THE SPREAD OF CONQUEST IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
In a companion volume of this series, "The Story of Extinct
Civilisations in the East," will be found an account of the rise
and development of the various nations who held sway over the west
of Asia at the dawn of history. Modern discoveries of remarkable
interest have enabled us to learn the condition of men in Asia
Minor as early as 4000 B.C. All these early civilisations existed
on the banks of great rivers, which rendered the land fertile through
which they passed.
We first find man conscious of himself, and putting his knowledge
on record, along the banks of the great rivers Nile, Euphrates,
and Tigris, Ganges and Yang-tse-Kiang. But for our purposes we
are not concerned with these very early stages of history. The
Egyptians got to know something of the nations that surrounded
them, and so did the Assyrians. A summary of similar knowledge
is contained in the list of tribes given in the tenth chapter of
Genesis, which divides all mankind, as then known to the Hebrews,
into descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet--corresponding, roughly,
to Asia, Europe, and Africa. But in order to ascertain how the
Romans obtained the mass of information which was summarised for
them by Ptolemy in his great work, we have merely to concentrate
our attention on the remarkable process of continuous expansion
which ultimately led to the existence of the Roman Empire.
All early histories of kingdoms are practically of the same type.
A certain tract of country is divided up among a certain number
of tribes speaking a common language, and each of these tribes
ruled by a separate chieftain. One of these tribes then becomes
predominant over the rest, through the skill in war or diplomacy
of one of its chiefs, and the whole of the tract of country is thus
organised into one kingdom. Thus the history of England relates
how the kingdom of Wessex grew into predominance over the whole
of the country; that of France tells how the kings who ruled over
the Isle of France spread their rule over the rest of the land;
the history of Israel is mainly an account of how the tribe of
Judah obtained the hegemony of the rest of the tribes; and Roman
history, as its name implies, informs us how the inhabitants of
a single city grew to be the masters of the whole known world.
But their empire had been prepared for them by a long series of
similar expansions, which might be described as the successive
swallowing up of empire after empire, each becoming overgrown in
the process, till at last the series was concluded by the Romans
swallowing up the whole. It was this gradual spread of dominion
which, at each stage, increased men's knowledge of surrounding
nations, and it therefore comes within our province to roughly sum
up these stages, as part of the story of geographical discovery.
Regarded from the point of view of geography, this spread of man's
knowledge might be compared to the growth of a huge oyster-shell,
and, from that point of view, we have to take the north of the
Persian Gulf as the apex of the shell, and begin with the Babylonian
Empire. We first have the kingdom of Babylon--which, in the early
stages, might be best termed Chaldæa--in the south of Mesopotamia
(or the valley between the two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates), which,
during the third and second millennia before our era, spread along
the valley of the Tigris. But in the fourteenth century B.C., the
Assyrians to the north of it, though previously dependent upon
Babylon, conquered it, and, after various vicissitudes, established
themselves throughout the whole of Mesopotamia and much of the
surrounding lands. In 604 B.C. the capital of this great empire was
moved once more to Babylon, so that in the last stage, as well as in
the first, it may be called Babylonia. For purposes of distinction,
however, it will be as well to call these three successive stages
Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylonia.
Meanwhile, immediately to the east, a somewhat similar process
had been gone through, though here the development was from north
to south, the Medes of the north developing a powerful empire in
the north of Persia, which ultimately fell into the hands of Cyrus
the Great in 546 B.C. He then proceeded to conquer the kingdom of
Lydia, in the northwest part of Asia Minor, which had previously
inherited the dominions of the Hittites. Finally he proceeded to
seize the empire of Babylonia, by his successful attack on the
capital, 538 B.C. He extended his rule nearly as far as India on
one side, and, as we know from the Bible, to the borders of Egypt
on the other. His son Cambyses even succeeded in adding Egypt for
a time to the Persian Empire. The oyster-shell of history had
accordingly expanded to include almost the whole of Western Asia.
