points the other three stories departed from
it, we do not hear.
[319] Herodot. i, 95. Ὡς ὦν Περσέων ~μετεξέτεροι~ λέγουσιν, οἱ
~μὴ βουλόμενοι σεμνοῦν~ τὰ περὶ Κῦρον, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐόντα λέγειν
λόγον, κατὰ ταῦτα γράψω· ἐπιστάμενος περὶ Κύρου καὶ ~τριφασίας
ἄλλας~ λόγων ὁδοὺς φῆναι. His informants were thus select
persons, who differed from the Persians generally.
The long narrative respecting the infancy and growth of Cyrus is
contained in Herodot. i, 107-129.
To the historian of Halikarnassus, we have to oppose the physician
of the neighboring town Knidus,—Ktêsias, who contradicted Herodotus,
not without strong terms of censure, on many points, and especially
upon that which is the very foundation of the early narrative
respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed that Cyrus was noway related to
Astyagês.[320] However indignant we may be with Ktêsias, for the
disparaging epithets which he presumed to apply to an historian
whose work is to us inestimable,—we must nevertheless admit that as
surgeon, in actual attendance on king Artaxerxês Mnêmon, and healer
of the wound inflicted on that prince at Kunaxa by his brother Cyrus
the younger,[321] he had better opportunities even than Herodotus of
conversing with sober-minded Persians; and that the discrepancies
between the two statements are to be taken as a proof of the
prevalence of discordant, yet equally accredited, stories. Herodotus
himself was in fact compelled to choose one out of four. So rare and
late a plant is historical authenticity.
[320] See the Extracts from the lost Persian History of Ktêsias,
in Photius Cod. lxxii, also appended to Schweighaüser’s edition
of Herodotus, vol. iv, p. 345. Φησὶ δὲ (Ktêsias) αὐτὸν τῶν
πλειόνων ἃ ἱστορεῖ αὐτόπτην γενόμενον, ἢ παρ᾽ αὐτῶν Περσῶν (ἔνθα
τὸ ὁρᾷν μὴ ἐνεχώρει) αὐτήκοον καταστάντα, οὕτως τὴν ἱστορίαν
συγγράψαι.
To the discrepancies between Xenophon, Herodotus, and Ktêsias, on
the subject of Cyrus, is to be added the statement of Æschylus
(Persæ, 747), the oldest authority of them all, and that of the
Armenian historians: see Bähr ad Ktesiam, p. 85: comp. Bähr’s
comments on the discrepancies, p. 87.
[321] Xenophon, Anabas. i, 8, 26.
That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the space which
he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of longitude, from
the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the Indus, are facts quite
indisputable; but of the steps by which this was achieved, we know
very little. The native Persians, whom he conducted to an empire so
immense, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and four nomadic
tribes,—all of them rude, hardy, and brave,[322]—dwelling in a
mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, or
any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea
of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of
dignity, probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among one
another: first in estimation among them stood the Pasargadæ; and the
first phratry, or clan, among the Pasargadæ were the Achæmenidæ, to
whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median
king whom he dethroned was a matter of fact, or a politic fiction,
we cannot well determine. But Xenophon, in noticing the spacious
deserted cities, Larissa and Mespila,[323] which he saw in his march
with the Ten Thousand Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris,
gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was
reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle.
However this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last
complete: though the Medes always continued to be the second nation
in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called; and by early
Greek writers the great enemy in the East is often called “the
Mede,[324]” as well as “the Persian.” Ekbatana always continued to
be one of the capital cities, and the usual summer residence, of the
kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspês, on the Kissian plain farther
southward, and east of the Tigris, being their winter abode.
[322] Herodot. i, 71-153; Arrian, v, 4; Strabo, xv, p. 727;
Plato, Legg. iii, p. 695.
[323] Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 3, 6; iii, 4, 7-12. Strabo had read
accounts which represented the last battle between Astyagês and
Cyrus to have been fought near Pasargadæ (xv, p. 730).
It has been rendered probable by Ritter, however, that the
ruined city which Xenophon called Mespila was the ancient
Assyrian Nineveh, and the other deserted city which Xenophon
calls Larissa, situated as it was on the Tigris, must have
been originally Assyrian, and not Median. See about Nineveh,
above,—the Chapter on the Babylonians, vol. iii, ch. xix, p. 305,
note.
The land east of the Tigris, in which Nineveh and Arbêla were
situated, seems to have been called Aturia,—a dialectic variation
of Assyria (Strabo, xvi, p. 737; Dio Cass. lxviii, 28).
[324] Xenophanês, Fragm. p. 39, ap. Schneidewin, Delectus Poett.
Elegiac. Græc.—
Πήλικος ἦσθ᾽ ὅθ᾽ ὁ Μῆδος ἀφίκετο;
compare Theognis, v, 775, and Herodot. i, 163.
The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the east,
the Oxus and Caspian sea to the north, the Persian gulf and Indian
ocean to the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the west,
appears to have been occupied in these times by a great variety
of different tribes and people, but all or most of them belonging
to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of the Zend
language.[325] It was known amongst its inhabitants by the common
name of Iran, or Aria: it is, in its central parts at least, a high,
cold plateau, totally destitute of wood and scantily supplied with
water; much of it, indeed, is a salt and sandy desert, unsusceptible
of culture. Parts of it are eminently fertile, where water can be
procured and irrigation applied; and scattered masses of tolerably
dense population thus grew up. But continuity of cultivation is not
practicable, and in ancient times, as at present, a large proportion
of the population of Iran seems to have consisted of wandering or
nomadic tribes, with their tents and cattle. The rich pastures,
and the freshness of the summer climate, in the region of mountain
and valley near Ekbatana, are extolled by modern travellers, just
as they attracted the Great King in ancient times, during the hot
months. The more southerly province called Persis proper (Farsistan)
consists also in part of mountain land interspersed with valley and
plain, abundantly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually
down to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry. The
care bestowed, both by Medes and Persians, on the breeding of
their horses, was remarkable.[326] There were doubtless material
differences between different parts of the population of this
vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along with their common
language and religion, they had also something of a common character,
which contrasted with the Indian population east of the Indus,
the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the Massagetæ and other
Nomads of the Caspian and the sea of Aral,—less brutish, restless,
and bloodthirsty, than the latter,—more fierce, contemptuous, and
extortionate, and less capable of sustained industry, than the two
former. There can be little doubt, at the time of which we are now
speaking, when the wealth and cultivation of Assyria were at their
maximum, that Iran also was far better peopled than ever it has been
since European observers have been able to survey it; especially the
north-eastern portion, Baktria and Sogdiana: so that the invasions of
the nomads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destructive
at various intervals since the Mohammedan conquest, were before that
period successfully kept back.