The next two centuries are taken up in universal history by the
magnificent struggle of the Greeks against the Persian Empire--the
most decisive conflict in all history, for it determined whether
Europe or Asia should conquer the world. Hitherto the course of
conquest had been from east to west, and if Xerxes' invasion had
been successful, there is little doubt that the westward tendency
would have continued. But the larger the tract of country which an
empire covers--especially when different tribes and nations are
included in it--the weaker and less organised it becomes. Within
little more than a century of the death of Cyrus the Great the
Greeks discovered the vulnerable point in the Persian Empire, owing
to an expedition of ten thousand Greek mercenaries under Xenophon,
who had been engaged by Cyrus the younger in an attempt to capture
the Persian Empire from his brother. Cyrus was slain, 401 B.C., but
the ten thousand, under the leadership of Xenophon, were enabled,
to hold their own against all the attempts of the Persians to destroy
them, and found their way back to Greece.
Meanwhile the usual process had been going on in Greece by which a
country becomes consolidated. From time to time one of the tribes
into which that mountainous country was divided obtained supremacy
over the rest: at first the Athenians, owing to the prominent part
they had taken in repelling the Persians; then the Spartans, and
finally the Thebans. But on the northern frontiers a race of hardy
mountaineers, the Macedonians, had consolidated their power, and,
under Philip of Macedon, became masters of all Greece. Philip had
learned the lesson taught by the successful retreat of the ten
thousand, and, just before his death, was preparing to attack the
Great King (of Persia) with all the forces which his supremacy in
Greece put at his disposal. His son Alexander the Great carried
out Philip's intentions. Within twelve years (334-323 B.C.) he had
conquered Persia, Parthia, India (in the strict sense, _i.e._ the
valley of the Indus), and Egypt. After his death his huge empire
was divided up among his generals, but, except in the extreme east,
the whole of it was administered on Greek methods. A Greek-speaking
person could pass from one end to the other without difficulty, and
we can understand how a knowledge of the whole tract of country
between the Adriatic and the Indus could be obtained by Greek scholars.
Alexander founded a large number of cities, all bearing his name, at
various points of his itinerary; but of these the most important
was that at the mouth of the Nile, known to this day as Alexandria.
Here was the intellectual centre of the whole Hellenic world, and
accordingly it was here, as we have seen, that Eratosthenes first
wrote down in a systematic manner all the knowledge about the habitable
earth which had been gained mainly by Alexander's conquests.
Important as was the triumphant march of Alexander through Western
Asia, both in history and in geography, it cannot be said to have
added so very much to geographical knowledge, for Herodotus was
roughly acquainted with most of the country thus traversed, except
towards the east of Persia and the north-west of India. But the
itineraries of Alexander and his generals must have contributed
more exact knowledge of the distances between the various important
centres of population, and enabled Eratosthenes and his successors
to give them a definite position on their maps of the world. What
they chiefly learned from Alexander and his immediate successors
was a more accurate knowledge of North-West India. Even as late
as Strabo, the sole knowledge possessed at Alexandria of Indian
places was that given by Megasthenes, the ambassador to India in
the third century B.C.
Meanwhile, in the western portion of the civilised world a similar
process had gone on. In the Italian peninsula the usual struggle
had gone on between the various tribes inhabiting it. The fertile
plain of Lombardy was not in those days regarded as belonging to
Italy, but was known as Cisalpine Gaul. The south of Italy, as we
have seen, was mainly inhabited by Greek colonists, and was called
Great Greece. Between these tracts of country the Italian territory
was inhabited by three sets of federate tribes--the Etrurians,
the Samnites, and the Latins. During the 230 years between 510
B.C. and 280 B.C. Rome was occupied in obtaining the supremacy
among these three sets of tribes, and by the latter date may be
regarded as having consolidated Central Italy into an Italian
federation, centralised at Rome. At the latter date, the Greek
king Pyrrhus of Epirus, attempted to arouse the Greek colonies
in Southern Italy against the growing power of Rome; but his
interference only resulted in extending the Roman dominion down
to the heel and big toe of Italy.
If Rome was to advance farther, Sicily would be the next step,
and just at that moment Sicily was being threatened by the other
great power of the West--Carthage. Carthage was the most important
of the colonies founded by the Phoenicians (probably in the ninth
century B.C.), and pursued in the Western Mediterranean the policy
of establishing trading stations along the coast, which had
distinguished the Phoenicians from their first appearance in history.