[325] Strabo, xv, p. 724. ὁμόγλωττοι παρὰ μικρόν. See Heeren,
Ueber den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, book i, pp. 320-340,
and Ritter, Erdkunde, West-Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. ii, sects. 1
and 2, pp. 17-84.
[326] About the province of Persis, see Strabo, xv, p. 727;
Diodor. xix, 21; Quintus Curtius, v, 13, 14, pp. 432-434, with
the valuable explanatory notes of Mützell (Berlin, 1841).
Compare, also, Morier’s Second Journey in Persia, pp. 49-120, and
Ritter, Erdkunde, West Asien, pp. 712-738.
The general analogy among the population of Iran probably enabled the
Persian conqueror with comparative ease to extend his empire to the
east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, and to become the full heir of
the Median kings. And if we may believe Ktêsias, even the distant
province of Baktria had been before subject to those kings: it at
first resisted Cyrus, but finding that he had become son-in-law of
Astyagês as well as master of his person, it speedily acknowledged
his authority.[327]
[327] Ktêsias, Persica, c. 2.
According to the representation of Herodotus, the war between Cyrus
and Crœsus of Lydia began shortly after the capture of Astyagês,
and before the conquest of Baktria.[328] Crœsus was the assailant,
wishing to avenge his brother-in-law, to arrest the growth of the
Persian conqueror, and to increase his own dominions: his more
prudent councillors in vain represented to him that he had little
to gain, and much to lose, by war with a nation alike hardy and
poor. He is represented, as just at that time recovering from the
affliction arising out of the death of his son. To ask advice of
the oracle, before he took any final decision, was a step which no
pious king would omit; but in the present perilous question, Crœsus
did more,—he took a precaution so extreme, that, if his piety had
not been placed beyond all doubt by his extraordinary munificence
to the temples, he might have drawn upon himself the suspicion of a
guilty skepticism.[329] Before he would send to ask advice respecting
the project itself, he resolved to test the credit of some of the
chief surrounding oracles,—Delphi, Dôdôna, Branchidæ near Milêtus,
Amphiaraus at Thebes, Trophônius at Lebadeia, and Ammôn in Libya. His
envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all directed on
the hundredth day afterwards to ask at the respective oracles how
Crœsus was at that precise moment employed. This was a severe trial:
of the manner in which it was met by four out of the six oracles
consulted, we have no information, and it rather appears that their
answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit
undiminished, and Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at
Branchidæ, solved the question with such unerring precision, as
to afford a strong additional argument against persons who might
be disposed to scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put
the question to the Delphian priestess, on the day named, “What is
Crœsus now doing?” than she exclaimed, in the accustomed hexameter
verse,[330] “I know the number of grains of sand, and the measures
of the sea; I understand the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks
not. The smell reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled in a
copper with lamb’s flesh,—copper above and copper below.” Crœsus
was awestruck on receiving this reply. It described with the
utmost detail that which he had been really doing, insomuch that
he accounted the Delphian oracle and that of Amphiaraus the only
trustworthy oracles on earth,—following up these feelings with a
holocaust of the most munificent character, in order to win the favor
of the Delphian god. Three thousand cattle were offered up, and upon
a vast sacrificial pile were placed the most splendid purple robes
and tunics, together with couches and censers of gold and silver:
besides which he sent to Delphi itself the richest presents in
gold and silver,—ingots, statues, bowls, jugs, etc., the size and
weight of which we read with astonishment; the more so as Herodotus
himself saw them a century afterwards at Delphi.[331] Nor was Crœsus
altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus, whose answer had been creditable,
though less triumphant than that of the Pythian priestess. He sent
to Amphiaraus a spear and shield of pure gold, which were afterwards
seen at Thebes by Herodotus: this large donative may help the reader
to conceive the immensity of those which he sent to Delphi.
[328] Herodot. i, 153.
[329] That this point of view should not be noticed in Herodotus,
may appear singular, when we read his story (vi, 86) about
the Milesian Glaukus, and the judgment that overtook him for
having tested the oracle; but it is put forward by Xenophon as
constituting part of the guilt of Crœsus (Cyropæd. vii, 2, 17).
[330] Herodot. i, 47-50.
[331] Herodot. i, 52-54.
The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask, at the
same time, whether Crœsus should undertake an expedition against
the Persians,—and, if so, whether he should prevail on any allies
to assist him. In regard to the second question, the answer both of
Apollo and Amphiaraus was decisive, recommending him to invite the
alliance of the most powerful Greeks. In regard to the first and most
momentous question, their answer was as remarkable for circumspection
as it had been before for detective sagacity: they told Crœsus that,
if he invaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty monarchy. The
blindness of Crœsus interpreted this declaration into an unqualified
promise of success. He sent farther presents to the oracle, and again
inquired whether his kingdom would be durable. “When a mule shall
become king of the Medes (replied the priestess), then must thou run
away,—be not ashamed.”[332]
[332] Herodot. i, 55.
More assured than ever by such an answer, Crœsus sent to Sparta,
under the kings Anaxandridês and Aristo, to tender presents and
solicit their alliance.[333] His propositions were favorably
entertained,—the more so, as he had before gratuitously furnished
some gold to the Lacedæmonians, for a statue to Apollo. The alliance
now formed was altogether general,—no express effort being as yet
demanded from them, though it soon came to be. But the incident is to
be noted, as marking the first plunge of the leading Grecian state
into Asiatic politics; and that too without any of the generous
Hellenic sympathy which afterwards induced Athens to send her
citizens across the Ægean. Crœsus was the master and tribute-exactor
of the Asiatic Greeks, and their contingents seem to have formed part
of his army for the expedition now contemplated; which army consisted
principally, not of native Lydians, but of foreigners.
[333] Herodot. i, 67-70.
The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between the Median
and Lydian empires: and Crœsus, marching across that river into the
territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of Kappadokia, took the city of
Pteria and many of its surrounding dependencies, inflicting damage
and destruction upon these distant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost
no time in bringing an army to their defence considerably larger than
that of Crœsus, and at the same time tried, though unsuccessfully,
to prevail on the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took
place between the two armies, but with indecisive result: and Crœsus,
seeing that he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces as
they stood, thought it wise to return to his capital, in order to
collect a larger army for the next campaign. Immediately on reaching
Sardis, he despatched envoys to Labynêtus king of Babylon; to Amasis
king of Egypt; to the Lacedæmonians, and to other allies; calling
upon all of them to send auxiliaries to Sardis during the course
of the fifth coming month. In the mean time, he dismissed all the
foreign troops who had followed him into Kappadokia.[334]
[334] Herodot. i, 77.
Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been prosecuted
with success; and on the part of the Lacedæmonians at least, there
was no tardiness; for their ships were ready and their troops almost
on board, when the unexpected news reached them that Crœsus was
already ruined.[335] Cyrus had foreseen and forestalled the defensive
plan of his enemy. He pushed on with his army to Sardis without
delay, compelling the Lydian prince to give battle with his own
unassisted subjects. The open and spacious plain before that town was
highly favorable to the Lydian cavalry, which at that time, Herodotus
tells us, was superior to the Persian. But Cyrus devised a stratagem
whereby this cavalry was rendered unavailable,—placing in front of
his line the baggage camels, which the Lydian horses could not endure
either to smell or to behold.[336] The horsemen of Crœsus were thus
obliged to dismount; nevertheless, they fought bravely on foot, and
were not driven into the town till after a sanguinary combat.
[335] Herodot. i, 83.
[336] The story about the successful employment of the camels
appears also in Xenophon, Cyropæd. vii, 1, 47.
Though confined within the walls of his capital, Crœsus had still
good reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his allies,
to whom he sent pressing envoys of acceleration: for Sardis was
considered impregnable,—one assault had already been repulsed,
and the Persians would have been reduced to the slow process of
blockade. But on the fourteenth day of the siege, accident did for
the besiegers that which they could not have accomplished either
by skill or force. Sardis was situated on an outlying peak of the
northern side of Tmôlus; it was well-fortified everywhere except
towards the mountain; and on that side, the rock, was so precipitous
and inaccessible, that fortifications were thought unnecessary, nor
did the inhabitants believe assault to be possible. But Hyrœades,
a Persian soldier, having accidentally seen one of the garrison
descending this precipitous rock to pick up his helmet, which had
rolled down, watched his opportunity, tried to climb up, and found
it not impracticable. Others followed his example, the strong-hold
was thus seized first, and the whole city was speedily taken by
storm.[337]
[337] Herodot. i, 84.
Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Crœsus, who was
accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were made for a solemn
and terrible spectacle. The captive king was destined to be burnt in
chains, together with fourteen Lydian youths, on a vast pile of wood:
and we are even told that the pile was already kindled and the victim
beyond the reach of human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to
preserve him. As to the general fact of supernatural interposition,
in one way or another, Herodotus and Ktêsias both agree, though they
describe differently the particular miracles wrought.[338] It is
certain that Crœsus, after some time, was released and well treated
by his conqueror, and lived to become the confidential adviser of the
latter as well as of his son Kambysês:[339] Ktêsias also acquaints us
that a considerable town and territory near Ekbatana, called Barênê,
was assigned to him, according to a practice which we shall find not
unfrequent with the Persian kings.
[338] Compare Herodot. i, 84-87, and Ktêsias, Persica, c. 4;
which latter seems to have been copied by Polyænus, vii, 6, 10.
It is remarkable that among the miracles enumerated by Ktêsias,
no mention is made of fire or of the pile of wood kindled:
we have the chains of Crœsus miraculously struck off, in the
midst of thunder and lightning, but no _fire_ mentioned. This
is deserving of notice, as illustrating the fact that Ktêsias
derived his information from _Persian_ narrators, who would not
be likely to impute to Cyrus the use of fire for such a purpose.
The Persians worshipped fire as a god, and considered it impious
to burn a dead body (Herodot. iii, 16). Now Herodotus seems to
have heard the story, about the burning, from Lydian informants
(λέγεται ὑπὸ Λυδῶν, Herodot. i, 87): whether the Lydians regarded
fire in the same point of view as the Persians, we do not know;
but even if they did, they would not be indisposed to impute to
Cyrus an act of gross impiety, just as the Egyptians imputed
another act equally gross to Kambysês, which Herodotus himself
treats as a falsehood (iii, 16).
The long narrative given by Nikolaus Damaskênus of the treatment
of Crœsus by Cyrus, has been supposed by some to have been
borrowed from the Lydian historian Xanthus, elder contemporary
of Herodotus. But it seems to me a mere compilation, not well
put together, from Xenophon’s Cyropædia, and from the narrative
of Herodotus, perhaps including some particular incidents out of
Xanthus (see Nikol. Damas. Fragm. ed. Orell. pp. 57-70, and the
Fragments of Xanthus in Didot’s Historic. Græcor. Fragm. p. 40).
[339] Justin (i, 7) seems to copy Ktêsias, about the treatment of
Crœsus.
The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between Persians
and Lydians, whereby Crœsus is said by Herodotus to have first
earned this favorable treatment, are hardly worth repeating; but the
indignant remonstrance sent by Crœsus to the Delphian god is too
characteristic to be passed over. He obtained permission from Cyrus
to lay upon the holy pavement of the Delphian temple the chains with
which he had at first been bound. The Lydian envoys were instructed,
after exhibiting to the god these humiliating memorials, to ask
whether it was his custom to deceive his benefactors, and whether he
was not ashamed to have encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise
so disastrous? The god, condescending to justify himself by the lips
of the priestess, replied: “Not even a god can escape his destiny.
Crœsus has suffered for the sin of his fifth ancestor (Gygês), who,
conspiring with a woman, slew his master and wrongfully seized the
sceptre. Apollo employed all his influence with the Mœræ (Fates) to
obtain that this sin might be expiated by the children of Crœsus, and
not by Crœsus himself; but the Mœræ would grant nothing more than a
postponement of the judgment for three years. Let Crœsus know that
Apollo has thus procured for him a reign three years longer than
his original destiny,[340] after having tried in vain to rescue him
altogether. Moreover, he sent that rain which at the critical moment
extinguished the burning pile. Nor has Crœsus any right to complain
of the prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on the war; for
when the god told him, that he would subvert _a great empire_, it was
his duty to have again inquired which empire the god meant; and if he
neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask for information, he
has himself to blame for the result. Besides, Crœsus neglected the
warning given to him, about the acquisition of the Median kingdom by
a mule: Cyrus was that mule,—son of a Median mother of royal breed,
by a Persian father, at once of different race and of lower position.”