They seized all the islands in that division of the sea, or at any
rate prevented any other nation from settling in Corsica, Sardinia,
and the Balearic Isles. In particular Carthage took possession
of the western part of Sicily, which had been settled by sister
Phoenician colonies. While Rome did everything in its power to
consolidate its conquests by admitting the other Italians to some
share in the central government, Carthage only regarded its foreign
possessions as so many openings for trade. In fact, it dealt with
the western littoral of the Mediterranean something like the East
India Company treated the coast of Hindostan: it established factories
at convenient spots. But just as the East India Company found it
necessary to conquer the neighbouring territory in order to secure
peaceful trade, so Carthage extended its conquests all down the
western coast of Africa and the south-east part of Spain, while Rome
was extending into Italy. To continue our conchological analogy, by
the time of the first Punic War Rome and Carthage had each expanded
into a shell, and between the two intervened the eastern section of
the island of Sicily. As the result of this, Rome became master
of Sicily, and then the final struggle took place with Hannibal in
the second Punic War, which resulted in Rome becoming possessed
of Spain and Carthage. By the year 200 B.C. Rome was practically
master of the Western Mediterranean, though it took another century
to consolidate its heritage from Carthage in Spain and Mauritania.
During that century--the second before our era--Rome also extended
its Italian boundaries to the Alps by the conquest of Cisalpine
Gaul, which, however, was considered outside Italy, from which it
was separated by the river Rubicon. In that same century the Romans
had begun to interfere in the affairs of Greece, which easily fell
into their hands, and thus prepared the way for their inheritance
of Alexander's empire.
This, in the main, was the work of the first century before our
era, when the expansion of Rome became practically concluded. This
was mainly the work of two men, Cæsar and Pompey. Following the
example of his uncle, Marius, Cæsar extended the Roman dominions
beyond the Alps to Gaul, Western Germany, and Britain; but from
our present standpoint it was Pompey who prepared the way for Rome
to carry on the succession of empire in the more civilised portions
of the world, and thereby merited his title of "Great." He pounded
up, as it were, the various states into which Asia Minor was divided,
and thus prepared the way for Roman dominion over Western Asia and
Egypt. By the time of Ptolemy the empire was thoroughly consolidated,
and his map and geographical notices are only tolerably accurate
within the confines of the empire.
[Illustration: EUROPE. Showing the principal Roman Roads.]
One of the means by which the Romans were enabled to consolidate
their dominion must be here shortly referred to. In order that
their legions might easily pass from one portion of this huge empire
to another, they built roads, generally in straight lines, and so
solidly constructed that in many places throughout Europe they
can be traced even to the present day, after the lapse of fifteen
hundred years. Owing to them, in a large measure, Rome was enabled
to preserve its empire intact for nearly five hundred years, and
even to this day one can trace a difference in the civilisation
of those countries over which Rome once ruled, except where the
devastating influence of Islam has passed like a sponge over the
old Roman provinces. Civilisation, or the art of living together
in society, is practically the result of Roman law, and this sense
all roads in history lead to Rome.
The work of Claudius Ptolemy sums up to us the knowledge that the
Romans had gained by their inheritance, on the western side, of
the Carthaginian empire, and, on the eastern, of the remains of
Alexander's empire, to which must be added the conquests of Cæsar
in North-West Europe. Cæsar is, indeed, the connecting link between
the two shells that had been growing throughout ancient history. He
added Gaul, Germany, and Britain to geographical knowledge, and,
by his struggle with Pompey, connected the Levant with his northerly
conquests. One result of his imperial work must be here referred
to. By bringing all civilised men under one rule, he prepared them
for the worship of one God. This was not without its influence on
travel and geographical discovery, for the great barrier between
mankind had always been the difference of religion, and Rome, by
breaking down the exclusiveness of local religions, and substituting
for them a general worship of the majesty of the Emperor, enabled
all the inhabitants of this vast empire to feel a certain communion
with one another, which ultimately, as we know, took on a religious
form.
The Roman Empire will henceforth form the centre from which to
regard any additions to geographical knowledge. As we shall see,
part of the knowledge acquired by the Romans was lost in the Dark
Ages succeeding the break-up of the empire; but for our purposes
this may be neglected and geographical discovery in the succeeding
chapters may be roughly taken to be additions and corrections of
the knowledge summed up by Claudius Ptolemy.