[340] Herodot. i, 91. Προθυμεομένου δὲ Λοξίεω ὅκως ἂν κατὰ τοὺς
παῖδας τοὺς Κροίσου γένοιτο τὸ Σαρδίων πάθος, καὶ μὴ κατ᾽ αὐτὸν
Κροῖσον, οὐκ οἷόν τε ἐγένετο παραγαγεῖν Μοίρας· ὅσον δὲ ἐνέδωκαν
αὗται, ἠνύσατο, καὶ ἐχαρίσατό οἱ· τρία γὰρ ἔτεα ἐπανεβάλετο τὴν
Σαρδίων ἅλωσιν. Καὶ τοῦτο ἐπιστάσθω Κροῖσος, ὡς ὕστερον τοῖσι
ἔτεσι τούτοισι ἁλοὺς τῆς πεπρωμένης.
This triumphant justification extorted even from Crœsus himself
a full confession, that the sin lay with him, and not with the
god.[341] It certainly illustrates, in a remarkable manner, the
theological ideas of the time; and it shows us how much, in the
mind of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own,
unrecorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to
cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the
historical web being in part put together, in part originally spun,
for the purpose of setting forth the religious sentiment and doctrine
woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess predicts to Gygês
that the crime which he had committed in assassinating his master
would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as Herodotus
tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it was at
last fulfilled:[342] we see thus that the history of the first
Mermnad king is made up after the catastrophe of the last. There
was something in the main facts of the history of Crœsus profoundly
striking to the Greek mind: a king at the summit of wealth and
power,—pious in the extreme, and munificent towards the gods,—the
first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia,—then precipitated, at
once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first
parent helped much towards the solution of this perplexing problem,
as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the
shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story (discussed
in a former chapter[343]) of Solon and Crœsus, the Lydian king is
punished with an acute domestic affliction, because he thought
himself the happiest of mankind,—the gods not suffering anyone to be
arrogant except themselves;[344] and the warning of Solon is made
to recur to Crœsus after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in
the narrative of Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the
story, just recounted, of the relations of Crœsus with the Delphian
oracle. An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious
feelings of the Greeks, how and why he was ruined,—but nothing less
than the overruling and omnipotent Mœræ could be invoked to explain
so stupendous a result.
[341] Herodot. i, 91. Ὁ δὲ ἀκούσας συνέγνω ἑωϋτοῦ εἶναι τὴν
ἁμαρτάδα, καὶ οὐ τοῦ θεοῦ.
Xenophon also, in the Cyropædia (vii, 2, 16-25), brings Crœsus to
the same result of confession and humiliation, though by steps
somewhat different.
[342] Herodot. i, 13.
[343] See above, chap, xi, vol. iii, pp. 149-153.
[344] Herodot. vii, 10. οὐ γὰρ ἐᾷ φρονέειν ἄλλον μέγα ὁ θεὸς ἢ
ἑωϋτόν.
It is rarely that these supreme goddesses, or hyper-goddesses—since
the gods themselves must submit to them—are brought into such
distinct light and action. Usually, they are kept in the dark, or
are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling-block in cases of
extreme incomprehensibility; and it is difficult clearly to determine
(as in the case of some complicated political constitutions) where
the Greeks conceived sovereign power to reside, in respect to the
government of the world. But here the sovereignty of the Mœræ, and
the subordinate agency of the gods, are unequivocally set forth.[345]
Yet the gods are still extremely powerful, because the Mœræ comply
with their requests up to a certain point, not thinking it proper
to be wholly inexorable; but their compliance is carried no farther
than they themselves choose. Nor would they, even in deference to
Apollo,[346] alter the original sentence of punishment for the
sin of Gygês in the person of his fifth descendant,—a sentence,
moreover, which Apollo himself had formally prophesied shortly after
the sin was committed; so that, if the Mœræ had listened to his
intercession on behalf of Crœsus, his own prophetic credit would have
been endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the
ruin of Crœsus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by the
circumstance, that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upon them to
alter it, or to grant more than a three years’ respite. The religious
element must here be viewed as giving the form—the historical element
as giving the matter only, and not the whole matter—of the story; and
these two elements will be found conjoined more or less throughout
most of the history of Herodotus, though, as we descend to later
times, we shall find the historical element in constantly increasing
proportion. His conception of history is extremely different from
that of Thucydidês, who lays down to himself the true scheme and
purpose of the historian, common to him with the philosopher,—to
recount and interpret the past, as a rational aid towards the
prevision of the future.[347]
[345] In the oracle reported in Herodot. vii, 141, as delivered
by the Pythian priestess to Athens on occasion of the approach
of Xerxês, Zeus is represented in the same supreme position as
the present oracle assigns to the Mœræ, or Fates: Pallas in vain
attempts to propitiate him in favor of Athens, just as, in this
case, Apollo tries to mitigate the Mœræ in respect to Crœsus—
Οὐ δύναται Παλλὰς Δί᾽ Ὀλύμπιον ἐξιλάσασθαι,
Λισσομένη πολλοῖσι λόγοις καὶ μήτιδι πυκνῇ, etc.
Compare also viii, 109, and ix, 16.
O. Müller (Dissertation on the Eumenides of Æschylus, p. 222,
Eng. Transl.) says: “On no occasion does Zeus Soter exert his
influence directly, like Apollo, Minerva, and the Erinnyes;
but whereas Apollo is prophet and exegetes by virtue of wisdom
derived from him, and Minerva is indebted to him for her sway
over states and assemblies,—nay, the very Erinnyes exercise their
functions in his name,—this Zeus stands always in the background,
and has in reality only to settle a conflict existing within
himself. For with Æschylus, as with all men of profound feeling
among the Greeks from the earliest times, Jupiter is the only
real god, in the higher sense of the word. Although he is, in
the spirit of ancient theology, a generated god, arisen out of
an imperfect state of things, and not produced till the third
stage of a development of nature,—still he is, at the time we are
speaking of, the spirit that pervades and governs the universe.”
To the same purpose Klausen expresses himself (Theologumena
Æschyli, pp. 6-69).
It is perfectly true that many passages may be produced from
Greek authors which ascribe to Zeus the supreme power here
noted. But it is equally true that this conception is not
uniformly adhered to, and that sometimes the Fates, or Mœræ are
represented as supreme; occasionally represented as the stronger
and Zeus as the weaker (Promêtheus, 515). The whole tenor of
that tragedy, in fact, brings out the conception of a Zeus
τύραννος,—whose power is not supreme, even for the time; and
is not destined to continue permanently, even at its existing
height. The explanations given by Klausen of this drama appear to
me incorrect; nor do I understand how it is to be reconciled with
the above passage quoted from O. Müller.
The two oracles here cited from Herodotus exhibit plainly the
fluctuation of Greek opinion on this subject: in the one, the
supreme determination, and the inexorability which accompanies
it, are ascribed to Zeus,—in the other, to the Mœræ. This double
point of view adapted itself to different occasions, and served
as a help for the interpretation of different events. Zeus was
supposed to have certain sympathies for human beings; misfortunes
happened to various men which he not only did not wish to bring
on, but would have been disposed to avert; here the Mœræ, who had
no sympathies, were introduced as an explanatory cause, tacitly
implied as overruling Zeus. “Cum Furiis Æschylus Parcas tantum
non ubique conjungit,” says Klausen (Theol. Æsch. p. 39); and
this entire absence of human sympathies constitutes the common
point of both,—that in which the Mœræ and the Erinnyes differ
from all the other gods,—πέφρικα τὰν ὠλεσίοικον θεὰν, οὐ θεοῖς
ὁμοίαν (Æschyl. Sept. ad Theb. 720): compare Eumenid. 169, 172,
and, indeed, the general strain of that fearful tragedy.
In Æschylus, as in Herodotus, Apollo is represented as exercising
persuasive powers over the Mœræ (Eumenid. 724),—Μοίρας ἔπεισας
ἀφθίτους θεῖναι βροτούς.
[346] The language of Herodotus deserves attention. Apollo tells
Crœsus: “I applied to the Mœræ to get the execution of the
judgment postponed from your time to that of your children,—but
I could not prevail upon them; but as much as they would yield
_of their own accord_, I procured for you.” (ὅσον δὲ ~ἐνέδωκαν
αὗται~, ἐχαρίσατό οἱ—i, 91.)
[347] Thucyd. i, 22.
The destruction of the Lydian monarchy, and the establishment of the
Persians at Sardis—an event pregnant with consequences to Hellas
generally—took place in 546 B. C.[348] Sorely did the Ionic Greeks
now repent that they had rejected the propositions made to them
by Cyrus for revolting from Crœsus,—though at the time when these
propositions were made, it would have been highly imprudent to listen
to them, since the Lydian power might reasonably be looked upon as
the stronger. As soon as Sardis had fallen, they sent envoys to the
conqueror, entreating that they might be enrolled as his tributaries,
on the footing which they had occupied under Crœsus. The reply was
a stern and angry refusal, with the exception of the Milesians, to
whom the terms which they asked were granted:[349] why this favorable
exception was extended to them, we do not know. The other continental
Ionians and Æolians (exclusive of Milêtus, and exclusive also of the
insular cities which the Persians had no means of attacking), seized
with alarm, began to put themselves in a condition of defence: it
seems that the Lydian king had caused their fortifications to be
wholly or partially dismantled, for we are told that they now began
to erect walls; and the Phôkæans especially devoted to that purpose
a present which they had received from the Iberian Arganthônius,
king of Tartêssus. Besides thus strengthening their own cities, they
thought it advisable to send a joint embassy entreating aid from
Sparta; they doubtless were not unapprized that the Spartans had
actually equipped an army for the support of Crœsus. Their deputies
went to Sparta, where the Phôkæan Pythermus, appointed by the rest
to be spokesman, clothing himself in a purple robe,[350] in order
to attract the largest audience possible, set forth their pressing
need of succor against the impending danger. The Lacedæmonians
refused the prayer; nevertheless, they despatched to Phôkæa some
commissioners to investigate the state of affairs,—who perhaps,
persuaded by the Phôkæans, sent Lakrinês, one of their number, to
the conqueror at Sardis, to warn him that he should not lay hands on
any city of Hellas,—for the Lacedæmonians would not permit it. “Who
are these Lacedæmonians? (inquired Cyrus from some Greeks who stood
near him)—how many are there of them, that they venture to send me
such a notice?” Having received the answer, wherein it was stated
that the Lacedæmonians had a city and a regular market at Sparta, he
exclaimed: “I have never yet been afraid of men like these, who have
a set place in the middle of their city, where they meet to cheat one
another and forswear themselves. If I live, they shall have troubles
of their own to talk about, apart from the Ionians.” To buy or sell,
appeared to the Persians a contemptible practice; for they carried
out consistently, one step farther, the principle upon which even
many able Greeks condemned the lending of money on interest; and the
speech of Cyrus was intended as a covert reproach of Grecian habits
generally.[351]
[348] This important date depends upon the evidence of Solinus
(Polyhistor, i, 112) and Sosikratês (ap. Diog. Laërt. i, 95): see
Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 546, and his Appendix, ch.
17, upon the Lydian kings.
Mr. Clinton and most of the chronologists accept the date without
hesitation, but Volney (Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne,
vol. i, pp. 306-308; Chronologie des Rois Lydiens) rejects it
altogether; considering the capture of Sardis to have occurred
in 557 B. C., and the reign of Crœsus to have begun in 571 B.
C. He treats very contemptuously the authority of Solinus and
Sosikratês, and has an elaborate argumentation to prove that the
date which he adopts is borne out by Herodotus. This latter does
not appear to me at all satisfactory: I adopt the date of Solinus
and Sosikratês, though agreeing with Volney that such positive
authority is not very considerable, because there is nothing to
contradict them, and because the date which they give seems in
consonance with the stream of the history.
Volney’s arguments suppose in the mind of Herodotus a degree of
chronological precision altogether unreasonable, in reference
to events anterior to contemporary records. He, like other
chronologists, exhausts his ingenuity to find a proper point of
historical time for the supposed conversation between Solon and
Crœsus (p. 320).
[349] Herodot. i, 141.
[350] Herodot. i, 152. The purple garment, so attractive a
spectacle amid the plain clothing universal at Sparta, marks the
contrast between Asiatic and European Greece.
[351] Herodot. i, 153. ταῦτα ἐς τοὺς πάντας Ἕλληνας ἀπέῤῥιψε ὁ
Κῦρος τὰ ἔπεα, etc.
This blank menace of Lakrinês, an insulting provocation to the
enemy rather than a real support to the distressed, was the only
benefit which the Ionic Greeks derived from Sparta. They were left
to defend themselves as best they could against the conqueror;
who presently, however, quitted Sardis to prosecute in person his
conquests in the East, leaving the Persian Tabalus with a garrison
in the citadel, but consigning both the large treasure captured, and
the authority over the Lydian population, to the Lydian Paktyas.
As he carried away Crœsus along with him, he probably considered
himself sure of the fidelity of those Lydians whom the deposed
monarch recommended. But he had not yet arrived at his own capital,
when he received the intelligence that Paktyas had revolted, arming
the Lydian population, and employing the treasure in his charge to
hire fresh troops. On hearing this news, Cyrus addressed himself
to Crœsus, according to Herodotus, in terms of much wrath against
the Lydians, and even intimated that he should be compelled to sell
them all as slaves. Upon which Crœsus, full of alarm for his people,
contended strenuously that Paktyas alone was in fault, and deserving
of punishment; but he at the same time advised Cyrus to disarm the
Lydian population, and to enforce upon them effeminate attire,
together with habits of playing on the harp and shopkeeping. “By this
process (he said) you will soon see them become women instead of
men.”[352] This suggestion is said to have been accepted by Cyrus,
and executed by his general Mazarês. The conversation here reported,
and the deliberate plan for enervating the Lydian character supposed
to be pursued by Cyrus, is evidently an hypothesis imagined by some
of the contemporaries or predecessors of Herodotus,—to explain the
contrast between the Lydians whom they saw before them, after two or
three generations of slavery, and the old irresistible horsemen of
whom they heard in fame, at the time when Crœsus was lord from the
Halys to the Ægean sea.
[352] Herodot. i, 155.
To return to Paktyas,—he had commenced his revolt, come down to the
sea-coast, and employed the treasures of Sardis in levying a Grecian
mercenary force, with which he invested the place and blocked up
the governor Tabalus. But he manifested no courage worthy of so
dangerous an enterprise; for no sooner had he heard that the Median
general Mazarês was approaching at the head of an army dispatched
by Cyrus against him, than he disbanded his force and fled to Kymê
for protection as a suppliant. Presently, arrived a menacing summons
from Mazarês, demanding that he should be given up forthwith, which
plunged the Kymæans into profound dismay; for the idea of giving
up a suppliant to destruction was shocking to Grecian sentiment.
They sent to solicit advice from the holy temple of Apollo, at
Branchidæ near Milêtus; and the reply directed, that Paktyas should
be surrendered. Nevertheless, so ignominious did such a surrender
appear, that Aristodikus and some other Kymæan citizens denounced the
messengers as liars, and required that a more trustworthy deputation
should be sent to consult the god. Aristodikus himself, forming one
of the second body, stated the perplexity to the oracle, and received
a repetition of the same answer; whereupon he proceeded to rob the
birds’-nests which existed in abundance in and about the temple.
A voice from the inner oracular chamber speedily arrested him,
exclaiming: “Most impious of men, how darest thou to do such things?
Wilt thou snatch my suppliants from the temple itself?” Unabashed
by the rebuke, Aristodikus replied: “Master, thus dost _thou_ help
suppliants thyself: and dost thou command the Kymæans to give up a
suppliant?” “Yes, I do command it[353] (rejoined the god forthwith),
in order that the crime may bring destruction upon you the sooner,
and that you may not in future come to consult the oracle upon the
surrender of suppliants.”
[353] Herodot. i, 159.
The ingenuity of Aristodikus completely nullified the oracular
response, and left the Kymæans in their original perplexity. Not
choosing to surrender Paktyas, nor daring to protect him against a
besieging army, they sent him away to Mitylênê, whither the envoys of
Mazarês followed and demanded him; offering a reward so considerable,
that the Kymæans became fearful of trusting them, and again conveyed
away the suppliant to Chios, where he took refuge in the temple of
Athênê Poliuchus. But here again the pursuers followed, and the
Chians were persuaded to drag him from the temple and surrender
him, on consideration of receiving the territory of Atarneus (a
district on the continent over against the island of Lesbos) as
purchase-money. Paktyas was thus seized and sent prisoner to Cyrus,
who had given the most express orders for this capture: hence the
unusual intensity of the pursuit. But it appears that the territory
of Atarneus was considered as having been ignominiously acquired by
the Chians; none even of their own citizens would employ any article
of its produce for holy or sacrificial purposes.[354]
[354] Herodot. i, 160. The short fragment from Charôn of
Lampsakus, which Plutarch (De Malignitat. Herod. p. 859) cites
here, in support of one among his many unjust censures on
Herodotus, is noway inconsistent with the statement of the
latter, but rather tends to confirm it.
In writing this treatise on the alleged ill-temper of Herodotus,
we see that Plutarch had before him the history of Charôn of
Lampsakus, more ancient by one generation than the historian
whom he was assailing, and also belonging to Asiatic Greece. Of
course, it suited the purpose of his work to produce all the
contradictions to Herodotus which he could find in Charôn: the
fact that he has produced none of any moment, tends to strengthen
our faith in the historian of Halikarnassus, and to show that in
the main his narrative was in accordance with that of Charôn.
Mazarês next proceeded to the attack and conquest of the Greeks on
the coast; an enterprise which, since he soon died of illness, was
completed by his successor Harpagus. The towns assailed successively
made a gallant but ineffectual resistance: the Persian general by
his numbers drove the defenders within their walls, against which
he piled up mounds of earth, so as either to carry the place by
storm or to compel surrender. All of them were reduced, one after
the other: with all, the terms of subjection were doubtless harder
than those which had been imposed upon them by Crœsus, because Cyrus
had already refused to grant these terms to them, with the single
exception of Milêtus, and because they had since given additional
offence by aiding the revolt of Paktyas. The inhabitants of Priênê
were sold into slavery: they were the first assailed by Mazarês, and
had perhaps been especially forward in the attack made by Paktyas on
Sardis.[355]
[355] Herodot. i, 161-169.
Among these unfortunate towns, thus changing their master and passing
out into a harsher subjection, two deserve especial notice,—Teôs and
Phôkæa. The citizens of the former, so soon as the mound around
their walls had rendered farther resistance impossible, embarked and
emigrated, some to Thrace, where they founded Abdêra,—others to the
Cimmerian Bosphorus, where they planted Phanagoria; a portion of
them, however, must have remained to take the chances of subjection,
since the town appears in after-times still peopled and still
Hellenic.[356]
[356] Herodot. i, 168; Skymnus Chius, Fragm. v, 153; Dionys.
Perieg. v, 553.
The fate of Phôkæa, similar in the main, is given to us with more
striking circumstances of detail, and becomes the more interesting,
since the enterprising mariners who inhabited it had been the
torch-bearers of Grecian geographical discovery in the west. I have
already described their adventurous exploring voyages of former days
into the interior of the Adriatic, and along the whole northern
and western coasts of the Mediterranean as far as Tartêssus (the
region around and adjoining to Cadiz),—together with the favorable
reception given to them by old Arganthônius, king of the country,
who invited them to emigrate in a body to his kingdom, offering
them the choice of any site which they might desire. His invitation
was declined, though probably the Phôkæans may have subsequently
regretted the refusal; and he then manifested his good-will towards
them by a large present to defray the expense of constructing
fortifications round their town.[357] The walls, erected in part, by
this aid, were both extensive and well built; yet they could not
hinder Harpagus from raising his mounds of earth up against them,
while he was politic enough at the same time to tempt them with
offers of a moderate capitulation; requiring only that they should
breach their walls in one place by pulling down one of the towers,
and consecrate one building in the interior of the town as a token
of subjection. To accept these terms, was to submit themselves to
the discretion of the besieger, for there could be no security that
they would be observed; and the Phôkæans, while they asked for one
day to deliberate upon their reply, entreated that, during that
day, Harpagus should withdraw his troops altogether from the walls.
With this demand the latter complied, intimating, at the same time,
that he saw clearly through the meaning of it. The Phôkæans had
determined that the inevitable servitude impending over their town
should not be shared by its inhabitants, and they employed their day
of grace in preparation for collective exile, putting on ship-board
their wives and children as well as their furniture and the movable
decorations of their temples. They then set sail for Chios, leaving
to the conqueror a deserted town for the occupation of a Persian
garrison.[358]
[357] Herodot. i, 163. Ὁ δὲ πυθόμενος παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τὸν Μῆδον ὡς
αὔξοιτο, ἐδίδου σφι χρήματα τεῖχος περιβαλέσθαι τὴν πόλιν.
I do not understand why the commentators debate what or who is
meant by τὸν Μῆδον: it plainly means the Median or Persian power
generally: but the chronological difficulty is a real one, if
we are to suppose that there was time between the first alarm
conceived of the Median power of the Ionians, and the siege of
Phôkæa by Harpagus, to inform Arganthônius of the circumstances,
and to procure from him this large aid as well as to build the
fortifications. The Ionic Greeks neither actually did conceive,
nor had reason to conceive, any alarm respecting Persian power,
until the arrival of Cyrus before Sardis; and within a month from
that time Sardis was in his possession. If we are to suppose
communication with Arganthônius, grounded upon this circumstance,
at the distance of Tartêssus, and under the circumstances of
ancient navigation, we must necessarily imagine, also, that the
attack made by Harpagus upon Phôkæa—which city he assailed before
any of the rest—was postponed for at least two or three years.
Such postponement is not wholly impossible, yet it is not in the
spirit of the Herodotean narrative, nor do I think it likely. It
is much more probable that the informants of Herodotus made a
slip in chronology, and ascribed the donations of Arganthônius to
a motive which did not really dictate them.
As to the fortifications (which Phôkæa and the other Ionic cities
are reported to have erected after the conquest of Sardis by the
Persians), the case may stand thus. While these cities were all
independent, before they were first conquered by Crœsus, they
must undoubtedly have had fortifications. When Crœsus conquered
them, he directed the demolition of the fortifications; but
demolition does not necessarily mean pulling down the entire
walls: when one or a few breaches are made, the city is laid
open, and the purpose of Crœsus would thus be answered. Such may
well have been the state of the Ionian cities at the time when
they first thought it necessary to provide defences against the
Persians at Sardis: they repaired and perfected the breached
fortifications.
The conjecture of Larcher (see the Notes both of Larcher
and Wesseling),—τὸν Λυδὸν instead of τὸν Μῆδον,—is not an
unreasonable one, if it had any authority: the donation of
Arganthônius would then be transferred to the period anterior
to the Lydian conquest: it would get rid of the chronological
difficulty above adverted to, but it would introduce some new
awkwardness into the narrative.
[358] Herodot. i, 164.
It appears that the fugitives were not very kindly received at Chios;
at least, when they made a proposition for purchasing from the Chians
the neighboring islands of Œnussæ as a permanent abode, the latter
were induced to refuse by apprehensions of commercial rivalry. It
was necessary to look farther for a settlement: and Arganthônius
their protector, being now dead, Tartêssus was no longer inviting.
Twenty years before, however, the colony of Alalia in the island of
Corsica had been founded from Phôkæa by the direction of the oracle,
and thither the general body of Phôkæans now resolved to repair.
Having prepared their ships for this distant voyage, they first
sailed back to Phôkæa, surprised the Persian garrison whom Harpagus
had left in the town, and slew them: they then sunk in the harbor a
great lump of iron, and bound themselves by a solemn and unanimous
oath never again to see Phôkæa until that iron should come up to the
surface. Nevertheless, in spite of the oath, the voyage of exile had
been scarcely begun when more than half of them repented of having
so bound themselves,—and became homesick.[359] They broke their vow
and returned to Phôkæa. But as Herodotus does not mention any divine
judgment as having been consequent on the perjury, we may, perhaps,
suspect that some gray-headed citizen, to whom transportation to
Corsica might be little less than a sentence of death, both persuaded
himself, and certified to his companions, that he had seen the
sunken lump of iron raised up and floating for a while buoyant upon
the waves. Harpagus must have been induced to pardon the previous
slaughter of his Persian garrison, or at least to believe that it
had been done by those Phôkæans who still persisted in exile. He
wanted tribute-paying subjects, not an empty military post, and the
repentant home-seekers were allowed to number themselves among the
slaves of the Great King.
[359] Herodot. i, 165. ὑπερημίσεας τῶν ἀστῶν ἔλαβε πόθος τε
καὶ οἶκτος τῆς πόλιος καὶ τῶν ἠθέων τῆς χώρης· ψευδόρκιοί τε
γενόμενοι, etc. The colloquial term which I have ventured to
place in the text expresses exactly, as well as briefly, the
meaning of the historian. A public oath, taken by most of the
Greek cities with similar ceremony of lumps of iron thrown into
the sea, is mentioned in Plutarch, Aristid. c. 25.
Meanwhile the smaller but more resolute half of the Phôkæans executed
their voyage to Alalia in Corsica, with their wives and children,
in sixty pentekontêrs, or armed ships, and established themselves
along with the previous settlers. They remained there for five
years,[360] during which time their indiscriminate piracies had
become so intolerable (even at that time, piracy committed against
a foreign vessel seems to have been both frequent and practised
without much disrepute), that both the Tyrrhenian seaports along
the Mediterranean coast of Italy, and the Carthaginians, united to
put them down. There subsisted particular treaties between these
two, for the regulation of the commercial intercourse between
Africa and Italy, of which the ancient treaty preserved by Polybius
between Rome and Carthage (made in 509 B. C.) may be considered as a
specimen.[361] Sixty Carthaginian and as many Tuscan ships attacked
the sixty Phôkæan ships near Alalia, and destroyed forty of them,
yet not without such severe loss to themselves that the victory was
said to be on the side of the latter; who, however, in spite of this
Kadmeian victory (so a battle was denominated in which the victors
lost more than the vanquished), were compelled to carry back their
remaining twenty vessels to Alalia, and to retire with their wives
and families, in so far as room could be found for them, to Rhegium.
At last, these unhappy exiles found a permanent home by establishing
the new settlement of Elea, or Velia, in the gulf of Policastro, on
the Italian coast (then called Œnôtrian) southward from Poseidônia,
or Pæstum. It is probable that they were here joined by other exiles
from Ionia, in particular by the Kolophonian philosopher and poet
Xenophanês, from whom what was afterwards called the Eleatic school
of philosophy, distinguished both for bold consistency and dialectic
acuteness, took its rise. The Phôkæan captives, taken prisoners in
the naval combat by Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians, were stoned to
death; but a divine judgment overtook the Tyrrhenian town of Agylla,
in consequence of this cruelty; and even in the time of Herodotus,
a century afterwards, the Agyllæans were still expiating the sin by
a periodical solemnity and agon, pursuant to the penalty which the
Delphian oracle had imposed upon them.[362]
[360] Herodot. i, 166.
[361] Aristot. Polit. iii, 5, 11; Polyb. iii, 22.
[362] Herodot. i, 167.
Such was the fate of the Phôkæan exiles, while their brethren
at home remained as subjects of Harpagus, in common with all the
other Ionic and Æolic Greeks except Milêtus. For even the insular
inhabitants of Lesbos and Chios, though not assailable by sea,
since the Persians had no fleet, thought it better to renounce
their independence and enrol themselves as Persian subjects,—both
of them possessing strips of the mainland which they were unable
to protect otherwise. Samos, on the other hand, maintained its
independence, and even reached, shortly after this period, under
the despotism of Polykratês, a higher degree of power than ever.
Perhaps the humiliation of the other maritime Greeks around may have
rather favored the ambition of this unscrupulous prince, to whom I
shall revert presently. But we may readily conceive that the public
solemnities in which the Ionic Greeks intermingled, in place of
those gay and richly-decked crowds which the Homeric hymn describes
in the preceding century as assembled at Delos, presented scenes of
marked despondency: one of their wisest men, indeed, Bias of Priênê,
went so far as to propose, at the Pan-Ionic festival, a collective
emigration of the entire population of the Ionic towns to the island
of Sardinia. Nothing like freedom, he urged, was now open to them
in Asia; but in Sardinia, one great Pan-Ionic city might be formed,
which would not only be free herself, but mistress of her neighbors.
The proposition found no favor; the reason of which is sufficiently
evident from the narrative just given respecting the unconquerable
local attachment on the part of the Phôkæan majority. But Herodotus
bestows upon it the most unqualified commendation, and regrets that
it was not acted upon.[363] Had such been the case, the subsequent
history of Carthage, Sicily, and even Rome, might have been sensibly
altered.
[363] Herodot. i, 170. Πυνθάνομαι γνώμην Βίαντα ἄνδρα Πριηνέα
ἀποδέξασθαι Ἴωσι χρησιμωτάτην, τῇ εἰ ἐπείθοντο, παρεῖχε ἂν σφι
εὐδαιμονέειν Ἑλλήνων μάλιστα.
Thus subdued by Harpagus, the Ionic and Æolic Greeks were employed as
auxiliaries to him in the conquest of the south-western inhabitants
of Asia Minor,—Karians, Kaunians, Lykians, and Doric Greeks of Knidus
and Halikarnassus. Of the fate of the latter town, Herodotus tells
us nothing, though it was his native place. The inhabitants of
Knidus, a place situated on a long outlying tongue of land, at first
tried to cut through the narrow isthmus which joined them to the
continent, but abandoned the attempt with a facility which Herodotus
explains by referring it to a prohibition of the oracle:[364] nor did
either the Karians or the Kaunians offer any serious resistance. The
Lykians only, in their chief town Xanthus, made a desperate defence.
Having in vain tried to repel the assailants in the open field, and
finding themselves blocked up in their city, they set fire to it
with their own hands; consuming in the flames their women, children,
and servants, while the armed citizens marched out and perished to
a man in combat with the enemy.[365] Such an act of brave and even
ferocious despair is not in the Grecian character. In recounting,
however, the languid defence and easy submission of the Greeks of
Knidus, it may surprise us to call to mind that they were Dorians
and colonists from Sparta. So that the want of steadfast courage,
often imputed to Ionic Greeks as compared to Dorian, ought properly
to be charged on Asiatic Greeks as compared with European; or rather
upon that mixture of indigenous with Hellenic population, which all
the Asiatic colonies, in common with most of the other colonies,
presented, and which in Halikarnassus was particularly remarkable;
for it seems to have been half Karian, half Dorian, and was even
governed by a line of Karian despots.
[364] Herodot. i, 174.
[365] Herodot. i, 176. The whole population of Xanthus perished,
except eighty families accidentally absent: the subsequent
occupants of the town were recruited from strangers. Nearly five
centuries afterwards, their descendants in the same city slew
themselves in the like desperate and tragical manner, to avoid
surrendering to the Roman army under Marcus Brutus (Plutarch,
Brutus, c. 31).
Harpagus and the Persians thus mastered, without any considerable
resistance, the western and southern portions of Asia Minor;
probably, also, though we have no direct account of it, the entire
territory within the Halys which had before been ruled by Crœsus. The
tributes of the conquered Greeks were transmitted to Ekbatana instead
of to Sardis. While Harpagus was thus employed, Cyrus himself had
been making still more extensive conquests in Upper Asia and Assyria,
of which I shall speak in the coming chapter.